The Recollections of a Drummer-Boy
by Henry Martyn Kieffer · English · Gutenberg #44970 · 359,202 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Recollections of a Drummer-Boy
Author: Henry Martyn Kieffer
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The original spelling of words has been retained. Italic
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[Illustration: READY FOR THE FRONT.]
THE RECOLLECTIONS
OF
A DRUMMER-BOY
BY
HARRY M. KIEFFER
LATE OF THE ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH REGIMENT
PENNSYLVANIA VOLUNTEERS
ILLUSTRATED
"_Forsan et hæc olim meminisse juvabit_"
VIRGIL, ÆNEID I. 203
[Illustration]
BOSTON
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY
1883
COPYRIGHT, 1881, BY HARRY M. KIEFFER, AND 1883, BY
THE CENTURY CO.
_All rights reserved._
Cambridge:
PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON,
UNIVERSITY PRESS.
TO
THE OFFICERS AND MEN
OF
THE ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH REGIMENT
PENNSYLVANIA VOLUNTEERS,
And to their Children,
_THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED_.
PREFACE.
As some apology would seem to be necessary for the effort, herewith
made, to add yet one more volume to the already overcrowded shelf
containing the Nation's literature of the great Civil War, it may
be well to say a few words in explanation of the following pages.
Several years ago the writer prepared a brief series of papers for
the columns of _St. Nicholas_, under the title of "Recollections of
a Drummer-Boy." It was thought that these sketches of army life, as
seen by a boy, would prove enjoyable and profitable to children in
general, and especially to the children of the men who participated
in the great Civil War, on one side or the other; while the belief
was entertained that they might at the same time serve to revive
in the minds of the veterans themselves long-forgotten or but
imperfectly remembered scenes and experiences in camp and field. In
the outstart it was not the author's design to write a connected
story, but rather simply to prepare a few brief and hasty sketches
of army life, drawn from his own personal experience, and suitable
for magazine purposes. But these, though prepared in such intervals
as could with difficulty be spared from the exacting duties of
a busy professional life, having been so kindly received by the
editors of _St. Nicholas_, as well as by the very large circle
of the readers of that excellent magazine, and the writer having
been urgently pressed on all sides for more of the same kind, it
was thought well to revise and enlarge the "Recollections of a
Drummer-Boy," and to present them to the public in permanent book
form. In the shape of a more or less connected story of army life,
covering the whole period of a soldier's experience from enlistment
to muster-out, and carried forward through all the stirring scenes
of camp and field, it was believed that these "Recollections," in
the revised form, would commend themselves not only to the children
of the soldiers of the late war, but to the surviving soldiers
themselves; while at the same time they would possess a reasonable
interest for the general reader as well.
From first to last it has been the author's design, while
endeavoring faithfully to reflect the spirit of the army to which
he belonged, to avoid all needless references of a sectional
nature, and to present to the public a story of army life which
should breathe in every page of it the noble sentiment of "malice
towards none, and charity for all."
In all essential regards, the following pages are what they profess
to be,--the author's personal recollections of three years of army
life in active service in the field. In a few instances, it is
true, certain incidents have been introduced which did not properly
fall within the range of the writer's personal experience; but
these have been admitted merely as by the way, or for the sake
of being true to the spirit rather than to the letter. Facts
and dates have been given as accurately as the author's memory,
aided by a carefully kept army journal, would permit; while the
names of officers and men mentioned in the narrative are given as
they appear in the published muster-rolls, with the exception of
several instances, easily recognized by the intelligent reader, in
which, for evident reasons, it seemed best to conceal the actors
beneath fictitious names. While speaking of the matter of names, an
affectionate esteem for a faithful boyhood's friend and subsequent
army messmate constrains the writer to mention that, as "Andy" was
the name by which Fisher Gutelius, "high private in the rear rank,"
was commonly known while wearing the blue, it has been deemed well
to allow him to appear in the narrative under cover of this, his
army _sobriquet_.
As no full and complete history of the One Hundred and Fiftieth
Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers has ever yet been written, it is
hoped that these Recollections of one of its humblest members may
serve the purpose of recalling to the minds of surviving comrades
the stirring scenes through which they passed, as well as of
keeping alive in coming time the name and memory of an organization
which deserved well of its country during the ever-memorable days
of now more than twenty years ago.
The author herewith acknowledges his indebtedness for certain
facts to a brief sketch of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Regiment
Pennsylvania Volunteers by Thomas Chamberlain, late Major of the
same; and to John C. Kensill, late sergeant of Company F, for
valuable information; and to the editors of _St. Nicholas_ for
their uniform courtesy and encouragement.
It cannot fail to interest the reader to know that the
illustrations signed A. C. R. were drawn by Allen C. Redwood, who
served in the Confederate army, and witnessed, albeit from the
other side of the fence, many of the scenes which his graphic
pencil has so admirably depicted.
With these few words of apology and explanation, the author
herewith places THE RECOLLECTIONS OF A DRUMMER-BOY in the hands of
a patient and ever-indulgent public.
H. M. K.
NORRISTOWN, PA.,
March 1, 1883.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. OFF TO THE WAR 15
II. FIRST DAYS IN CAMP 34
III. ON TO WASHINGTON 49
IV. OUR FIRST WINTER QUARTERS 60
V. A GRAND REVIEW 71
VI. ON PICKET ALONG THE RAPPAHANNOCK 76
VII. A MUD-MARCH AND A SHAM-BATTLE 89
VIII. HOW WE GOT A SHELLING 107
IX. IN THE WOODS AT CHANCELLORSVILLE 117
X. THE FIRST DAY AT GETTYSBURG 128
XI. AFTER THE BATTLE 152
XII. THROUGH "MARYLAND, MY MARYLAND" 159
XIII. PAINS AND PENALTIES 171
XIV. A TALE OF A SQUIRREL AND THREE
BLIND MICE 187
XV. "THE PRIDE OF THE REGIMENT" 201
XVI. AROUND THE CAMP-FIRE 214
XVII. OUR FIRST DAY IN "THE WILDERNESS" 221
XVIII. A BIVOUAC FOR THE NIGHT 235
XIX. "WENT DOWN TO JERICHO AND FELL
AMONG THIEVES" 245
XX. IN THE FRONT AT PETERSBURG 257
XXI. FUN AND FROLIC 272
XXII. CHIEFLY CULINARY 290
XXIII. HATCHER'S RUN 300
XXIV. KILLED, WOUNDED, OR MISSING? 305
XXV. A WINTER RAID TO NORTH CAROLINA 314
XXVI. "JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME!" 324
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
READY FOR THE FRONT _Frontispiece_
VIGNETTE 8
THE COMPANY STARTS FOR THE WAR 26
TAILPIECE 48
IN WINTER-QUARTERS 62
WAITING TO BE REVIEWED BY THE PRESIDENT 72
TAILPIECE 75
IN A DANGEROUS PART OF HIS BEAT 84
THE QUARTERMASTER'S TRIUMPH 102
TAILPIECE 106
GENERAL DOUBLEDAY DISMOUNTS AND SIGHTS THE
GUN 112
TAILPIECE 116
A SURGEON WRITING UPON THE POMMEL OF HIS
SADDLE AN ORDER FOR AN AMBULANCE 118
A SKIRMISH AFTER A HARD DAY'S MARCH 140
AT CLOSE QUARTERS THE FIRST DAY AT GETTYSBURG 144
ON THE MARCH TO AND FROM GETTYSBURG 156
TAILPIECE 158
"I'VE GOT HIM, BOYS!" 168
DRUMMING SNEAK-THIEVES OUT OF CAMP 172
TAILPIECE 186
TAILPIECE 213
CHRISTMAS EVE AROUND THE CAMP-FIRE 216
SICK 220
A SCENE IN THE FIELD-HOSPITAL 228
ARMY BADGES 236
"GENERAL GRANT CAN'T HAVE ANY OF THIS WATER!" 242
"ANDY HAD BOUGHT THE SORREL FOR TEN DOLLARS" 254
"BETTER GIT OFF'N DAT DAR MULE!" 260
FINDING A WOUNDED PICKET IN A RIFLE-PIT 262
SCENE AMONG THE RIFLE-PITS BEFORE PETERSBURG 266
THE MAGAZINE WHERE THE POWDER AND SHELLS
WERE STORED 270
"FALL IN FOR HARD-TACK!" 292
THE CONFLICT AT DAYBREAK IN THE WOODS AT
HATCHER'S RUN 304
WRECKING THE RAILWAY 316
THE CHARGE ON THE CAKES 326
THE WELCOME HOME 330
THE RECOLLECTIONS
OF
A DRUMMER-BOY.
[Illustration]
THE RECOLLECTIONS
OF
A DRUMMER-BOY.
CHAPTER I.
OFF TO THE WAR.
"It is no use, Andy, I cannot study any more. I have struggled
against this feeling, and have again and again resolved to shut
myself up to my books and stop thinking about the war; but when
news comes of one great battle after another, and I look around in
the school-room and see the many vacant seats once occupied by the
older boys, and think of where they are and what they may be doing
away down in Dixie, I fall to day-dreaming and wool-gathering over
my books, and it is just no use. I cannot study any more. I might
as well leave school and go home and get at something else."
But my companion was apparently too deeply interested in
unravelling the intricacies of a sentence in Cæsar to pay much
attention to what I had been saying. For Andy was a studious boy,
and the sentence with which he had been wrestling when the bell
rang for recess could not at once be given up. He had therefore
carried his book with him on our walk as we strolled leisurely up
the green lane which led past the "Old Academy," and, with his
copy of Cæsar spread out before him, lay stretched out at full
length on the greensward, in the shade of a large cherry-tree,
whose fruit was already turning red under the warm spring sun. It
was a beautiful, dreamy day in May, early in the summer of 1862,
the second year of the great Civil War. The air was laden with the
sweet scent of the young clover, and vocal with the song of the
robin and the bluebird. The sky was cloudless overhead, and the
soft spring breeze blew balmily up from the south. Behind us were
the hills, covered with orchards, and beneath us lay the quiet
little village of M----, with its one thousand inhabitants, and
beyond it the valley, renowned far and wide for its beauty, while
in the farther background deep-blue mountains rose towering toward
the sky.
My companion, apparently quite indifferent to the languid influence
of the season, resolutely persevered at his task until he had
triumphantly mastered it. Then, closing the book and clasping his
hands behind his head as he rolled around on his back, he looked at
me with a smile and said,--
"Oh! you only have the spring-fever, Harry."
"No, I haven't, Andy; it was the same last winter. And don't you
remember how excited _you_ were when the news came about Fort
Sumter last spring? You would have enlisted right off, had your
father consented. Or, may be, _you_ had the spring-fever then?"
"I'm all over that now, and for good and all. I want to study, and
as I cannot study and keep on thinking of the war all the time, why
I just stop thinking about the war as well as I can."
"Well," said I, "I cannot. Look at our school: why, there are
scarcely any large boys left in it any more, only little fellows
and the girls. For my part, I ought to get at something else."
"What would you get at? You would feel the same anywhere else.
There is Ike Zellers, the blacksmith, for example. When I came
past his shop this morning on my way to school, instead of being
busy with hammer and tongs as he should have been, there he was,
sitting on an old harrow outside his shop-door whittling a stick,
while Elias Foust was reading an account of the last battle from
some newspaper. I shouldn't wonder if Elias and Ike both would be
enlisting some one of these days. It is the same everywhere. All
people feel the excitement of the war--storekeepers, tradesmen,
farmers, and even the women; and we school-boys are no exception."
"Would you enlist, Andy, if your father would consent? You are old
enough."
"I don't think I should, Harry. I want to stick to study. But there
is no telling what a person may do when he is once taken down with
this war-fever. But you are too young to enlist; they wouldn't take
you. And you had therefore better make up your mind to stick to
school and help me at my Cæsar. If you want war, there's enough of
it in old Julius here to satisfy the most bloodthirsty, I should
think."
"You will find more about war, and of a more romantic kind too,
in Virgil and Homer when you get on so far in your studies, Andy.
But the wars of Cæsar and the siege of Troy, what are they when
compared with the great war now being waged in our own time and
country? The nodding plumes of Hector and the shining armor of
all old Homer's heroes do not seem to me half so interesting or
magnificent as the brave uniforms in which some of our older
school-fellows occasionally come home on furlough."
"Up there on the hillside," said Andy, suddenly rising from his
reclining posture, "is cousin Joe Gutelius, hoeing corn in his
father's lot. Let's go up and see what he has to say about the war."
We found Joe busy and hard at work with the young corn. He was
a fine young fellow, perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three years
of age, tall, well built, of a fine manly bearing, and looked a
likely subject for a recruiting-officer, as, in response to our
loud "Hello, Joe!" he left his unfinished row and came down to the
fence for a talk.
"Rather a warm day for work in a cornfield, isn't it, Joe?"
"Well, yes," said Joe, as he threw down his hoe and mounted the
top rail, wiping away the perspiration, which stood in great beads
on his brow. "But I believe I'd rather hoe corn than go to school
such beautiful weather. Nearly kill me to be penned up in the old
Academy such a day as this."
"That's what's the matter with Harry, here," said Andy. "He's got
the spring-fever, I tell him; but he thinks he has the war-fever. I
told him we'd come up here and see what you had to say about it."
"About what? About the spring-fever, or about the war?"
"Why, about the war, of course, Joe," said Andy with a smile.
"Well, boys, I know what the war-fever is like. I had a touch of
it last winter when the Fifty-first boys went off, and I came very
near going along with them, too. But my brothers, Charlie and Sam,
both wanted to go, and I declared that if they went I'd go too;
and mother took it so much to heart that we all had to give it up.
Charlie and Sam came near joining a cavalry company some months
ago, and I shouldn't wonder much if they did get off one of these
days; but as for myself, I guess I'll have to stay at home and take
care of the old folks."
"And I tell Harry, here," said Andy, "that he had better stick to
books and help me with my Cæsar."
"Or he might get a hoe and come and help me with my corn," said
Joe, with a smile; "that would take both the spring-fever and the
war-fever out of him in a jiffy. But there is your bell calling you
to your books. Poor fellows, how I pity you!"
That my companion would persevere in his purpose of "sticking
to books," as he called it, I had no doubt. For besides being
naturally possessed of a resolute will, he was several years
my senior, and therefore presumably less liable to be carried
away by the prevailing restlessness of the times. But for myself
study continued to grow more and more irksome as the summer drew
on apace, so that when, before the close of the term, a former
schoolmate began to "raise a company," as it was called, for the
nine months' service, unable any longer to endure my restless
longing for a change, I sat down at my desk one day in the
school-room and wrote the following letter home:--
DEAR PAPA: I write to ask whether I may have your permission to
enlist. I find the school is fast breaking up; most of the boys
are gone. I can't study any more. _Won't_ you let me go?
Poor father! In the anguish of his heart it must have been that he
sat down and wrote: "You may go!" Without the loss of a moment I
was off to the recruiting-office, showed my father's letter, and
asked to be sworn in. But alas! I was only sixteen, and lacked two
years of being old enough, and they would not take me unless I
could swear I was eighteen, which, of course, I could not and would
not do.
So, then, back again to the school when the fall term opened early
in August, 1862, there to dream over Horace, and Homer, and that
one poor little old siege of Troy, for a few days more, while Andy
at my side toiled manfully at his Cæsar. The term had scarcely well
opened, when, unfortunately for my peace of mind, a gentleman who
had been my school-teacher some years previously, began to raise
a company for the war, and the village at once went into another
whirl of excitement, which carried me utterly away; for they said
I could enlist as a drummer-boy, no matter how young I might be,
provided I had my father's consent. But this, most unfortunately,
had been meanwhile revoked. For, to say nothing of certain
remonstrances on the part of my father during the vacation, there
had recently come a letter saying,--
MY DEAR BOY: If you have not yet enlisted, do not do so; for
I think you are quite too young and delicate, and I gave my
permission perhaps too hastily, and without due consideration.
But alas! dear father, it was too late then, for I had set my
very heart on going. The company was nearly full, and would leave
in a few days, and everybody in the village knew that Harry was
going for a drummer-boy. Besides, the very evening on which the
above letter reached me we had a grand procession which marched
all through the village street from end to end, and this was
followed by an immense mass-meeting, and our future captain, Henry
W. Crotzer, made a stirring speech, and the band played, and the
people cheered and cheered again, as man after man stepped up and
put his name down on the list. Albert Foster and Joe Ruhl and Sam
Ruhl signed their names, and then Jimmy Lucas and Elias Foust and
Ike Zellers and several others followed; and when Charlie Gutelius
and his brother Sam stepped up, with Joe at their heels declaring
that "if they went he'd go too," the meeting fairly went wild with
excitement, and the people cheered and cheered again, and the band
played "Hail Columbia!" and the "Star-Spangled Banner," and "Away
Down South in Dixie," and--in short, what in the world was a poor
boy to do?
* * * * *
There was an immense crowd of people at the depot that midsummer
morning, more than twenty years ago, when our company started off
to the war. It seemed as if the whole county had suspended work
and voted itself a holiday, for a continuous stream of people, old
and young, poured out of the little village of L----, and made its
way through the bridge across the river, and over the dusty road
beyond, to the station where we were to take the train.
The thirteen of us who had come down from the village of M---- to
join the larger body of the company at L----, had enjoyed something
of a triumphal progress on the way. We had a brass band to start
with, besides no inconsiderable escort of vehicles and mounted
horsemen, the number of which was steadily swelled to quite a
procession as we advanced. The band played, and the flags waved,
and the boys cheered, and the people at work in the fields cheered
back, and the young farmers rode down the lanes on their horses, or
brought their sweethearts in their carriages, and fell in line with
the dusty procession. Even the old gatekeeper, who could not leave
his post, became much excited as we passed, gave "three cheers for
the Union forever," and stood waving his hat after us till we were
hid from sight behind the hills.
Reaching L---- about nine in the morning, we found the village all
ablaze with bunting, and so wrought up with the excitement that all
thought of work had evidently been given up for that day. As we
formed in line and marched down the main street toward the river,
the sidewalks were everywhere crowded with people,--with boys who
wore red-white-and-blue neckties, and boys who wore fatigue-caps;
with girls who carried flags, and girls who carried flowers; with
women who waved their kerchiefs, and old men who waved their
walking-sticks; while here and there, as we passed along, at
windows and doorways, were faces red with long weeping, for Johnny
was off to the war, and maybe mother and sisters and sweetheart
would never, never see him again.
[Illustration: THE COMPANY STARTS FOR THE WAR.]
Drawn up in line before the station, we awaited the train. There
was scarcely a man, woman, or child in that great crowd around
us but had to press up for a last shake of the hand, a last good
by, and a last "God bless you, boys!" And so, amid cheering, and
hand-shaking, and flag-waving, and band-playing, the train at last
came thundering in, and we were off, with the "Star-Spangled
Banner" sounding fainter and farther away, until it was drowned and
lost to the ear in the noise of the swiftly rushing train.
For myself, however, the last good by had not yet been said, for I
had been away from home at school, and was to leave the train at a
way station some miles down the road, and walk out to my home in
the country, and say good by to the folks at home; and that was the
hardest part of it all, for good by then might be good by forever.
If anybody at home had been looking out of door or window that hot
August afternoon, more than twenty years ago, he would have seen,
coming down the dusty road, a slender lad, with a bundle slung over
his shoulder, and--but nobody _was_ looking down the road, nobody
was in sight. Even Rollo, the dog, my old playfellow, was asleep
somewhere in the shade, and all was sultry, hot, and still. Leaping
lightly over the fence by the spring at the foot of the hill,
I took a cool draught of water, and looked up at the great red
farmhouse above with a throbbing heart, for that was home, and many
a sad good by had there to be said, and said again, before I could
get off to the war!
Long years have passed since then, but never have I forgotten how
pale the faces of mother and sisters became when, entering the
room where they were at work, and throwing off my bundle, in reply
to their question, "Why, Harry! where did _you_ come from?" I
answered, "I come from school, and I'm off for the war!" You may
well believe there was an exciting time of it in the dining-room of
that old red farmhouse then. In the midst of the excitement, father
came in from the field and greeted me with, "Why, my boy, where did
_you_ come from?" to which there was but the one answer, "Come from
school, and off for the war!"
"Nonsense! I can't let you go! I thought you had given up all idea
of that. What would they do with a mere boy like you? Why, you'd be
only a bill of expense to the Government. Dreadful thing to make me
all this trouble!"
But I began to reason full stoutly with poor father. I reminded
him, first of all, that I would not go without his consent; that
in two years, and perhaps in less, I might be drafted and sent
amongst men unknown to me, while here was a company commanded by my
own school-teacher, and composed of acquaintances who would look
after me; that I was unfit for study or work while this fever was
on me, and so on; till I saw his resolution begin to give way, as
he lit his pipe and walked down to the spring to think the matter
over.
"If Harry is to go, father," mother says, "hadn't I better run
up to the store and get some woollens, and we'll make the boy an
outfit of shirts to-night yet?"
"Well--yes; I guess you had better do so."
But when he sees mother stepping past the gate on her way, he halts
her with,--
"Stop! That boy can't go! I _can't_ give him up!"
And shortly after, he tells her that she "had better be after
getting that woollen stuff for shirts;" and again he stops her at
the gate with,--
"Dreadful boy! Why _will_ he make me all this trouble? I _can not_
let my boy go!"
But at last, and somehow, mother gets off. The sewing-machine is
going most of the night, and my thoughts are as busy as it is,
until far into the morning, with all that is before me that I have
never seen, and all that is behind me that I may never see again.
Let me pass over the trying good by the next morning, for Joe is
ready with the carriage to take father and me to the station, and
we are soon on the cars, steaming away toward the great camp,
whither the company already has gone.
"See, Harry, there is your camp!" And looking out of the
car-window, across the river, I catch, through the tall tree tops,
as we rush along, glimpses of my first camp,--acres and acres of
canvas, stretching away into the dim and dusty distance, occupied,
as I shall soon find, by some ten or twenty thousand soldiers,
coming and going continually, marching and countermarching, until
they have ground the soil into the driest and deepest dust I ever
saw.
I shall never forget my first impressions of camp life as father
and I passed the sentry at the gate. They were anything but
pleasant; and I could not but agree with the remark of my father,
that "the life of a soldier must be a hard life indeed." For as we
entered that great camp, I looked into an A tent, the front flap
of which was thrown back, and saw enough to make me sick of the
housekeeping of a soldier. There was nothing in that tent but dirt
and disorder, pans and kettles, tin cups and cracker-boxes, forks
and bayonet-scabbards, greasy pork and broken hard-tack in utter
confusion, and over all and everywhere that insufferable dust.
Afterward, when we got into the field, our camps in summer-time
were models of cleanliness, and in winter models of comfort, as
far, at least, as axe and broom could make them so; but this,
the first camp I ever saw, was so abominable, that I have often
wondered it did not frighten the fever out of me.
But once among the men of the company, all this was soon forgotten.
We had supper,--hard-tack and soft bread, boiled pork and strong
coffee (in tin cups),--fare that father thought "one could live
on right well, I guess;" and then the boys came around and begged
father to let me go; "they would take care of Harry; never you
fear for that;" and so helped on my cause, that that night, about
eleven o'clock, when we were in the railroad station together, on
the way home, father said,--
"Now, Harry, my boy, you are not enlisted yet. I am going home on
this train; you can go home with me now, or go with the boys. Which
will you do?"
To which the answer came quickly enough,--too quickly and too
eagerly, I have often since thought, for a father's heart to bear
it well,--
"Papa, I'll go with the boys!"
"Well, then, good by, my boy! And may God bless you and bring you
safely back to me again!"
The whistle blew "Off brakes!" the car-door closed on father, and I
did not see him again for three long, long years!
Often and often as I have thought over these things since, I have
never been able to come to any other conclusion than this: that it
was the "war-fever" that carried me off, and that made poor father
let me go. For that "war-fever" was a terrible malady in those
days. Once you were taken with it, you had a very fire in the bones
until your name was down on the enlistment-roll. There was Andy,
for example, my schoolfellow, and afterward my messmate for three
ever-memorable years. I have had no time to tell you how Andy came
to be with us; but with us he surely was, notwithstanding he had so
stoutly asserted his determination to quit thinking about the war
and stick to his books.
He was on his way to school the very morning the company was
leaving the village, with no idea of going along; but seeing this,
that, and the other acquaintance in line, what did he do but run
across the street to an undertaker's shop, cram his school-books
through the broken window, take his place in line, and march off
with the boys without so much as saying good by to the folks at
home! And he did not see his Cæsar and Greek grammar again for
three years.
CHAPTER II.
FIRST DAYS IN CAMP.
Our first camp was located on the outskirts of Harrisburg, Pa.,
and was called "Camp Curtin." It was so named in honor of Governor
Andrew G. Curtin, the "War Governor" of the State of Pennsylvania,
who was regarded by the soldiers of his State with a patriotic
enthusiasm second only to that with which they, in common with all
the troops of the Northern States, greeted the name of Abraham
Lincoln.
Camp Curtin was not properly a camp of instruction. It was rather
a mere rendezvous for the different companies which had been
recruited in various parts of the State. Hither the volunteers
came by hundreds and thousands for the purpose of being mustered
into the service, uniformed and equipped, assigned to regiments,
and shipped to the front as rapidly as possible. Only they who
witnessed it can form any idea of the patriotic ardor, amounting
often to a wild enthusiasm, with which volunteering went on in
those days. Companies were often formed, and their muster-rolls
filled, in a week, sometimes in a few days. The contagion of
enlisting and "going to the war" was in the very atmosphere. You
could scarcely accompany a friend to a way station on any of the
main lines of travel, without seeing the future wearers of blue
coats at the car-windows and on the platforms. Very frequently
whole trains were filled with them, speeding away to the State
capital as swift as steam could carry them. They poured into
Harrisburg, company by company, usually in citizens' clothes, and
marched out of the town a week or so later, regiment by regiment,
all glorious in bright new uniforms and glistening bayonets,
transformed in a few days from citizens into soldiers, and destined
for deeds of high endeavor on many a bloody field.
Shortly after our arrival in camp, Andy and I went to town to
purchase such articles as we supposed a soldier would be likely to
need,--a gum-blanket, a journal, a combination knife, fork, and
spoon, and so on to the end of the list. To our credit I have it to
record that we turned a deaf ear to the solicitations of a certain
dealer in cutlery who insisted on selling us each a revolver, and
an ugly looking bowie-knife in a bright red morocco sheath.
"Shentlemens, shust de ting you vill need ven you goes into de
battle. Ah, see dis knife, how it shines! Look at dis very fine
revolfer!"
But Moses entreated in vain, while his wife stood at the shop-door
looking at some regiment marching down the street to the depot,
weeping as if her heart would break, and wiping her eyes with the
corner of her apron from time to time.
"Ah, de poor boys!" said she. "Dere dey go again, off to de great
war, away from deir homes, and deir mutters, deir wives and deir
sweethearts, all to be kilt in de battle! Dey will nefer any more
coom back. Oh, it is so wicked!"
But the drums rattled on, and the crowd on the sidewalk gazed and
cheered, and Moses behind his counter smiled pleasantly as he
cried up his wares and went on selling bowie-knives and revolvers
to kill men with, while his wife went on weeping and lamenting
because men would be killed in the wicked war, and "nefer any more
coom back." The firm of Moses and wife struck us as a very strange
combination of business and sentiment. I do not know how many
knives and pistols Moses sold, nor how many tears his good wife
shed, but if she wept whenever a regiment marched down the street
to the depot, her eyes must have been turned into a river of tears;
for the tap of the drum and the tramp of the men resounded along
the streets of the capital by day and by night, until people grew
so used to it that they scarcely noticed it any more.
The tide of volunteering was at the full during those early fall
days of 1862. But the day came at length when the tide began to
turn. Various expedients were then resorted to for the purpose of
stimulating the flagging zeal of Pennsylvania's sons. At first the
tempting bait of large bounties was presented--county bounties,
city bounties, State and United States bounties--some men towards
the close of the war receiving as much as one thousand dollars, and
never smelling powder at that. At last drafting was of necessity
resorted to, and along with drafting came all the miseries of
"hiring substitutes," and so making merchandise of a service of
which it is the chief glory that it shall be free.
But in the fall of '62 there had been no drafting yet, and large
bounties were unknown--and unsought. Most of us were taken quite
by surprise when, a few days after our arrival in camp, we were
told that the County Commissioners had come down for the purpose of
paying us each the magnificent sum of fifty dollars. At the same
time, also, we learned that the United States Government would
pay us each one hundred dollars additional, of which, however,
only twenty-five were placed in our hands at once. The remaining
seventy-five were to be received only by those who might safely
pass through all the unknown dangers which awaited us, and live to
be mustered out with the regiment three years later.
Well, it was no matter then. What cared we for bounty? It seemed a
questionable procedure, at all events, this offering of money as a
reward for an act which, to be a worthy act at all, asks not and
needs not the guerdon of gold. We were all so anxious to enter the
service, that, instead of looking for any artificial helps in that
direction, our only concern was lest we might be rejected by the
examining surgeon and not be admitted to the ranks.
For soon after our arrival, and before we were mustered into the
service, every man was thoroughly examined by a medical officer,
who had us presented to him one by one, _in puris naturalibus_,
in a large tent, where he sharply questioned us--"Teeth sound?
Eyes good? Ever had this, that, and the other disease?"--and
pitiable was the case of that unfortunate man who, because of bad
hearing, or defective eyesight, or some other physical blemish,
was compelled to don his citizen's clothes again and take the next
train for home.
After having been thoroughly examined, we were mustered into the
service. We were all drawn up in line. Every man raised his right
hand while an officer recited the oath. It took only a few minutes,
but when it was over one of the boys exclaimed: "Now, fellows, I'd
like to see any man go home if he dare. We belong to Uncle Sam now."
Of the one thousand men drawn up in line there that day, some
lived to come back three years later and be drawn up in line again,
almost on that identical spot, for the purpose of being mustered
out of the service. And how many do you think there were? Not more
than one hundred and fifty.
As we now belonged to Uncle Sam, it was to be expected that he
would next proceed to clothe us. This he punctually did a few days
after the muster. We had no little merriment when we were called
out and formed in line and marched up to the quartermaster's
department at one side of the camp to draw our uniforms. There were
so many men to be uniformed, and so little time in which to do it,
that the blue clothes were passed out to us almost regardless of
the size and weight of the prospective wearer. Each man received
a pair of pantaloons, a coat, cap, overcoat, shoes, blanket, and
underwear, of which latter the shirt was--well, a revelation to
most of us both as to size and shape and material. It was so rough,
that no living mortal, probably, could wear it, except perhaps one
who wished to do penance by wearing a hair shirt. Mine was promptly
sent home along with my citizen's clothes, with the request
that it be kept as a sort of heir-loom in the family for future
generations to wonder at.
With our clothes on our arms, we marched back to our tents,
and there proceeded to get on the inside of our new uniforms.
The result was in most cases astonishing! For, as might have
been expected, scarcely one man in ten was fitted. The tall men
had invariably received the short pantaloons, and presented an
appearance, when they emerged from their tents, which was equalled
only by that of the short men who had, of course, received the
long pantaloons. One man's cap was perched away up on the top of
his head, while another's rested on his ears. Andy, who was not
very tall, waddled forth into the company street amid shouts of
laughter, having his pantaloons turned up some six inches or more
from the bottoms, declaring that "Uncle Sam must have got the
patterns for his boys' pantaloons somewhere over in France; for he
seems to have cut them after the style of the two French towns,
Toulon and Toulouse."
"Hello, fellows! what do you think of this? Now just look here,
will you!" exclaimed Pointer Donachy, the tallest man in the
company, as he came out of his tent in a pair of pantaloons that
were little more than knee-breeches for him, and began to parade
the street with a tent-pole for a musket. "How in the name of the
American eagle is a man going to fight the battles of his country
in such a uniform as this? Seems to me that Uncle Sam must be a
little short of cloth, boys."
"Brother Jonathan generally dresses in tights, you know," said some
one.
"Ah," said Andy, "Pointer's uniform reminds one of what the poet
says,--
"'Man needs but little here below,
Nor needs that little long.'"
"You're rather poor at quoting poetry, Andy," answered Pointer,
"because I need more than a little here below: I need at least six
inches."
But the shoes! Coarse, broad-soled, low-heeled "gunboats," as we
afterward learned to call them--what a time there was getting into
them. Here came one fellow down the street with shoes so big that
they could scarcely be kept on his feet, while over yonder another
tugged and pulled and kicked himself red in the face over a pair
that _would_ not go on. But by trading off, the large men gradually
got the large garments and the little men the small, so that in a
few days we were all pretty well suited.
I remember hearing about one poor fellow in another company, a
great strapping six-footer, who could not be suited. The largest
shoe furnished by the Government was quite too small. The giant
tried his best to force his foot in, but in vain. His comrades
gathered about him, and laughed, and chaffed him unmercifully,
whereupon he exclaimed,--
"Why, you don't think they are all _boys_ that come to the army, do
you? A man like me needs a man's shoe, not a baby's."
There was another poor fellow, a very small man, who had received
a very large pair of shoes, and had not yet been able to effect
any exchange. One day the sergeant was drilling the company on the
facings--Right-face, Left-face, Right-about-face--and of course
watched his men's feet closely, to see that they went through the
movements promptly. Observing one pair of feet down the line that
never budged at the command, the sergeant, with drawn sword, rushed
up to the possessor of them, and in menacing tones demanded,--
"What do you mean by not facing about when I tell you? I'll have
you put in the guard-house, if you don't mind."
"Why--I--did, sergeant," said the trembling recruit.
"You did not, sir. Didn't I watch your feet? They never moved an
inch."
"Why, you see," said the man, "my shoes are so big that they don't
turn when I do. I go through the motions on the inside of them!"
Although Camp Curtin was not so much a camp of instruction as a
camp of equipment, yet once we had received our arms and uniforms,
we were all eager to be put on drill. Even before we had received
our uniforms, every evening we had some little drilling under
command of Sergeant Cummings, who had been out in the three
months' service. Clothed in citizens' dress and armed with such
sticks and poles as we could pick up, we must have presented a
sorry appearance on parade. Perhaps the most comical figure in
the line was that of old Simon Malehorn, who, clothed in a long
linen duster, high silk hat, blue overalls, and loose slippers,
was forever throwing the line into confusion by breaking rank and
running back to find his slipper, which he had lost in the dust
somewhere, and happy was he if some one of the boys had not quietly
smuggled it into his pocket or under his coat, and left poor Simon
to finish the parade in his stocking-feet.
Awkward enough in the drill we all were, to be sure. Still, we were
not quite so stupid as a certain recruit of whom it was related
that the drill sergeant had to take him aside as an "awkward squad"
by himself, and try to teach him how to "mark time." But alas!
the poor fellow did not know his right foot from his left, and
consequently could not follow the order, "Left! Left!" until the
sergeant, driven almost to desperation, lit on the happy expedient
of tying a wisp of straw on one foot and a similar wisp of hay on
the other, and then put the command in a somewhat agricultural
shape--"Hay-foot, Straw-foot! Hay-foot, Straw-foot!" whereupon it
is said he did quite well; for if he did not know his left foot
from his right, he at least could tell hay from straw.
One good effect of our having been detained in Camp Curtin for
several weeks was that we thus had the opportunity of forming the
acquaintance of the other nine companies, with which we were to be
joined in one common regimental organization. Some of these came
from the western and some from the eastern part of the State; some
were from the city, some from inland towns and small villages,
and some from the wild lumber regions. Every rank, class, and
profession seemed to be represented. There were clerks, farmers,
students, railroad men, iron-workers, lumbermen. At first we were
all strangers to one another. The different companies, having as
yet no regimental life to bind them together as a unit, naturally
regarded each other as foreigners rather than as members of the
same organization. In consequence of this, there was no little
rivalry between company and company, together with no end of
friendly chaffing and lively banter, especially about the time
of roll-call in the evening. The names of the men who hailed
from the west were quite strange, and a long-standing source of
amusement to the boys from the east, and _vice versâ_. When the
Orderly-Sergeant of Company I called the roll, the men of Company
B would pick out all the outlandish-sounding surnames and make all
manner of puns on them, only to be paid back in their own coin by
similar criticisms of _their_ roll. Then there were certain forms
of expression peculiar to the different sections from which the men
came, strange idiomatic usages of speech, amounting at times to the
most pronounced provincialisms, which were a long-continued source
of merriment. Thus the Philadelphia boys made all sport of the boys
from the upper tier of counties because they said "I be going deown
to teown," and invariably used "I make out to" for "I am going to,"
or "I intend to." Some of the men, it was observed, called every
species of board, no matter how thin, "a plank;" and every kind
of stone, no matter how small, "a rock." How the men laughed one
evening when a high wind came up and blew the dust in dense clouds
all over the camp, and one of the western boys was heard to declare
that he had "a rock in his eye!"
Once we got afield, however, there was developed such a feeling of
regimental unity as soon obliterated whatever natural antagonisms
may at first have existed between the different companies.
Peculiarities of speech of course remained, and a generous and
wholesome rivalry never disappeared; but these were a help rather
than a hindrance. For in military, as in all social life, there can
be no true unity without some diversity in the component parts,--a
principle which is fully recognized in our national motto, "_E
pluribus unum_."
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III.
ON TO WASHINGTON.
After two weeks in that miserable camp at the State capital, we
were ordered to Washington; and into Washington, accordingly, one
sultry September morning, we marched, after a day and a night in
the cars on the way thither. Quite proud we felt, you may be sure,
as we tramped up Pennsylvania Avenue, with our new silk flags
flying, the fifes playing "Dixie," and we ten little drummer-boys
pounding away, awkwardly enough, no doubt, under the lead of a
white-haired old man, who had beaten _his_ drum, nearly fifty
years before, under Wellington, at the battle of Waterloo. We were
green, raw troops, as anybody could tell at a glance; for we were
fair-faced yet, and carried enormous knapsacks. I remember passing
some old troops somewhere near Fourteenth Street, and being
painfully conscious of the difference between them and us. _They_,
I observed, had no knapsacks; a gum-blanket, twisted into a roll,
and slung carelessly over the shoulder, was all the luggage they
carried. Dark, swarthy, sinewy men they were, with torn shoes and
faded uniforms, but with an air of self-possession and endurance
that came only of experience and hardship. They smiled on us as we
passed by,--a grim smile of half pity and half contempt,--just as
we in our turn learned to smile on other new troops a year or two
later.
By some unpardonable mistake, instead of getting into camp
forthwith on the outskirts of the city, whither we had been ordered
for duty at the present, we were marched far out into the country,
under a merciless sun, that soon scorched all the endurance out
of me. It was dusty; it was hot; there was no water; my knapsack
weighed a ton. So that when, after marching some seven miles, our
orders were countermanded, and we faced about to return to the
city again, I thought it impossible I ever should reach it. My
feet moved mechanically, everything along the road was in a misty
whirl; and when at nightfall Andy helped me into the barracks near
the Capitol from which we had started in the morning, I threw
myself, or rather perhaps fell, on the hard floor, and was soon so
soundly asleep that Andy could not rouse me for my cup of coffee
and ration of bread.
I have an indistinct recollection of being taken away next morning
in an ambulance to some hospital, and being put into a clean white
cot. After which, for days, all consciousness left me, and all was
blank before me, save only that, in misty intervals, I saw the kind
faces and heard the subdued voices of Sisters of Mercy,--voices
that spoke to me from far away, and hands that reached out to me
from the other side of an impassable gulf.
Nursed by their tender care back to returning strength, no sooner
was I able to stand on my feet once more than, against their solemn
protest, I asked for my knapsack and drum, and insisted on setting
out forthwith in quest of my regiment, which I found had meanwhile
been scattered by companies about the city, my own company and
another having been assigned to duty at "Soldiers' Home," the
President's summer residence. Although it was but a distance of
three miles or thereabouts, and although I started out in search of
"Soldiers' Home" at noon, so conflicting were the directions given
me by the various persons of whom I asked the road, that it was
nightfall before I reached it. Coming then at the hour of dusk to a
gateway leading apparently into some park or pleasure-ground, and
being informed by the porter at the gate that this was "Soldiers'
Home," I walked about among the trees, in the growing darkness,
in search of the camp of Company D, when, just as I had crossed a
fence, a challenge rang out,--
"Halt! Who goes there?"
"A friend."
"Advance, friend, and give the countersign!"
"Hello, Elias!" said I, peering through the bushes, "is that you?"
"That isn't the countersign, friend. You'd better give the
countersign, or you're a dead man!"
Saying which, Elias sprang back in true Zouave style, with his
bayonet fixed and ready for a lunge at me.
"Now, Elias," said I, "you know me just as well as I know myself,
and you know I haven't the countersign; and if you're going to kill
me, why, don't stand there crouching like a cat ready to spring on
a mouse, but up and at it like a man. Don't keep me here in such
dreadful suspense."
"Well, friend without the countersign, I'll call up the corporal,
and he may kill you,--you're a dead man, any way!" Then he sang
out,--
"Corporal of the guard, post number three!"
From post to post it rang along the line, now shrill and high, now
deep and low: "Corporal of the guard, post number three!" "Corporal
of the guard, post number three!"
Upon which up comes the corporal of the guard on a full trot, with
his gun at a right-shoulder shift, and saying,--
"Well, what's up?"
"Man trying to break my guard."
"Where is he?"
"Why there, beside that bush."
"Come along, you there; you'll be shot for a spy to-morrow morning
at nine o'clock."
"All right, Mr. Corporal, I'm ready."
Now all this was fine sport; for Corporal Harter and Elias were
both of my company, and knew me quite as well as I knew them;
but they were bent on having a little fun at my expense, and the
corporal had marched me off some distance toward headquarters,
beyond the ravine, when again the call rang along the line,--
"Corporal of the guard, post number three!" "Corporal of the guard,
post number three!"
Back the corporal trotted me to Elias.
"Well, what in the mischief's up now?"
"Another fellow trying to break my guard, corporal."
"Well, where is he? Trot him out! We'll have a grand execution in
the morning! The more the merrier, you know; and 'Long live the
Union!'"
"I'm sorry, corporal, but the fact is I killed this chap myself.
I caught him trying to climb over the gate there, and he wouldn't
stop nor give the countersign, and so I up and at him, and ran my
bayonet through him, and there he is!"
And sure enough, there he was,--a big fat 'possum!
"All right, Elias; you're a brave soldier. I'll speak to the
colonel about this, and you shall have two stripes on your sleeve
one of these days."
And so, with the 'possum by the tail and me by the shoulder, he
marched us off to headquarters, where, the 'possum being thrown
down on the ground, and I handed over to the tender mercies of the
captain, it was ordered that--
"This young man should be taken down to Andy's tent, and a supper
cooked, and a bed made for him there; and that henceforth and
hereafter he should beat reveille at daybreak, retreat at sundown,
tattoo at nine p.m., and lights out a half-hour later."
Nothing, however, was said about the execution of spies in the
morning, although it was duly ordained that the 'possum, poor
thing, should be roasted for dinner the next day.
Never was there a more pleasant camp than ours,--there on that
green hillside across the ravine from the President's summer
residence. We had light guard duty to do, and that of a kind we
esteemed a most high honor; for it was no less than that of being
special guards for President Lincoln. But the good President, we
were told, although he loved his soldiers as his own children, did
not like being guarded. Often did I see him enter his carriage
before the hour appointed for his morning departure for the White
House, and drive away in haste, as if to escape from the irksome
escort of a dozen cavalry-men, whose duty it was to guard his
carriage between our camp and the city. Then when the escort rode
up to the door, some ten or fifteen minutes later, and found that
the carriage had already gone, wasn't there a clattering of hoofs
and a rattling of scabbards as they dashed out past the gate and
down the road to overtake the great and good President, in whose
heart was "charity for all, and malice toward none!"
Boy as I was, I could not but notice how pale and haggard the
President looked as he entered his carriage in the morning, or
stepped down from it in the evening, after a weary day's work in
the city; and no wonder, either, for those September days of 1862
were the dark, perhaps the darkest, days of the war. Many a mark
of favor and kindness did we receive from the President's family.
Delicacies, such as we were strangers to then, and would be for a
long time to come, found their way from Mrs. Lincoln's hand to our
camp on the green hillside; while little Tad, the President's son,
was a great favorite with the boys, fond of the camp, and delighted
with the drill.
One night, when all but the guards on their posts were wrapped in
great-coats and sound asleep in the tents, I felt some one shake me
roughly by the shoulder, and call:
"Harry! Harry! Get up quick and beat the long roll; we're going to
be attacked. Quick, now!"
Groping about in the dark for my drum and sticks, I stepped out
into the company street, and beat the loud alarm, which, waking the
echoes, brought the boys out of their tents in double-quick time,
and set the whole camp in an uproar.
"What's up, fellows?"
"Fall in, Company D!" shouted the orderly.
"Fall in, men," shouted the captain; "we're going to be attacked at
once!"
Amid the confusion of so sudden a summons at midnight, there was
some lively scrambling for guns, bayonets, cartridge-boxes, and
clothes.
"I say, Bill, you've got my coat on!"
"Where's my cap?"
"Andy, you scamp, you've got my shoes!"
"Fall in, men, quick; no time to look after shoes now. Take your
arms and fall in."
And so, some shoeless, others hatless, and all only half dressed,
we formed in line and marched out and down the road at double-quick
for a mile; then halted; pickets were thrown out; an advance of
the whole line through the woods was made among tangled bushes and
briers, and through marshes, until, as the first early streaks
of dawn were shooting up in the eastern sky, our orders were
countermanded, and we marched back to camp, to find--that the whole
thing was a ruse, planned by some of the officers for the purpose
of testing our readiness for work at any hour. After that, we slept
with our shoes on.
But poor old Peter Blank,--a man who should never have enlisted,
for he was as afraid of a gun as Robinson Crusoe's man Friday,--poor
old Peter was the butt for many a joke the next day. For amid
the night's confusion, and in the immediate prospect, as he
supposed, of a deadly encounter with the enemy, so alarmed did
he become that he at once fell to--praying! Out of consideration
for his years and piety, the captain had permitted him to remain
behind as a guard for the camp in our absence, in which capacity
he did excellent service, excellent service! But oh, when we sat
about our fires the next morning, frying our steaks and cooking our
coffee, poor Peter was the butt of all the fun, and was cruelly
described by the wag of the company as "the man that had a brave
heart, but a most cowardly pair of legs!"
CHAPTER IV.
OUR FIRST WINTER QUARTERS.
"Well, fellows, I tell you what! I've heard a good deal about the
balmy breezes and sunny skies of Old Virginny, but if this is a
specimen of the sort of weather they have in these parts, I, for
one, move we 'right-about-face' and march home."
So saying, Phil Hammer got up from under the scrub-pine, where
he had made his bed for the night, shaking the snow from his
blanket and the cape of his overcoat, while a loud "Ha! ha!" and
an oft-repeated "What do you think of this, boys?" rang along the
hillside on which we had found our first camping-place on "Old
Virginia's Shore."
The weather had played us a most deceptive and unpleasant trick. We
had landed the day before, as my journal says, "at Belle Plains,
at a place called Platt's Landing," having been brought down from
Washington on the steamer "Louisiana;" had marched some three or
four miles inland in the direction of Falmouth, and had halted
and camped for the night in a thick undergrowth of scrub-pine and
cedar. The day of our landing was remarkably fair. The skies were
so bright, the air was so soft and balmy, that we were rejoiced
to find what a pleasant country it was we were getting into, to
be sure; but the next morning, when we drummer-boys woke the men
with our loud reveille, we were all of Phil's opinion, that the
sunny skies and balmy breezes of this new land were all a miserable
fiction. For as man after man opened his eyes at the loud roll
of our drums, and the shout of the orderly: "Fall in, Company
D, for roll-call!" he found himself covered with four inches of
snow, and more coming down. Fortunately, the bushes had afforded
us some protection; they were so numerous and so thick that one
could scarcely see twenty rods ahead of him, and with their great
overhanging branches had kindly kept the falling snow out of our
faces, at least while we slept.
[Illustration: IN WINTER-QUARTERS.]
And now began a busy time. We were to build winter quarters--a
work for which we were but poorly prepared, either by nature or by
circumstance. Take any body of men out of civilized life, put them
into the woods to shift for themselves, and they are generally as
helpless as children. As for ourselves, we were indeed "Babes in
the Wood." At least half the regiment knew nothing of wood-craft,
having never been accustomed to the use of the axe. It was a
laughable sight to see some of the men from the city try to cut
down a tree! Besides, we were poorly equipped. Axes were scarce,
and worth almost their weight in gold. We had no "shelter-tents."
Most of us had "poncho" blankets; that is to say, a piece of
oilcloth about five feet by four, with a slit in the middle. But we
found our ponchos very poor coverings for our cabins; for the rain
just _would_ run down through that unfortunate hole in the middle;
and then, too, the men needed their oilcloths when they went on
picket, for which purpose they had been particularly intended. This
circumstance gave rise to frequent discussion that day: whether to
use the poncho as a covering for the cabin, and get soaked on
picket, or to save the poncho for picket, and cover the cabin
with brushwood and clay? Some messes[1] chose the one alternative,
others the other; and as the result of this preference, together
with our ignorance of wood-craft and the scarcity of axes, we
produced on that hillside the oddest looking winter quarters a
regiment ever built! Such an agglomeration of cabins was never seen
before nor since. I am positive no two cabins on all that hillside
had the slightest resemblance to each other.
[1] A "mess" is a number of men who eat together.
There, for instance, was a mess over in Company A, composed of men
from the city. They had _one_ kind of cabin, an immense square
structure of pine-logs, about seven feet high, and covered over
the top, first with brushwood, and then coated so heavily with
clay that I am certain the roof must have been two feet thick at
the least. It was hardly finished before some wag had nicknamed it
"Fortress Monroe."
Then there was Ike Zellers, of our own company; he invented another
style of architecture, or perhaps I should rather say he borrowed
it from the Indians. Ike would have none of your flat-roofed
concerns; he would build a wigwam. And so, marking out a huge
circle, in the centre of which he erected a pole, and around the
pole a great number of smaller poles, with one end on the circle
and the other end meeting in the common apex, covering this with
brush, and the brush with clay, he made for himself a house that
was quite warm, indeed, but one so fearfully gloomy, that within it
was as dark at noon as at midnight. Ominous sounds came afterward
from the dark recesses of "The Wigwam;" for we were a "skirmish
regiment," and Ike was our bugler, and the way he tooted all day
long, "Deploy to the right and left," "Rally by fours," and "Rally
by platoons," was suggestive of things yet to come.
Then there was my own tent, or cabin, if indeed I may dignify
it with the name of either; for it was a cross between a house
and a cave. Andy and I thought we would follow the advice of the
Irishman, who, in order to raise his roof higher, dug his cellar
deeper. We resolved to dig down some three feet; "and then, Harry,
we'll log her up about two feet high, cover her with ponchos, and
we'll have the finest cabin in the row!" It took us about three
days to accomplish so stupendous an undertaking, during which time
we slept at night under the bushes as best we could, and when our
work was done, we moved in with great satisfaction. I remember the
door of our house was a mystery to all visitors, as, indeed, it was
to ourselves until we "got the hang of it," as Andy said. It was a
hole about two feet square, cut through one end of the log part of
the cabin, and through it you had to crawl as best you could. If
you put one leg in first, then the head, and then drew in the other
leg after you, you were all right; but if, as visitors generally
did, you put in your head first, you were obliged to crawl in on
all fours in a most ungraceful and undignified fashion.
That was a queer-looking camp all through. If you went up to the
top of the hill, where the Colonel had his quarters, and looked
down, a strange sight met your eyes. By the time the next winter
came, however, we had learned how to swing an axe, and we built
ourselves winter quarters that reflected no little credit on
our skill as experienced woodsmen. The last cabin we built--it
was down in front of Petersburg--was a model of comfort and
convenience: ten feet long by six wide and five high, made of clean
pine-logs straight as an arrow, and covered with shelter tents; a
chimney at one end, and a comfortable bunk at the other; the inside
walls covered with clean oat-bags, and the gable ends papered with
pictures cut from illustrated papers; a mantelpiece, a table, a
stool; and we were putting down a floor of pine-boards, too, one
day toward the close of winter, when the surgeon came by, and,
looking in, said:
"No time to drive nails now, boys; we have orders to move!" But
Andy said:
"Pound away, Harry, pound away; we'll see how it looks, anyhow,
before we go!"
I remember an amusing occurrence in connection with the building
of our winter quarters. I had gone over to see some of the boys
of our company one evening, and found they had "logged up" their
tent about four feet high, and stretched a poncho over it to keep
the snow out, and were sitting before a fire they had built in a
chimney-place at one end. The chimney was built up only as high
as the log walls reached, the intention being to "cat-stick and
daub" it afterward to a sufficient height. The mess had just got a
box from home, and some one had hung nearly two yards of sausage
on a stick across the top of the chimney, "to smoke." And there,
on a log rolled up in front of the fire, I found Jimmy Lucas and
Sam Ruhl sitting smoking their pipes, and glancing up the chimney
between whiffs every now and then, to see that the sausage was
safe. Sitting down between them, I watched the cheery glow of the
fire, and we fell to talking, now about the jolly times they were
having at home at the holiday season, and again about the progress
of our cabin-building, while every now and then Jimmy would peep
up the chimney on one side, and shortly after Sam would squint up
on the other. After sitting thus for half an hour or so, all of a
sudden, Sam, looking up the chimney, jumped off the log, clapped
his hands together, and shouted:
"Jim, it's _gone_!"
Gone it was; and you might as well look for a needle in a haystack
as search for two yards of sausage among troops building winter
quarters on short rations!
One evening Andy and I were going to have a feast, consisting in
the main of a huge dish of apple-fritters. We bought the flour
and the apples of the sutler at enormous figures, for we were so
tired of the endless monotony of bacon, beef, and bean-soup, that
we were bent on having a glorious supper, cost or no cost. We had
a rather small chimney-place, in which Andy was superintending
the heating of a mess-pan half full of lard, while I was busying
myself with the flour, dough, and apples, when, as ill-luck would
have it, the lard took fire and flamed up the chimney with a roar
and a blaze so bright that it illuminated the whole camp from end
to end. Unfortunately, too, for us, four of our companies had been
recruited in the city, and most of them had been in the volunteer
fire department, in which service they had gained an experience,
useful enough to them on the present occasion, but most disastrous
to us.
No sooner was the bright blaze seen pouring high out of the
chimney-top of our modest little cabin, than at least a half-dozen
fire companies were on the instant organized for the emergency. The
"Humane," the "Fairmount," the "Good-will," with their imaginary
engines and hose-carriages, came dashing down our company street
with shouts, and yells, and cheers. It was but the work of a moment
to attach the imaginary hose to imaginary plugs, plant imaginary
ladders, tear down the chimney and demolish the roof, amid a
flood of sparks, and to the intense delight of the firemen, but
to our utter consternation and grief. It took us days to repair
the damage, and we went to bed with some of our neighbors, after a
scant supper of hard-tack and coffee.
How did we spend our time in winter quarters, do you ask? Well,
there was always enough to do, you may be sure, and often it was
work of the very hardest sort. Two days in the week the regiment
went out on picket, and while there got but little sleep and
suffered much from exposure. When they were not on picket, all
the men not needed for camp guard had to drill. It was nothing
but drill, drill, drill: company drill, regimental drill, brigade
drill, and once even division drill. Our regiment, as I have said,
was a skirmish regiment, and the skirmish-drill is no light work,
let me tell you. Many an evening the men came in more dead than
alive after skirmishing over the country for miles around, all the
afternoon. Reveille and roll-call at five o'clock in the morning,
guard mount at nine, company drill from ten to twelve, regimental
drill from two to four, dress-parade at five, tattoo and lights
out at nine at night, with continual practice on the drum for us
drummer-boys--so our time passed away.
CHAPTER V.
A GRAND REVIEW.
On a certain day near the beginning of April, 1863, we were ordered
to prepare for a grand review of our corps. President Lincoln, Mrs.
Lincoln, Master Tad Lincoln (who used to play among our tents at
"Soldiers' Home"), and some of the Cabinet officers, were coming
down to look us over and see what promise we gave for the campaign
soon to open.
Those who have never seen a grand review of well-drilled troops
in the field have never seen one of the finest and most inspiring
sights the eyes of man can behold. I wish I could impart to my
readers some faint idea of the thrilling scene which must have
presented itself to the eyes of the beholders when, on the morning
of the ninth day of April, 1863, our gallant First Army Corps,
leaving its camps among the hills, assembled on a wide, extended
plain for the inspection of our illustrious visitors.
As regiment after regiment, and brigade after brigade, came
marching out from the surrounding hills and ravines, with flags
gayly flying, bands and drum corps making such music as was enough
to stir the blood in the heart of the most indifferent to a
quicker pulse, and well-drilled troops that marched in the morning
sunlight with a step as steady as the stroke of machinery,--ah!
it was a sight to be seen but once in a century! And when those
twenty thousand men were all at last in line, with the artillery
in position off to one side on the hill, and ready to fire their
salute, it seemed well worth the President's while to come all the
way from Washington to look at them.
[Illustration: WAITING TO BE REVIEWED BY THE PRESIDENT.]
But the President was a long, long time in coming. The sun,
mounting fast toward noon, began to be insufferably hot. One hour,
two hours, three hours were passing away, when, at last, far off
through a defile between the hills, we caught sight of a great
cloud of dust.
"Fall in, men!" for now here they come, sure enough. Mr. and Mrs.
Lincoln in a carriage, escorted by a body of cavalry and groups of
officers, and at the head of the cavalcade Master Tad, big with
importance, mounted on a pony, and having for his especial escort
a boy orderly, dressed in a cavalry-man's uniform, and mounted
on another pony! And the two little fellows, scarce restraining
their boyish delight, outride the company, and come on the field
in a cloud of dust and at a full gallop,--little Tad shouting to
the men, at the top of his voice: "Make way, men! Make way, men!
Father's a-coming! Father's a-coming!"
Then the artillery breaks forth into a thundering salute, that
wakes the echoes among the hills and sets the air to shivering and
quaking about your ears, as the cavalcade gallops down the long
line, and regimental standards droop in greeting, and bands and
drum corps, one after another, strike up "Hail to the Chief," till
they are all playing at once in a grand chorus that makes the hills
ring as they never rang before.
But all this is only a flourish by way of prelude. The real
beauty of the review is yet to come, and can be seen only when the
cavalcade, having galloped down the line in front and up again on
the rear, has taken its stand out yonder immediately in front of
the middle of the line, and the order is given to "pass in review."
Notice now, how, by one swift and dexterous movement, as the
officers step out and give the command, that long line is broken
into platoons of exactly equal length; how, straight as an arrow,
each platoon is dressed; how the feet of the men all move together,
and their guns, flashing in the sun, have the same inclination.
Observe particularly how, when they come to wheel off, there is no
_bend_ in the line, but they wheel as if the whole platoon were a
ramrod made to revolve about its one end through a quarter-circle;
and now that they are marching thus down the field and past the
President, what a grandeur there is in the steady step and onward
sweep of that column of twenty thousand boys in blue!
But once we have passed the President and gained the other end of
the field, it is not nearly so fine. For we must needs finish
the review in a double-quick, just by way of showing, I suppose,
what we could do if we were wanted in a hurry,--as indeed we
shall be, not more than sixty days hence! Away we go, then, on a
dead run off the field, in a cloud of dust and amid a clatter of
bayonet-scabbards, till, hid behind the hills, we come to a more
sober pace, and march into camp just as tired as tired can be.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI.
ON PICKET ALONG THE RAPPAHANNOCK.
"Harry, wouldn't you like to go out on picket with us to-morrow?
The weather is pleasant, and I'd like to have you for company,
for time hangs rather heavy on a fellow's hands out there; and,
besides, I want you to help me with my Latin."
Andy was a studious fellow, and carried on his studies with greater
or less regularity during our whole time of service. Of course we
had no books, except a pocket copy of "Cæsar;" but to make up for
the deficiency, particularly of a grammar, I had written out the
declensions of the nouns and the conjugations of the verbs on odd
scraps of paper, which Andy had gathered up and carried in a roll
in his breast-pocket, and many were the lessons we had together
under the canvas or beneath the sighing branches of the pines.
"Well, old boy, I'd like to go along first-rate; but we must get
permission of the adjutant first."
Having secured the adjutant's consent, and provided myself with a
gun and accoutrements, the next morning, at four o'clock, I set
out, in company with a body of some several hundred men of the
regiment. We were to be absent from camp for two days, at the
expiration of which time we were to be relieved by the next detail.
It was pleasant April weather, for the season was well advanced.
Our route lay straight over the hills and through the ravines,
for there were no roads, fences, nor fields. But few houses were
to be seen, and from these the inhabitants had, of course, long
since disappeared. At one of these few remaining houses, situated
some three hundred yards from the river's edge, our advance
picket-reserve was established, the captain in command making
his headquarters in the once beautiful grounds of the mansion,
long since deserted and left empty by its former occupants. The
place had a very distressing air of neglect. The beautiful lawn
in front, where merry children had no doubt played and romped in
years gone by, was overgrown with weeds. The large and commodious
porch, where in other days the family gathered in the evening-time
and talked and sang, while the river flowed peacefully by, was
now abandoned to the spiders and their webs. The whole house was
pitifully forlorn looking, as if wondering why the family did not
come back to fill its spacious halls with life and mirth. Even
the colored people had left their quarters. There was not a soul
anywhere about.
We were not permitted either to enter the house or to do any damage
to the property. Pitching our shelter-tents under the outspreading
branches of the great elms on the lawn in front of the house,
and building our fires back of a hill in the rear to cook our
breakfast, we awaited our turn to stand guard on the picket-line,
which ran close along the river's edge.
It may be interesting to my young readers to know more particularly
how this matter of standing picket is arranged and conducted. When
a body of men numbering, let us say, for the sake of example, two
hundred in all, go out on picket, the detail is usually divided
into two equal parts, consisting in the supposed case of one
hundred each. One of these companies of a hundred goes into a sort
of camp about a half mile from the picket-line,--usually in a woods
or near by a spring, if one can be found, or in some pleasant
ravine among the hills,--and the men have nothing to do but make
themselves comfortable for the first twenty-four hours. They may
sleep as much as they like, or play at such games as they please,
only they must not go away any considerable distance from the post,
because they may be very suddenly wanted, in case of an attack on
the advance picket-line.
The other band of one hundred takes position only a short distance
to the rear of the line where the pickets pace to and fro on
their beats, and is known as the advance picket-post. It is under
the charge of a captain or Lieutenant, and is divided into three
parts, each of which is called a "relief," the three being known
as the first, the second, and the third relief, respectively. Each
of these is under the charge of a non-commissioned officer,--a
sergeant or corporal,--and must stand guard in succession, two
hours on and four off, day and night, for the first twenty-four
hours, at the end of which time the reserve one hundred in the
rear march up and relieve the whole advance picket-post, which
then goes to the rear, throws off its accoutrements, stacks its
arms, and sleeps till it can sleep no more. I need hardly add that
each picket is furnished with the countersign, which is regularly
changed every day. While on the advance picket-post no one is
permitted to sleep, whether on duty on the line or not, and to
sleep on the picket-line is death! At or near midnight a body of
officers, known as "The Grand Rounds," goes all along the line,
examining every picket, to see that "all is well."
Andy and I had by request been put together on the second relief,
and stood guard from eight to ten in the morning, two to four in
the afternoon, and eight to ten and two to four at night.
It was growing dark as we sat with our backs against the old
elms on the lawn, telling stories, singing catches of songs, or
discussing the probabilities of the summer campaign, when the call
rang out: "Fall in, second relief!"
"Come on, Harry--get on your horse-hide and shooting-iron. We have
a nice moonlight night for it, any way."
Our line, as I have said, ran directly along the river's edge, up
and down which Andy and I paced on our adjoining beats, each of us
having to walk about a hundred yards, when we turned and walked
back, with gun loaded and capped and at a right-shoulder-shift.
The night was beautiful. A full round moon shone out from among
the fleecy clouds overhead. At my feet was the pleasant plashing
of the river, ever gliding on, with the moonbeams dancing as if in
sport on its rippling surface, while the opposite bank was hid in
the deep, solemn shadows made by the overhanging trees. Yet the
shadows were not so deep there but that occasionally I could catch
glimpses of a picket silently pacing his beat on the south side of
the river, as I was pacing mine on the north, with bayonet flashing
in the patches of moonlight as he passed up and down. I fell to
wondering, as I watched him, what sort of man he was? Young or old?
Had he children at home, may be, in the far-off South? Or a father
and mother? Did he wish this cruel war was over? In the next fight
may be he'd be killed! Then I fell to wondering who had lived in
that house up yonder, and what kind of people they were. Were the
sons in the war? And the daughters, where were they? and would they
ever come back again and set up their household gods in the good
old place once more? My imagination was busy trying to picture the
scenes that had enlivened the old plantation, the darkies at work
in the fields, and the--
"Hello, Yank! We can lick you!"
"Beautiful night, Johnny, isn't it?"
"Y-e-s, lovely!"
But our orders are to hold as little conversation with the pickets
on the other side of the river as necessary, and so, declining any
further civilities, I resume my beat.
"Harry, I'm going to lie down here at the upper end of your beat,"
says the sergeant who has charge of our relief. "I ain't a-going
to sleep, but I'm tired. Every time you come up to this end of your
beat, speak to me, will you? for I _might_ fall asleep."
"Certainly, sergeant."
The first time I speak to him, the second, and the third, he
answers readily enough, "All right, Harry;" but at the fourth
summons he is sound asleep. Sleep on, sergeant, sleep on! Your
slumbers shall not be broken by me, unless the "Grand Rounds" come
along, for whom I must keep a sharp lookout, lest they catch you
napping and give you a pretty court-martial! But Grand Rounds or
no, you shall have a little sleep. One of these days you, and many
more of us besides, will sleep the last long sleep that knows no
waking. But hark! I hear the challenge up the line! I must rouse
you, after all.
"Sergeant! Sergeant! Get up--Grand Rounds!"
"Halt! Who goes there?"
"The Grand Rounds."
"Advance, officer of the Grand Rounds, and give the countersign."
An officer steps out from the group that is half-hidden in the
shadow, and whispers in my ear, "Lafayette," when the whole body
silently and stealthily passes down the line.
Relieved at ten o'clock, we go back to our post at the house, and
find it rather hard work to keep our eyes open from ten to two
o'clock, but sleep is out of the question. At two o'clock in the
morning the second relief goes out again, down through the patch
of meadow, wet with the heavy dew, and along down the river to our
posts. It is nearly three o'clock, and Andy and I are standing
talking in low tones, he at the upper end of his beat and I at the
lower end of mine, when--
Bang! And the whistle of a ball is heard overhead among the
branches. Springing forward at once by a common impulse, we get
behind the shelter of a tree, run out our rifles, and make ready to
fire.
"You watch up-river, Harry," whispers Andy, "and I'll watch down;
and if you see him trying to handle his ramrod, let him have it,
and don't miss him."
[Illustration: IN A DANGEROUS PART OF HIS BEAT.]
But apparently Johnny is in no hurry to load up again, and likes
the deep shadow of his tree too well to walk his beat any more, for
we wait impatiently for a long while and see nothing of him. By
and by we hear him calling over: "I say, Yank!"
"Well, Johnny?"
"If you won't shoot, I won't."
"Rather late in the morning to make such an offer, isn't it? Didn't
you shoot just now?"
"You see, my old gun went off by accident."
"That's a likely yarn o' yours, Johnny!"
"But it's an honest fact, any way."
"Well, Johnny, next time your gun's going to go off in that
uncomfortable way, you will oblige us chaps over here by holding
the muzzle down toward Dixie, or somebody'll turn up his toes to
the daisies before morning yet."
"All right, Yank," said Johnny, stepping out from behind his tree
into the bright moonlight like a man, "but we can lick you, any
way!"
"Andy, do you think that fellow's gun went off by accident, or was
the rascal trying to hurt somebody?"
"I think he's honest in what he says, Harry. His gun might have
gone off by accident. There's no telling, though; he'll need a
little watching, I guess."
But Johnny paces his beat harmlessly enough for the remainder of
the hour, singing catches of song, and whistling the airs of Dixie,
while we pace ours as leisurely as he, but, with a wholesome regard
for guns that go off so easily of themselves, we have a decided
preference for the dark shadows, and are cautious lest we linger
too long on those parts of our several beats where the bright
moonbeams lie.
It must not be supposed that the sentries of the two armies were
forever picking one another off whenever opportunity offered; for
what good did it do to murder each other in cold blood? It only
wasted powder, and did not forward the issue of the great conflict
at all. Except at times immediately before or after a battle, or
when there was some specially exciting reason for mutual defiance,
the pickets were generally on friendly terms, conversed freely
about the news of the day, exchanged newspapers, coffee, and
tobacco, swapped knives, and occasionally had a friendly game of
cards together. Sometimes, however, picket duty was but another
name for sharpshooting and bushwhacking of the most dangerous and
deadly sort.
When we had been relieved, and got back to our little bivouac under
the elms on the lawn, and sat down there to discuss the episode of
the night, I asked Andy,--
"What was that piece of poetry you read to me the other day, about
a picket being shot? It was something about 'All quiet along the
Potomac to-night.' Do you remember the words well enough to repeat
it?"
"Yes, I committed it to memory, Harry; and if you wish, I'll recite
it for your benefit. We'll just imagine ourselves back in the dear
old Academy again, and that it is 'declamation-day,' and my name is
called, and I step up and declaim:--
"ALL QUIET ALONG THE POTOMAC TO-NIGHT.
"All quiet along the Potomac, they say,
Except, now and then, a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
'Tis nothing--a private or two, now and then,
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost--only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle.
"All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming;
Their tents, in the rays of the clear autumn moon,
O'er the light of the watch-fires are gleaming.
A tremulous sigh of the gentle night-wind
Through the forest-leaves softly is creeping,
While stars up above, with their glittering eyes,
Keep guard, for the army is sleeping.
"There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread,
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain,
And thinks of the two, in the low trundle-bed,
Far away in the cot on the mountain.
His musket falls slack--his face, dark and grim,
Grows gentle with memories tender,
As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep--
For their mother--may Heaven defend her!
"He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree--
His footstep is lagging and weary;
Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,
Toward the shades of the forest so dreary.
Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves?
Was it the moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a rifle--'Ha! Mary, good by!'
And the life-blood is ebbing and plashing!
"All quiet along the Potomac to-night--
No sound save the rush of the river:
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead,--
The picket's off duty forever!"
CHAPTER VII.
A MUD-MARCH AND A SHAM BATTLE.
We had been quietly lying in our winter quarters there at Belle
Plains some two months and more, without having yet had much to
vary the dull monotony of a soldier's everyday life. There was,
of course, plenty of work in the way of picket duty and endless
drilling, and no lack of fun in the camp of one kind or other; but
of all this we gradually wearied, and began to long for something
new. Not that we were especially anxious for the fatigues of the
march and the stirring scenes of the battle-field (of all which we
were so far blissfully ignorant): we simply felt that we were tired
of the monotony of camp life, and, knowing that great things were
before us, with all the ardor of young men for strange experiences
and new adventures, we gradually became more and more anxious for
the campaign to open. Alas! we knew not what it was we wished for;
for when this celebrated campaign of '63 was ended, the few of us
who remained to build our second winter quarters had seen quite
enough of marching and fighting to last us the rest of our natural
days.
However, it was with feelings of relief that we suddenly received
orders for the march early in the afternoon of Monday, April 20.
As good luck would have it, Andy and I had just finished a hearty
meal consisting in the main of apple-fritters; for by this time we
had repaired our chimney, which had been destroyed by the fire, and
had several times already prepared our fritters without burning our
house down over our heads in the operation. Having finished our
meal, we were lying lazily back against our knapsacks, disputing as
to whose turn it was to wash the dishes, when Andy, hearing some
outcry which I had not noticed, suddenly leaped out of the little
door in the side of our cabin into the company street, exclaiming
as he did so,--
"What's that, sergeant? What's up?"
"Orders to move, that's all, my boy," said the sergeant. "Orders to
move. Pack up immediately."
"Where are we going?" queried a dozen voices in chorus; for the
news spread like fire in a clearing, and the boys came tumbling
out of their cabins pell-mell and gathered about the sergeant in a
group.
"You tell me, and I'll tell you," answered the sergeant, with a
shrug of his shoulders, as he shouted,--
"Pack up immediately, men! We go in light marching order. No
knapsacks; only a shelter or a gum-blanket, and three days' rations
in your haversacks; and be lively now!"
It was not long before we were all ready, with our thirty
hard-tack, a piece of pork, and a little coffee and sugar in our
haversacks, and our gum-blankets or shelters rolled and twisted
into a shape somewhat resembling an immense horse-collar, slung
over the shoulder diagonally across the body, as was universally
the custom with the troops when knapsacks were to be dispensed with
in winter, or had been thrown away in summer. We drummer-boys,
tightening our drums and tuning them up with a tap-tap-tap of
the drumstick, took station on the parade-ground up on the hill,
awaiting the adjutant's signal to beat the assembly. At the first
tap of our drums the whole regiment, in full view below us,
poured out of quarters, like ants tumbling out of their hill when
disturbed by the thrust of a stick. As the men fell into line and
marched by companies up the hill to the parade-ground where the
regiment was ordinarily formed, cheer upon cheer went up; for the
monotony of camp life was now plainly at an end, and we were at
last to be up and doing, though where, or how, or what, no one
could tell.
When a drum-head is wet, it at once loses all its peculiar charm
and power. On the present occasion our drum-heads were soon soaked,
for it was raining hard. So, unloosening the ropes, we slung our
useless sheepskins over our shoulders, as the order was given,
"Forward--route-step--march!" The order "route-step" was always
a welcome and merciful command, and the reader must bear in mind
that troops on the march always go by the "route-step." They march
usually four abreast, indeed, but make no effort to keep step;
for marching in that way, though good enough for a mile or two on
parade, would soon become intolerable if kept up for any great
distance. In "route-step" each man picks his way, selecting his
steps at his pleasure, and carrying or shifting his arms at his
convenience. Even then, marching is no easy matter, especially when
it is raining, and you are marching over a clay soil,--and it did
seem to us that the soil about Belle Plains was the toughest and
most slippery clay in the world, at least in the roads that wound,
serpent-like, around the hills amongst which we were marching,
where, as we well knew, many a poor mule during the winter had
stuck fast, and had to be literally pulled out or left to die in
his tracks after the harness had been ripped off his back.
At first, however, we had tolerable marching, for we took across
the fields, and kept well upon the high ground as long as we could.
We passed some good farms and comfortable looking houses, where
we should have liked to stop and buy bread and butter, or get
"hoecake" and milk; but there was no time for that, for we made no
halt longer than was necessary to allow the rear to "close up,"
and then were up and away again at a swift pace.
The afternoon wore on. Night set in, and we began to wonder, in
all the simplicity of new troops, whether Uncle Sam expected us to
march all night as well as all day? To make matters still worse, as
night fell dark and drizzling, we left the high ground and came out
on the main road of those regions; and if we never before knew what
Virginia mud was like, we knew it then. It was not only knee-deep,
but also so sticky, that when you set one foot down, you could
scarcely pull the other out. As for myself, I found my side-arms
(if indeed they merited the name) a provoking incumbrance.
Drummer-boys carried no arms except a straight thin sword fastened
to a broad leathern belt about the waist. Of this we had been in
the outstart quite proud, and had kept it polished with great
care. However, this "toad-sticker," as we were pleased to call
it, on this mud-march caused each of us drummer-boys a world of
trouble, and well illustrated the saying that "pride goeth before
a fall." For as we groped about in the darkness and slid and
plunged about in the mud, this miserable sword was forever getting
tangled up with the wearer's legs, so that before he was aware of
it, down he went on his face in the mud. My own weapon gave me so
many falls that night, that I was quite out of conceit with it.
When we reached camp after this march was done, I handed it to the
quartermaster, agreeing to pay the price of it thrice over rather
than carry it any more. The rest of the drummer-boys, I believe,
carried theirs as far as Chancellorsville, and there solemnly hung
them up on an oak-tree, where they are unto this day, if nobody has
found them and carried them off as trophies of war.
We had a little darky along with us on this march who had an
experience which was quite as provoking to him as it was amusing
to us. The darky's name was Bill. Other name he had none, except
"Shorty," which had been given him by the boys because of his
remarkably short stature. For although he was as strong as a man,
and quite as old-featured, he was nevertheless so dwarfed in
size that the name Shorty seemed to become him better than his
original name of Bill. Well, Shorty had been employed by one of
our captains as cook, or, as seemed more likely on the present
occasion, as a sort of sumpter-mule. For the captain, having an eye
to comfort on the march, had loaded the poor darky with a pack of
blankets, tents, pans, kettles, and general camp equipage, so large
and bulky, that it is no exaggeration to say that Shorty's pack
was quite as large as himself. All along it had been a wonder to
us how he had managed to pull through so far with all that immense
bundle on his back; but, with strength far beyond his size, he had
trudged doggedly on at the captain's heels, over hill and through
field, until we came at nightfall to the main road. There, like
many another sumpter-mule, he stuck fast in the mud, so that, puff
and pull as he might, he could not pull either foot out, and had to
be dragged out by two men, to the great merriment of all who in the
growing darkness were aware of Shorty's misfortune.
At length it became so dark that no one was able to see an inch
before his face, and we lost the road. Torches were then lighted,
in order to find it. Then we forded a creek, and then on and on
we went, till at length we were allowed to halt and fall out on
either side of the road into a last year's cornfield, to "make
fires and cook coffee."
To make a fire was a comparatively easy matter, notwithstanding
the rain; for some one or other always had matches, and there were
plenty of rails at hand, and these were dry enough when split open
with a hatchet or an axe. In a few moments the fence around the
cornfield was carried off rail by rail, and everywhere was heard
the sound of axes and hatchets, the premonitory symptoms of roaring
camp-fires, which were soon everywhere blazing along the road.
"Harry," said Lieutenant Dougal, "I haven't any tin cup, and when
you get your coffee cooked, I believe I'll share it with you; may
I?"
"Certainly, lieutenant. But where shall I get water to make the
coffee with? It's so dark, that nobody can see how the land lies so
as to find a spring."
Without telling the lieutenant what I did, I scooped up a tin cup
full of water (whether clear or muddy I could not tell; it was too
dark to see) out of a corn-furrow. I had the less hesitation in
doing so, because I found all the rest were doing the same, and I
argued that if they could stand it, why I could too--and so could
the lieutenant. Tired and wet and sleepy as I was, I could not
help but be sensible of the strange, weird appearance the troops
presented, as, coming out of the surrounding darkness, I faced
the brilliant fires with groups of busy men about them. There
they sat, squatting about the fires, each man with his quart tin
cup suspended on one end of his iron ramrod or on some convenient
stick, and each eager and impatient to be the first to bring his
cup to the boiling-point. Thrusting my cup in amongst the dozen
others already smoking amid the crackling flames, I soon had the
pleasure of seeing the foam rise to the surface,--a sure indication
that my coffee was nearly done. When the lieutenant and I had
finished drinking it, I called his attention to the half inch of
mud in the bottom of the cup, and asked him how he liked coffee
made out of water taken from a last year's corn-furrow? "First
rate," he replied, as he took out his tobacco pouch and pipe for a
smoke, "first rate; gives it the real old 'Virginny' flavor, you
see."
We were not permitted, however, to enjoy the broad glare of our
fires very long after our coffee was disposed of, for we soon
heard the command to "fall in" coming down the line. It was now
half-past eleven o'clock, and away we went again slap-dash in the
thick darkness and bottomless mud. At three o'clock in the morning,
during a brief halt, I fell asleep while sitting on my drum, and
tumbled over into the road from sheer exhaustion. Partly aroused by
my fall, I spread out my shelter on the road where the mud seemed
the shallowest, and lay down to sleep, chilled to the bone and
shivering like an aspen.
At six o'clock we were roused up, and a pretty appearance we
presented too, for every man was covered with mud from neck to
heel. However, daylight having now come to our assistance, we
marched on in merrier mood in the direction of Port Royal, a
place or village on the Rappahannock some thirty miles below
Fredericksburg, and reached our destination about ten o'clock that
forenoon.
As we emerged from the woods and came out into the open fields,
with the river in full view about a fourth of a mile in front,
we fully believed that now, at last, we were to go at once into
battle. And so, indeed, it seemed, as the long column halted in a
cornfield a short distance from the river, and the pontoon trains
came up, and the pioneers were sent forward to help lay the bridge,
and signal-flags began flying, and officers and orderlies began to
gallop gayly over the field--of course we were now about to go into
our first battle.
"I guess we'll have to cross the river, Harry," said Andy, as we
stood together beside a corn shock and watched the men putting down
the pontoons, "and then we'll have to go in on 'em and gobble 'em
up."
"Yes; gobbling up is all right. But suppose that over in the woods
yonder, on the other side the river, there might happen to be a
lot of Johnnies watching us, and all ready to sweep down on us and
gobble _us_ up, while we are crossing the river--eh? That wouldn't
be nearly so nice, would it?"
"Hah!" exclaimed Andy, "I'd just like to see 'em do it once! Look
there! There come the boys that'll take the Johnnies through the
brush!"
Looking in the direction in which Andy was pointing, that is,
away to the skirt of the woods in our rear, I beheld a battery of
artillery coming up at full gallop towards us and making straight
for the river.
"Just you wait, now," said Andy, with a triumphant snap of his
fingers, "till you hear those old bull-dogs begin to bark, and
you'll see the Johnnies get up and dust!"
As the battery came near the spot where we were standing, and could
be plainly seen, I exclaimed:
"Why, Andy, I don't believe those dogs can bark at all! Don't you
see? They are wooden logs covered over with black gum-blankets
and mounted on the front-wheels of wagons, and--as sure as you're
alive--it's our quartermaster on his gray horse in command of the
battery!"
"Well, I declare!" said Andy, with a look of mingled surprise and
disappointment.
There was no disputing the fact. Dummies they were, those cannon
which Andy had so exultingly declared were to take the Johnnies
through the brush; and we began at once to suspect that this
whole mud-march was only a miserable ruse, or feint of war, got
up expressly for the purpose of deceiving the enemy and making
him believe that the whole Union army was there in full force,
when such was by no means the case. So there was not going to be
any battle after all, then? Such indeed, as we learned a little
later in the day, was the true state of things. Nevertheless the
pioneers went on with their work of putting down the pontoon-boats
for a bridge, and our gallant quartermaster, on his bobtail gray,
with drawn sword, and shouting out his commands like a veritable
major-general, swept by us with his battery of wooden guns, and
then away out into the field like a whirlwind, apparently bent on
the most bloody work imaginable. Now the battery would dash up and
unlimber and get into position here; then away on a gallop across
the field and go into position there; while the quartermaster would
meanwhile swing his sword and shout himself hoarse, as if in the
very crisis of a battle.
It was, then, all, alas! a ruse, and there wouldn't be any battle
after all! I think the general feeling among the men was one
of disappointment, when about nine o'clock that night we were
all withdrawn from the riverside under cover of darkness, and
bivouacked in the woods to our rear, where we were ordered to
make as many and as large fires as we could, so as to attract the
enemy's attention, and make him believe that the whole Army of
the Potomac was concentrating at that point; whereas the truth
was that, instead of making any movement thirty miles _below_
Fredericksburg, the Union army, ten days later, crossed the
river thirty miles _above_ Fredericksburg, and met the enemy at
Chancellorsville.
[Illustration: THE QUARTERMASTER'S TRIUMPH.]
But I have never forgotten our gallant quartermaster, and what a
fine appearance he made as the commanding officer of a battery of
artillery. It was an amusing sight; for the reader must remember
that a quartermaster, having to do only with army supplies, was
a non-combatant, that is to say, he did no fighting, and in most
cases "stayed by the stuff" among his army wagons, which were
usually far enough to the rear in time of battle. Thinking of this
little episode on our first mud-march, there comes to my mind a
conversation I recently had with a gentleman, my neighbor, who was
also a quartermaster in the Union army.
"I was down in Virginia on business last spring," said the
ex-quartermaster, "in the neighborhood of Warrenton. (You remember
Warrenton? Fine country down there.) And I found the people very
kind and friendly, and inclined to forget the late unpleasantness.
Well, one man came up to me, and says he:
"'Major, you were in the war, weren't you?'
"'Yes,' said I, 'I was; but (I might as well admit it) I was on the
other side of the fence. I was in the Union army.'
"'You were? Well, Major, did you ever kill anybody?'
"'Oh yes,' said I; 'lots of 'em,--lots of 'em, sir.'
"'You don't tell me!' said the Virginian. 'And if I might be so
bold as to ask--how did you generally kill them?'
"'Well,' said I, 'I never like to tell, because bragging is not
in my line; but I'll tell you. You see, I never liked this thing
of shooting people. It seemed to me a barbarous business, and
besides, I was a kind of Quaker, and had conscientious scruples
about bearing arms. And so, when the war broke out and I found
I'd have to enter the army, maybe, whether I wanted to or not,
I enlisted and got in as a quartermaster, thinking that in that
position I wouldn't have to kill anybody with a gun, anyhow. But
war is a dreadful thing, a dreadful thing, sir. And I found that
even a quartermaster had to take a hand at killing people; and the
way I took for it was this: I always managed to have a good swift
horse, and as soon as things would begin to look a little like
fighting, and the big guns would begin to boom, why I'd clap spurs
to my horse and make for the rear as fast as ever I could. And then
when your people would come after me, they never _could_ catch me;
they'd always get out of breath trying to come up to me. And in
that way I've killed dozens of your people, sir, dozens of them,
and all without powder or ball. They couldn't catch me, and always
died for want of breath trying to get hold of me!'"
We slept in the woods that night under the dark pines and beside
our great camp-fires; and early the next morning took up the line
of march for home. We marched all day over the hills, and as the
sun was setting, came at last to a certain hilltop whence we could
look down upon the odd-looking group of cabins and wigwams which we
recognized as our camp, and which we hailed with cheers as our home.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VIII.
HOW WE GOT A SHELLING.
"Pack up!" "Fall in!" All is stir and excitement in the camp. The
bugles are blowing "boots and saddles" for the cavalry camped above
us on the hill; we drummer-boys are beating the "long roll" and
"assembly" for the regiment; mounted orderlies are galloping along
the hillside with great yellow envelopes stuck in their belts; and
the men fall out of their miserable winter-quarters, with shouts
and cheers that make the hills about Falmouth ring again. For the
winter is past; the sweet breath of spring comes balmily up from
the south, and the whole army is on the move,--whither?
"Say, Captain, tell us where are we going?" But the captain doesn't
know, nor even the colonel,--nobody knows. We are raw troops yet,
and have not learned that soldiers never ask questions about
orders.
So, fall in there, all together, and forward! And we ten little
drummer-boys beat gayly enough "The Girl I left behind me," as the
line sweeps over the hills, through the woods, and on down to the
river's edge.
And soon here we are, on the Rappahannock, three miles below
Fredericksburg. We can see, as we emerge from the woods, away over
the river, the long line of earthworks thrown up by the enemy,
and small dark specks moving about along the field, in the far,
dim distance, which we know to be officers, or perhaps cavalry
pickets. We can see, too, our own first division laying down the
pontoon-bridge, on which, according to a rumor that is spreading
among us, we are to cross the river and charge the enemy's works.
Here is an old army letter lying before me, written on my drum-head
in lead pencil, in that stretch of meadow by the river, where I
heard my first shell scream and shriek:--
"NEAR RAPPAHANNOCK RIVER, Apr. 28th.
"DEAR FATHER,--We have moved to the river, and are just going
into battle. I am well, and so are the boys.--Your affect. son,
"HARRY."
But we do not go into battle this day, nor next day, nor at all
at this point; for we are making only a "feint," though we do not
know it now, to attract the attention of the enemy from the main
movement of the army at Chancellorsville, some twenty-five or
thirty miles farther up the river. The men are in good spirits and
all ready for the fray; but as the day wears on without further
developments, arms are stacked, and we begin to roam about the
hills. Some are writing letters home, some sleeping, some even
fishing in a little rivulet that runs by us, when, toward three
o'clock in the afternoon, and all of a sudden, the enemy opens fire
on us with a salute of three shells fired in rapid succession, not
quite into our ranks, but a little to the left of us. And see!
over there where the 'Forty-third lies, to our left, come three
_stretchers_, and you can see deep crimson stains on the canvas
as they go by us on a lively trot to the rear; for "the ball is
opening, boys," and we are under fire for the first time.
I wish I could convey to my readers some faint idea of the noise
made by a shell as it flies shrieking and screaming through
the air, and of that peculiar _whirring_ sound made by the
pieces after the shell has burst overhead or by your side. So
loud, high-pitched, shrill, and terrible is the sound, that one
unaccustomed to it would think at first that the very heavens were
being torn down about his ears!
How often I have laughed and laughed at myself when thinking of
that first shelling we got there by the river! For up to that time
I had had a very poor, old-fashioned idea of what a shell was like,
having derived it probably from accounts of sieges in the Mexican
war.
I had thought a shell was a hollow ball of iron, filled with
powder and furnished with a fuse, and that they threw it over
into your ranks, and there it lay, hissing and spitting, till the
fire reached the powder, and the shell burst and killed a dozen
men or so; that is, if some venturesome fellow didn't run up and
stamp the fire off the fuse before the miserable thing went off!
Of a _conical_ shell, shaped like a minie-ball, with ridges on
the outside to fit the grooves of a rifled cannon, and exploding
by a percussion-cap at the pointed end, I had no idea in the
world. But that was the sort of thing they were firing at us
now,--Hur-r-r--bang! Hur-r-r--bang!
Throwing myself flat on my face while that terrible shriek is
in the air, I cling closer to the ground while I hear that low,
whirring sound near by, which I foolishly imagine to be the sound
of a burning fuse, but which, on raising my head and looking up and
around, I find is the sound of pieces of exploded shells flying
through the air about our heads! The enemy has excellent range of
us, and gives it to us hot and fast, and we fall in line and take
it as best we may, and without the pleasure of replying, for the
enemy's batteries are a full mile and a half away, and no Enfield
rifle can reach half so far.
"Colonel, move your regiment a little to the right, so as to get
under cover of yonder bank." It is soon done; and there, seated on
a bank about twenty feet high, with our backs to the enemy, we let
them blaze away, for it is not likely they can tumble a shell down
at an angle of forty-five degrees.
And now, see! Just to the rear of us, and therefore in full
view as we are sitting, is a battery of our own coming up into
position at full gallop,--a grand sight indeed! The officers with
swords flashing in the evening sunlight, the bugles clanging out
the orders, the carriages unlimbered, and the guns run up into
position; and now, that ever beautiful drill of the artillery in
action, steady and regular as the stroke of machinery! How swiftly
the man that handles the swab has prepared his piece, while the
runners have meanwhile brought up the little red bag of powder and
the long conical shell from the caisson in the rear! How swiftly
they are rammed home! The lieutenant sights his piece, the man with
the lanyard with a sudden jerk fires the cap, the gun leaps five
feet to the rear with the recoil, and out of the cannon's throat,
in a cloud of smoke, rushes the shell, shrieking out its message of
death into the lines a mile and a half away, while our boys rend
the air with wild hurrahs, for the enemy's fire is answered!
Now ensues an artillery duel that keeps the air all quivering
and quaking about our ears for an hour and a half, and it is all
the more exciting that we can see the beautiful drill of the
batteries beside us, with that steady swabbing and ramming, running
and sighting, and bang! bang! bang! The mystery is how in the world
they can load and fire so fast.
"Boys, what are you trying to do?"
[Illustration: GENERAL DOUBLEDAY DISMOUNTS AND SIGHTS THE GUN.]
It is Major-General Abner Doubleday, our division-commander, who
reins in his horse and asks the question. He is a fine-looking
officer, and is greatly beloved by the boys. He rides his horse
beautifully, and is said to be one of the finest artillerists in
the service, as he may well be, for it was his hand that fired the
first gun on the Union side from the walls of Fort Sumter.
"Why, General, we are trying to put a shell through that stone barn
over there; it's full of sharpshooters."
"Hold a moment!" and the general dismounts and sights the gun.
"Try that elevation once, sergeant," he says; and the shell
goes crashing through the barn a mile and a half away, and the
sharpshooters come pouring out of it like bees out of a hive. "Let
them have it so, boys." And the general has mounted, and rides,
laughing, away along the line.
Meanwhile, something is transpiring immediately before our eyes
that amuses us greatly. Not more than twenty yards away from us
is another high bank, corresponding exactly with the one we are
occupying, and running parallel with it, the two hills inclosing a
little ravine some twenty or thirty yards in width.
This second high bank, the nearer one, you must remember, faces the
enemy's fire. The water has worn out of the soft sand-rock a sort
of cave, in which Darkie Bill, our company cook, took refuge at
the crack of the first shell. And there, crouching in the narrow
recess of the rock, we can see him shivering with affright. Every
now and then, when there is a lull in the firing, he comes to the
wide-open door of his house, intent upon flight, and, rolling up
the great whites of his eyes, is about to step out and run, when
Hur-r-r--bang--crack! goes the shell, and poor scared Darkie Bill
dives into his cave again head-first, like a frog into a pond.
After repeated attempts to run and repeated frog-leaps backward,
the poor fellow takes heart and cuts for the woods, pursued by
the laughter and shouts of the regiment, for which he cares far
less, however, than for that terrible shriek in the air, which, he
afterward told us, "was a-sayin' all de time, 'Where's dat nigger!
Where's dat nigger! Where's dat nigger!'"
As nightfall comes on, the firing ceases. Word is passed around
that under cover of night we are to cross the pontoons and charge
the enemy's works; but we sleep soundly all night on our arms, and
are awaked only by the first streaks of light in the morning sky.
We have orders to move. A staff-officer is delivering orders to
our colonel, who is surrounded by his staff. They press in toward
the messenger, standing immediately below me as I sit on the bank,
when the enemy gives us a morning salute, and the shell comes
ricochetting over the hill and tumbles into a mud-puddle about
which the group is gathered; the mounted officers crouch in their
saddles and spur hastily away, the foot officers throw themselves
flat on their faces into the mud; the drummer-boy is bespattered
with mud and dirt; but fortunately the shell does not explode, or
my readers would never have heard how we got our first shelling.
And now, "Fall in, men!" and we are off on a double-quick in a
cloud of dust, amid the rattle of canteens and tin cups, and the
regular _flop, flop_ of cartridge-boxes and bayonet-scabbards,
pursued for two miles by the hot fire of the enemy's batteries, for
a long, hot, weary day's march to the extreme right of the army at
Chancellorsville.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IX.
IN THE WOODS AT CHANCELLORSVILLE.
It is no easy matter to describe a long day's march to one who
knows nothing of the hardships of a soldier's life. That a body of
troops marched some twenty-five or thirty miles on a certain day
from daylight to midnight, from one point to another, seems, to one
who has not tried it, no great undertaking. Thirty miles! It is
but an hour's ride in the cars. Nor can the single pedestrian, who
easily covers greater distances in less time, have a full idea of
the fatigue of a soldier as he throws himself down by the roadside,
utterly exhausted, when the day's march is done.
Unnumbered circumstances combine to test the soldier's powers of
endurance to the very utmost. He has, in the first place, a heavy
load to carry. His knapsack, haversack, canteen, ammunition,
musket, and accoutrements are by no means a light matter at the
outset, and they grow heavier with every additional mile of the
road. So true is this, that, in deciding what of our clothing to
take along on a march and what to throw away, we soon learned to
be guided by the soldiers' proverb that "what weighs an ounce in
the morning weighs a pound at night." Then, too, the soldier is not
master of his own movements, as is the solitary pedestrian; for he
cannot pick his way, nor husband his strength by resting when and
where he may choose. He marches generally "four abreast," sometimes
at double-quick, when the rear is closing up, and again at a most
provokingly slow pace when there is some impediment on the road
ahead. Often his canteen is empty, no water is to be had, and he
marches on in a cloud of dust, with parched throat and lips and
trembling limbs,--on and on, and still on, until about the midnight
hour, at the final "Halt!" he drops to the ground like a shot,
feverish, irritable, exhausted in body and soul.
It would seem a shame and a folly to take troops thus utterly worn
out, and hurl them at midnight into a battle the issue of which
hangs trembling in the balance. Yet this was what they came pretty
near doing with us, after our long march from four miles below
Fredericksburg to the extreme right of the army at Chancellorsville.
[Illustration: A SURGEON WRITING UPON THE POMMEL OF HIS SADDLE AN
ORDER FOR AN AMBULANCE.]
I have a very indistinct and cloudy recollection of that march.
I can quite well remember the beginning of it, when at the early
dawn the enemy's batteries drove us, under a sharp shell-fire, at a
lively double-quick for the first four miles. And I can well recall
how, at midnight, we threw ourselves under the great oak-trees
near Chancellorsville, and were in a moment sound asleep amid
the heaven-rending thunder of the guns, the unbroken roll of the
musketry, and the shouts and yells of the lines charging each other
a quarter of a mile to our front. But when I attempt to call up
the incidents that happened by the way, I am utterly at a loss. My
memory has retained nothing but a confused mass of images: here a
farmhouse, there a mill; a company of stragglers driven on by the
guard; a surgeon writing upon the pommel of his saddle an order
for an ambulance to carry a poor exhausted and but half-conscious
fellow; an officer's staff or an orderly dashing by at a lively
trot; a halt for coffee in the edge of a wood; filling a canteen
(oh, blessed memory!) at some meadow stream or roadside spring;
and on, and on, and on, amid the rattle of bayonet-scabbards and
tin cups, mopping our faces and crunching our hard-tack as we
went,--this, and such as this, is all that will now come to mind.
But of events toward nightfall the images are clearer and more
sharply defined. The sun is setting, large, red, and fiery-looking,
in a dull haze that hangs over the thickly-wooded horizon. We are
nearing the ford where we are to cross the Rappahannock. We come to
some hilltop, and--hark! A deep, ominous growl comes, from how many
miles away we know not; now another; then another!
On, boys, on! There is work doing ahead, and terrible work it is,
for two great armies are at each other's throat, and the battle is
raging fierce and high, although we know nothing as yet of how it
may be going.
On,--on,--on!
Turning sharp to the left, we enter the approach to the ford, the
road leading, in places, through a deep cut,--great high pine-trees
on either side of the road shutting out the little remaining light
of day. Here we find the first actual evidences of the great battle
that is raging ahead: long lines of ambulances filled with wounded;
yonder a poor fellow with a bandaged head sitting by a spring; and
a few steps away another, his agonies now over; here, two men,
one with his arm in a sling supporting the other, who has turned
his musket into a crutch; then more ambulances, and more wounded
in increasing numbers; orderlies dashing by at full gallop, while
the thunder of the guns grows louder and closer as we step on the
pontoons and so cross the gleaming river.
"Colonel, your men have had a hard day's march; you will now let
them rest for the night."
It is a staff-officer whom I hear delivering this order to our
colonel, and a sweeter message I think I never heard. We cast
wistful eyes at the half-extinguished camp-fires of some regiment
that has been making coffee by the roadside, and has just moved
off, and we think them a godsend, as the order is given to "Stack
arms!" But before we have time even to unsling knapsacks, the
order comes, "Fall in!" and away we go again, steadily plodding
on through that seemingly endless forest of scrub-pine and oak,
straight in the direction of the booming guns ahead.
Why whippoorwills were made I do not know; doubtless for some wise
purpose; but never before that night did I know they had been made
in such countless numbers. Every tree and bush was full of them, it
seemed. There were thousands of them, there were tens of thousands
of them, there were millions of them! And every one whistling, as
fast as it could, "Who-hoo-hoo! Who-hoo-hoo! Who-hoo-hoo!" Had they
been vultures or turkey-buzzards,--vast flocks of which followed
the army wherever we went, almost darkening the sky at times, and
always suggesting unpleasant reflections,--they could not have
appeared more execrable to me. Many were the imprecations hurled
at them as we plodded on under the light of the great red moon,
now above the tree-tops, while still from every bush came that
monotonous half-screech, half-groan, "Who-hoo-hoo! Who-hoo-hoo!"
But, O miserable birds of ill-omen, there is something more ominous
in the air than your lugubrious night-song! There is borne to our
ears at every additional step the deepening growl of the cannon
ahead. As the moon mounts higher, and we advance farther along the
level forest-land, we hear still more distinctly another sound--the
long, unbroken roll of musketry.
Forward now, at double-quick, until we are on the outskirts of the
battle-field.
Shells are crashing through the tall tree-tops overhead.
"Halt! Load at will! Load!"
In the moonlight that falls shimmering across the road, as I look
back over the column, I see the bright steel flashing, while the
jingle of the ramrods makes music that stirs the blood to a quicker
pulse. A well-known voice calls me down the line, and Andy whispers
a few hurried words into my ear, while he grasps my hand hard. But
we are off at a quick step. A sharp turn to the left, and--hark!
The firing has ceased, and they are "charging" down there! That
peculiar, and afterward well-known, "Yi! Yi! Yi!" indicates a
struggle for which we are making straight and fast.
At this moment comes the order: "Colonel, you will countermarch
your men, and take position down this road on the right. Follow
me!" The staff-officer leads us half a mile to the right, where,
sinking down utterly exhausted, we are soon sound asleep.
Of the next day or two I have but an indistinct recollection. What
with the fatigue and excitement, the hunger and thirst, of the last
few days, a high fever set in for me. I became half-delirious,
and lay under a great oak-tree, too weak to walk, my head nearly
splitting with the noise of a battery of steel cannon in position
fifty yards to the left of me. That battery's beautiful but
terrible drill I could plainly see. My own corps was put on
reserve: the men built strong breastworks, but took no part in the
battle, excepting some little skirmishing. Our day was yet to come.
One evening,--it was the last evening we spent in the woods at
Chancellorsville,--a sergeant of my company came back to where we
were, with orders for me to hunt up and bring an ambulance for one
of the lieutenants who was sick.
"You see, Harry, there are rumors that we are going to retreat
to-night, for the heavy rains have so swollen the Rappahannock that
our pontoons are in danger of being carried away, and it appears
that, for some reason or other, we've got to get out of this at
once under cover of night, and lieutenant can't stand the march.
So you will go for an ambulance. You'll find the ambulance-park
about two miles from here. You'll take through the woods in that
direction,"--pointing with his finger,--"until you come to a path;
follow the path till you come to a road; follow the road, taking to
the right and straight ahead, till you come to the ambulances."
Although it was raining hard at the time, and had been raining
for several days, and though I myself was probably as sick as the
lieutenant, and felt positive that the troops would have started in
retreat before I could get back, yet it was my duty to obey, and
off I went.
I had no difficulty in finding the path; and I reached the road
all right. Fording a stream, the corduroy bridge of which was all
afloat, and walking rapidly for a half-hour, I found the ambulances
all drawn up ready to retreat.
"We have orders to pull out from here at once, and can send an
ambulance for no man. Your lieutenant must take his chance."
It was getting dark fast, as I started back with this message. I
was soaked to the skin, and the rain was pouring down in torrents.
To make bad worse, in the darkness I turned off from the road at
the wrong point, missed the path, and quite lost my way! What was
to be done? If I should spend much time where I was, I was certain
to be left behind, for I felt sure that the troops were moving off;
and yet I feared to make for any of the fires I saw through the
woods, for I knew the lines of the two armies were near each other,
and I might, as like as not, walk over into the lines of the enemy.
Collecting my poor fevered faculties, I determined to follow the
course of a little stream I heard plashing down among the bushes to
the left. By and by I fixed my eye on a certain bright camp-fire,
and determined to make for it at all hazards, be it of friend or of
foe. Judge of my joyful surprise when I found it was burning in
front of my own tent!
Standing about our fire trying to get warm and dry, our fellows
were discussing the question of the retreat about to be made. But I
was tired and sick, and wet and sleepy, and did not at all relish
the prospect of a night-march through the woods in a drenching
rain. So, putting on the only remaining dry shirt I had left (I had
_two_ on already, and they were soaked through), I lay down under
my shelter, shivering and with chattering teeth, but soon fell
sound asleep.
In the gray light of the morning we were suddenly awakened by a
loud "Halloo there, you chaps! Better be digging out of this! We're
the last line of cavalry pickets, and the Johnnies are on our
heels!"
It was an easy matter for us to sling on our knapsacks and rush
after the cavalry-man, until a double-quick of two miles brought us
within the rear line of defences thrown up to cover the retreat.
CHAPTER X.
THE FIRST DAY AT GETTYSBURG.
"Harry, I'm getting tired of this thing. It's becoming monotonous,
this thing of being roused every morning at four, with orders
to pack up and be ready to march at a moment's notice, and then
lying around here all day in the sun. I don't believe we are going
anywhere, anyhow."
We had been encamped for six weeks, of which I need give no special
account, only saying that in those "summer quarters," as they might
be called, we went on with our endless drilling, and were baked and
browned, and thoroughly hardened to the life of a soldier in the
field.
The monotony of which Andy complained did not end that day, nor
the next. For six successive days we were regularly roused at four
o'clock in the morning, with orders to "pack up and be ready to
move immediately!" only to unpack as regularly about the middle of
the afternoon. We could hear our batteries pounding away in the
direction of Fredericksburg, but we did not then know that we were
being held well in hand till the enemy's plan had developed itself
into the great march into Pennsylvania, and we were let off in hot
pursuit.
So, at last, on the 12th of June, 1863, we started, at five o'clock
in the morning, in a north-westerly direction. My journal says:
"Very warm, dust plenty, water scarce, marching very hard. Halted
at dusk at an excellent spring, and lay down for the night with
aching limbs and blistered feet."
I pass over the six days' continuous marching that followed,
steadily on toward the north, pausing only to relate several
incidents that happened by the way.
On the 14th we were racing with the enemy--we being pushed on to
the utmost of human endurance--for the possession of the defences
of Washington. From five o'clock of that morning till three the
following morning,--that is to say, from daylight to daylight,--we
were hurried along under a burning June sun, with no halt longer
than sufficient to recruit our strength with a hasty cup of coffee
at noon and nightfall. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve o'clock at night,
and still on! It was almost more than flesh could endure. Men fell
out of line in the darkness by the score, and tumbled over by the
roadside, asleep almost before they touched the ground.
I remember how a great tall fellow in our company made us laugh
along somewhere about one o'clock that morning,--"Pointer," we
called him,--an excellent soldier, who afterward fell at his
post at Spottsylvania. He had been trudging on in sullen silence
for hours, when all of a sudden, coming to a halt, he brought
his piece to "order arms" on the hard road with a ring, took off
his cap, and, in language far more forcible than elegant, began
forthwith to denounce both parties to the war, "from A to Izzard,"
in all branches of the service, civil and military, army and navy,
artillery, infantry, and cavalry, and demanded that the enemy
should come on in full force here and now, "and I'll fight them
all, single-handed and alone, the whole pack of 'em! I'm tired of
this everlasting marching, and I want to fight!"
"Three cheers for Pointer!" cried some one, and we laughed heartily
as we toiled doggedly on to Manassas, which we reached at three
o'clock A. M., June 15th. I can assure you we lost no time in
stretching ourselves at full length in the tall summer grass.
"James McFadden, report to the adjutant for camp guard! James
McFadden! Anybody know where Jim McFadden is?"
Now that was rather hard, wasn't it? To march from daylight to
daylight, and lie down for a rest of probably two hours before
starting again, and then to be called up to stand throughout those
precious two hours on guard duty!
I knew very well where McFadden was, for wasn't he lying right
beside me in the grass? But just then I was in no humor to tell.
The camp might well go without a guard that night, or the orderly
might find McFadden in the dark if he could.
But the rules were strict, and the punishment was severe, and poor
McFadden, bursting into tears of vexation, answered like a man:
"Here I am, Orderly; I'll go." It was hard.
Two weeks later, both McFadden and the orderly went where there is
neither marching nor standing guard any more.
Now comes a long rest of a week in the woods near the Potomac; for
we have been marching parallel with the enemy, and dare not go
too fast, lest by some sudden and dexterous move in the game he
should sweep past our rear in upon the defences of Washington. And
after this sweet refreshment, we cross the Potomac on pontoons,
and march, perhaps with a lighter step, since we are nearing home,
through the smiling fields and pleasant villages of "Maryland, my
Maryland." At Poolesville, a little town on the north bank of the
Potomac, we smile as we see a lot of children come trooping out of
the village school,--a merry sight to men who have seen neither
woman nor child these six months and more, and a touching sight to
many a man in the ranks as he thinks of his little flaxen-heads in
the far-away home. Ay, think of them now, and think of them full
tenderly too, for many a man of you shall never have child climb
on his knee any more!
As we enter one of these pleasant little Maryland
villages,--Jefferson by name,--we find on the outskirts of the
place two young ladies and two young gentlemen waving the good old
flag as we pass, and singing "Rally round the Flag, Boys!" The
excitement along the line is intense. Cheer on cheer is given by
regiment after regiment as we pass along, we drummer-boys beating,
at the colonel's express orders, the old tune, "The Girl I left
behind me," as a sort of response. Soon we are in among the hills
again, and still the cheering goes on in the far distance to the
rear.
Only ten days later we passed through the same village again, and
were met by the same young ladies and gentlemen, waving the same
flag and singing the same song. But though we tried twice, and
tried hard, we could not cheer at all; for there's a difference
between five hundred men and one hundred,--is there not? So, that
second time, we drooped our tattered flags, and raised our caps
in silent and sorrowful salute. Through Middletown next, where a
rumor reaches us that the enemy's forces have occupied Harrisburg,
and where certain ladies, standing on a balcony and waving their
handkerchiefs as we pass by, in reply to our colonel's greeting,
that "we are glad to see so many Union people here," answer, "Yes;
and we are glad to see the Yankee soldiers too."
From Middletown, at six o'clock in the evening, across the mountain
to Frederick, on the outskirts of which city we camp for the night.
At half-past five next morning (June 29th) we are up and away,
in a drizzling rain, through Lewistown and Mechanicstown, near
which latter place we pass a company of Confederate prisoners,
twenty-four in number, dressed in well-worn gray and butternut,
which makes us think that the enemy cannot be far ahead. After
a hard march of twenty-five miles, the greater part of the way
over a turnpike, we reach Emmittsburg at nightfall, some of us
quite barefoot, and all of us footsore and weary. Next morning
(June 30th) at nine o'clock we are up and away again, "on the
road leading towards Gettysburg," they say. After crossing the
line between Maryland and Pennsylvania, where the colonel halts
the column for a moment, in order that we may give three rousing
cheers for the Old Keystone State, we march perceptibly slower, as
if there were some impediment in the way. There is a feeling among
the men that the enemy is somewhere near. Towards noon we leave the
public road, and taking across the fields, form in line of battle
along the rear of a wood, and pickets are thrown out. There is an
air of uncertainty and suspicion in the ranks as we look to the
woods, and consider what our pickets may possibly unmask there.
But no developments have yet been made when darkness comes, and we
bivouac for the night behind a strong stone wall.
Passing down along the line of glowing fires in the gathering
gloom, I come on one of my company messes squatting about a fire,
cooking supper. Joe Gutelius, corporal and color-guard from our
company, is superintending the boiling of a piece of meat in a tin
can, while Sam Ruhl and his brother Joe are smoking their pipes
near by.
"Boys, it begins to look a little dubious, don't it? Where is Jimmy
Lucas?"
"He's out on picket in the woods yonder. Yes, Harry, it begins to
look a little as if we were about to stir the Johnnies out of the
brush," says Joe Gutelius, throwing another rail on the fire.
"If we do," says Joe Ruhl, "remember that you have the post of
honor, Joe, and 'if any man pulls down that flag, shoot him on the
spot!'"
"Never you fear for that," answers Joe Gutelius. "We of the
color-guard will look out for the flag. For my part, I'll stay a
dead man on the field before the colors of the 150th are disgraced."
"You'll have some tough tussling for your colors, then," says Sam.
"If the Louisiana Tigers get after you once, look out!"
"Who's afraid of the Louisiana Tigers? I'll back the Buck-tails
against the Tigers any day. Stay and take supper with us, Harry!
We are going to have a feast to-night. I have the heart of a beef
boiling in the can yonder; and it is done now. Sit up, boys, get
out your knives and fall to."
"We were going to have boiled lion heart for supper, Harry," says
Joe Ruhl with mock apology for the fare, "but we couldn't catch
any lions. They seem to be scarce in these parts. Maybe we can
catch a tiger to-morrow, though."
Little do we think, as we sit thus cheerily talking about the
blazing fire behind the stone-wall, that it is our last supper
together, and that ere another nightfall two of us will be sleeping
in the silent bivouac of the dead.
* * * * *
"Colonel, close up your men, and move on as rapidly as possible."
It is the morning of July 1st, and we are crossing a bridge over
a stream, as the staff-officer, having delivered this order for
us, dashes down the line to hurry up the regiments in the rear. We
get up on a high range of hills, from which we have a magnificent
view. The day is bright, the air is fresh and sweet with the
scent of the new-mown hay, and the sun shines out of an almost
cloudless sky, and as we gaze away off yonder down the valley to
the left--look! Do you see that? A puff of smoke in mid-air! Very
small, and miles away, as the faint and long-coming "boom" of the
exploding shell indicates; but it means that something is going on
yonder, away down in the valley, in which, perhaps, we may have a
hand before the day is done. See! another--and another! Faint and
far away comes the long-delayed "boom!" "boom!" echoing over the
hills, as the staff-officer dashes along the lines with orders to
"double-quick! double-quick!"
Four miles of almost constant double-quicking is no light work at
any time, least of all on such a day as this memorable first day
of July, for it is hot and dusty. But we are in our own State now,
boys, and the battle is opening ahead, and it is no time to save
breath. On we go, now up a hill, now over a stream, now checking
our headlong rush for a moment, for we _must_ breathe a little. But
the word comes along the line again, "double-quick," and we settle
down to it with right good-will, while the cannon ahead seem to be
getting nearer and louder. There's little said in the ranks, for
there is little breath for talking, though every man is busy enough
thinking. We all feel, somehow, that our day has come at last--as
indeed it has!
We get in through the outskirts of Gettysburg, tearing down the
fences of the town-lots and outlying gardens as we go; we pass a
battery of brass guns drawn up beside the Seminary, some hundred
yards in front of which building, in a strip of meadow-land, we
halt, and rapidly form the line of battle.
"General, shall we unsling knapsacks?" shouts some one down the
line to our division-general, as he is dashing by.
"Never mind the knapsacks, boys; it's the State now!"
And he plunges his spurs into the flanks of his horse, as he takes
the stake-and-rider fence at a leap, and is away.
"Unfurl the flags, Color-guard!"
"Now, forward, double----"
"Colonel, we're not loaded yet!"
A laugh runs along the line as, at the command "Load at
will--load!" the ramrods make their merry music, and at once the
word is given, "Forward, double-quick!" and the line sweeps up that
rising ground with banners gayly flying, and cheers that rend the
air,--a sight, once seen, never to be forgotten.
I suppose my readers wonder what a drummer-boy does in time of
battle. Perhaps they have the same idea I used to have, namely,
that it is the duty of a drummer-boy to beat his drum all the time
the battle rages, to encourage the men or drown the groans of the
wounded! But if they will reflect a moment, they will see that
amid the confusion and noise of battle, there is little chance of
martial music being either heard or heeded. Our colonel had long
ago given us our orders:
"You drummer-boys, in time of an engagement, are to lay aside your
drums and take stretchers and help off the wounded. I expect you to
do this, and you are to remember that, in doing it, you are just
as much helping the battle on as if you were fighting with guns in
your hands."
And so we sit down there on our drums and watch the line going
in with cheers. Forthwith we get a smart shelling, for there is
evidently somebody else watching that advancing line besides
ourselves; but they have elevated their guns a little too much, so
that every shell passes quite over the line and ploughs up the
meadow-sod about _us_ in all directions.
[Illustration: A SKIRMISH AFTER A HARD DAY'S MARCH]
Laying aside our knapsacks, we go to the Seminary, now rapidly
filling with the wounded. This the enemy surely cannot know, or
they wouldn't shell the building so hard! We get stretchers at the
ambulances, and start out for the line of battle. We can just see
our regimental colors waving in the orchard, near a log-house about
three hundred yards ahead, and we start out for it--I on the lead,
and Daney behind.
There is one of our batteries drawn up to our left a short distance
as we run. It is engaged in a sharp artillery duel with one of
the enemy's, which we cannot see, although we can hear it plainly
enough, and straight between the two our road lies. So, up we
go, Daney and I, at a lively trot, dodging the shells as best we
can, till, panting for breath, we set down our stretcher under an
apple-tree in the orchard, in which, under the brow of the hill,
we find the regiment lying, one or two companies being out on the
skirmish line ahead.
I count six men of Company C lying yonder in the grass--killed,
they say, by a single shell. Close beside them lies a tall,
magnificently built man, whom I recognize by his uniform as
belonging to the "Iron Brigade," and therefore probably an Iowa
boy. He lies on his back at full length, with his musket beside
him--calm-looking as if asleep, but having a fatal blue mark on
his forehead and the ashen pallor of death on his countenance.
Andy calls me away for a moment to look after some poor fellow
whose arm is off at the shoulder; and it was just time I got away,
too, for immediately a shell plunges into the sod where I had been
sitting, tearing my stretcher to tatters, and ploughing up a great
furrow under one of the boys who had been sitting immediately
behind me, and who thinks, "That was rather close shaving, wasn't
it, now?" The bullets whistling overhead make pretty music with
their ever-varying "z-i-p! z-i-p!" and we could imagine them so
many bees, only they have such a terribly sharp sting. They tell
me, too, of a certain cavalry-man (Dennis Buckley, Sixth Michigan
cavalry it was, as I afterwards learned--let history preserve
the brave boy's name) who, having had his horse shot under him,
and seeing that first-named shell explode in Company C with such
disaster, exclaimed, "That is the company for me!" He remained with
the regiment all day, doing good service with his carbine, and he
escaped unhurt!
"Here they come, boys; we'll have to go in at them on a charge,
I guess!" Creeping close around the corner of the log-house, I
can see the long lines of gray sweeping up in fine style over the
fields; but I feel the colonel's hand on my shoulder.
"Keep back, my boy; no use exposing yourself in that way."
As I get back behind the house and look around, an old man is seen
approaching our line through the orchard in the rear. He is dressed
in a long blue swallow-tailed coat and high silk hat, and coming up
to the colonel, he asks:
"Would you let an old chap like me have a chance to fight in your
ranks, colonel?"
"Can you shoot?" inquires the colonel.
"Oh yes, I can shoot, I reckon," says he.
"But where are your cartridges?"
"I've got 'em here, sir," says the old man, slapping his hand on
his trousers pocket.
And so "old John Burns," of whom every school-boy has heard, takes
his place in the line and loads and fires with the best of them,
and is left wounded and insensible on the field when the day is
done.
Reclining there under a tree while the skirmishing is going on in
front and the shells are tearing up the sod around us, I observe
how evidently hard pressed is that battery yonder in the edge of
the wood, about fifty yards to our right. The enemy's batteries
have excellent range on the poor fellows serving it. And when the
smoke lifts or rolls away in great clouds for a moment, we can
see the men running, and ramming, and sighting, and firing, and
swabbing, and changing position every few minutes to throw the
enemy's guns out of range a little. The men are becoming terribly
few, but nevertheless their guns, with a rapidity that seems
unabated, belch forth great clouds of smoke, and send the shells
shrieking over the plain.
[Illustration: AT CLOSE QUARTERS THE FIRST DAY AT GETTYSBURG.]
Meanwhile, events occur which give us something more to think of
than mere skirmishing beloved brigadier-general, Roy Stone,
stepping out a moment to reconnoitre the enemy's position and
movements, is seen by some sharpshooter off in a tree, and is
carried, severely wounded, into the barn. Our colonel, Langhorne
Wister, assumes command of the brigade. Our regiment, facing
westward, while the line on our right faces to the north, is
observed to be exposed to an enfilading fire from the enemy's
guns, as well as from the long line of gray now appearing in
full sight on our right. So our regiment must form in line and
"change front forward," in order to come in line with the other
regiments. Accomplished swiftly, this new movement brings our line
at once face to face with the enemy's, which advances to within
fifty yards, and exchanges a few volleys, but is soon checked and
staggered by our fire.
Yet now, see! Away to our left, and consequently on our flank, a
new line appears, rapidly advancing out of the woods a half-mile
away, and there must be some quick and sharp work done now, boys,
or, between the old foes in front and the new ones on our flank,
we shall be annihilated. To clear us of these old assailants in
front before the new line can sweep down on our flank, our brave
colonel, in a ringing command, orders a charge along the whole
line. Then, before the gleaming and bristling bayonets of our
"Buck-tail" brigade, as it yells and cheers, sweeping resistlessly
over the field, the enemy gives way and flies in confusion. But
there is little time to watch them fly, for that new line on our
left is approaching at a rapid pace; and, with shells falling thick
and fast into our ranks, and men dropping everywhere, our regiment
must reverse the former movement by "changing front to rear," and
so resume its original position facing westward, for the enemy's
new line is approaching from that direction, and if it takes us in
flank, we are done for.
To "change front to rear" is a difficult movement to execute even
on drill, much more so under severe fire; but it is executed now
steadily and without confusion, yet not a minute too soon! For the
new line of gray is upon us in a mad tempest of lead, supported by
a cruel artillery fire, almost before our line can steady itself to
receive the shock. However, partially protected by a post-and-rail
fence, we answer fiercely, and with effect so terrific that the
enemy's line wavers, and at length moves off by the right flank,
giving us a breathing space for a time.
During this struggle, there had been many an exciting scene
all along the line as it swayed backward and forward over the
field,--scenes which we have had no time to mention yet.
See yonder, where the colors of the regiment on our right--our
sister regiment, the 149th--have been advanced a little, to draw
the enemy's fire, while our line sweeps on to the charge. There
ensues about the flags a wild _mêlée_ and close hand-to-hand
encounter. Some of the enemy have seized the colors and are making
off with them in triumph, shouting victory. But a squad of our own
regiment dashes out swiftly, led to the rescue of the stolen colors
by Sergeant John C. Kensill, of Company F, who falls to the ground
before reaching them, and amid yells and cheers and smoke, you see
the battle-flags rise and fall, and sway hither and thither upon
the surging mass, as if tossed on the billows of a tempest, until,
wrenched away by strong arms, they are borne back in triumph to the
line of the 149th.
See yonder, again! Our colonel is clapping his hand to his cheek,
from which a red stream is pouring; our lieutenant-colonel, H.
S. Huidekoper, is kneeling on the ground, and is having his
handkerchief tied tight around his arm at the shoulder; Major
Thomas Chamberlain and Adjutant Richard L. Ashurst both lie low,
pierced with balls through the chest; one lieutenant is waving his
sword to his men, although his leg is crushed at the knee; three
other officers of the line are lying over there, motionless now
forever. All over the field are strewn men wounded or dead, and
comrades pause a moment in the mad rush to catch the last words
of the dying. Incidents such as these the reader must imagine
for himself, to fill in these swift sketches of how the day was
won--and lost!
Ay, lost! For the balls which have so far come mainly from our
front, begin now to sing in from our left and right, which means
that we are being flanked. Somehow, away off to our right, a
half-mile or so, our line has given way, and is already on retreat
through the town, while our left is being driven in, and we
ourselves may shortly be surrounded and crushed--and so the retreat
is sounded.
Back now along the railroad cut we go, or through the orchard and
the narrow strip of woods behind it, with our dead scattered around
on all sides, and the wounded crying piteously for help.
"Harry! Harry!" It is a faint cry of a dying man yonder in the
grass, and I _must_ see who it is.
"Why, Willie! Tell me where you are hurt," I ask, kneeling down
beside him; and I see the words come hard, for he is fast dying.
"Here in my side, Harry. Tell--mother--mother----"
Poor fellow, he can say no more. His head falls back, and Willie is
at rest forever!
On, now, through that strip of woods, at the other edge of which,
with my back against a stout oak, I stop and look at a beautiful
and thrilling sight. Some reserves are being brought up; infantry
in the centre, the colors flying and officers shouting; cavalry on
the right, with sabres flashing and horses on a trot; artillery on
the left, with guns at full gallop sweeping into position to check
the headlong pursuit,--it is a grand sight, and a fine rally; but
a vain one, for in an hour we are swept off the field, and are in
full retreat through the town.
Up through the streets hurries the remnant of our shattered corps,
while the enemy is pouring into the town only a few squares away
from us. There is a tempest of shrieking shells and whistling balls
about our ears. The guns of that battery by the woods we have
dragged along, all the horses being disabled. The artillery-men
load as we go, double-charging with grape and canister.
"Make way there, men!" is the cry, and the surging mass crowds
close up on the sidewalks to right and left, leaving a long lane
down the centre of the street, through which the grape and canister
go rattling into the ranks of the enemy's advance-guard.
And so, amid scenes which I have neither space nor power to
describe, we gain Cemetery Ridge towards sunset, and throw
ourselves down by the road in a tumult of excitement and grief,
having lost the day through the overwhelming force of numbers, and
yet somehow having gained it too (although as yet we know it not),
for the sacrifice of our corps has saved the position for the
rest of the army, which has been marching all day, and which comes
pouring in over Cemetery Ridge all night long.
Ay, the position is saved; but where is our corps? Well may our
division-general, Doubleday, who early in the day succeeded to the
command when our brave Reynolds had fallen, shed tears of grief as
he sits there on his horse and looks over the shattered remains of
that First Army Corps, for there is but a handful of it left. Of
the five hundred and fifty men that marched under our regimental
colors in the morning, but one hundred remain. All our field and
staff officers are gone. Of some twenty captains and lieutenants,
but one is left without a scratch, while of my own company only
thirteen out of fifty-four sleep that night on Cemetery Ridge,
under the open canopy of heaven. There is no roll-call, for
Sergeant Weidensaul will call the roll no more; nor will Joe
Gutelius, nor Joe Ruhl, nor McFadden, nor Henning, nor many others
of our comrades whom we miss, ever answer to their names again
until the world's last great reveille.
CHAPTER XI.
AFTER THE BATTLE.
I had frequently seen pictures of battle-fields, and had often
read about them; but the most terrible scenes of carnage my boyish
imagination had ever figured fell far short of the dreadful reality
as I beheld it after the great battle of the war. It was the
evening of Sunday, July 5, 1863, when, at the suggestion of Andy,
we took our way across the breastworks, stone fences, and redoubts,
to look over the battle-field. Our shattered brigade had been
mainly on reserve during the last three days; and as we made our
way through the troops lying in our front, and over the defences of
stone and earth and ragged rocks, the scene among our troops was
one for the pencil of a great artist.
Scattered about irregularly were groups of men discussing the
battle and its results, or relating exciting incidents and
adventures of the fray: here, one fellow pointing out bullet-holes
in his coat or cap, or a great rent in the sleeve of his blouse
made by a flying piece of shell; there, a man laughing as he held
up his crushed canteen, or showed his tobacco-box with a hole in
the lid and a bullet among his "fine cut"; yonder, knots of men
frying steaks and cooking coffee about the fire, or making ready
for sleep.
Before we pass beyond our own front line, evidences of the terrible
carnage of the battle environ us on all sides. Fresh, hastily dug
graves are there, with rude head-boards telling the poor fellows'
names and regiments; yonder, a tree on whose smooth bark the names
of three Confederate generals, who fell here in the gallant charge,
have been carved by some thoughtful hand. The trees round about are
chipped by the balls and stripped almost bare by the leaden hail,
while a log-house near by in the clearing has been so riddled with
shot and shell that scarcely a whole shingle is left to its roof.
But sights still more fearful await us as we step out beyond the
front line, pick our way carefully among the great rocks, and walk
down the slope to the scene of the fearful charge. The ground has
been soaked with the recent rains, and the heavy mist which hangs
like a pall over the field, together with the growing darkness,
renders objects but indistinctly visible, and all the more ghastly.
As the eye ranges over so much of the field as the shrouding
mist allows us to see, we behold a scene of destruction terrible
indeed, if ever there was one in all this wide world! Dismounted
gun-carriages, shattered caissons, knapsacks, haversacks, muskets,
bayonets, accoutrements, scattered over the field in wildest
confusion,--horses (poor creatures!) dead and dying,--and, worst
and most awful of all, dead men by the hundreds! Most of the men in
blue have been buried already, and the pioneers yonder in the mist
are busy digging trenches for the poor fellows in gray.
As we pass along, we stop to observe how thickly they lie, here and
there, like grain before the scythe in summer-time,--how firmly
some have grasped their guns, with high, defiant looks,--and how
calm are the countenances of others in their last solemn sleep;
while more than one has clutched in his stiffened fingers a piece
of white paper, which he waved, poor soul, in his death-agony, as
a plea for quarter, when the great wave of battle had receded and
left him there, mortally wounded, on the field.
I sicken of the dreadful scene,--can endure it no longer,--and beg
Andy to "Come away! Come away! It's too awful to look at any more!"
And so we get back to our place in the breastworks with sad,
heavy hearts, and wonder how we ever could have imagined war so
grand and gallant a thing when, after all, it is so horribly
wicked and cruel. We lie down--the thirteen of us that are left
in the company--on a big flat rock, sleeping without shelter, and
shielding our faces from the drizzling rain with our caps as best
we may, thinking of the dreadful scene in front there, and of the
sad, heavy hearts there will be all over the land for weary years,
till kindly sleep comes to us, with sweet forgetfulness of all.
Our clothes were damp with the heavy mists and drizzling rain
when we awoke next morning, and hastily prepared for the march
off the field and the long pursuit of the foe through the waving
grain-fields of Maryland. Having cooked our coffee in our blackened
tin cups, and roasted our slices of fresh beef, stuck on the end of
a ramrod and thrust into the crackling fires, we were ready in a
moment for the march, for we had but little to pack up.
Straight over the field we go, through that valley of death where
the heavy charging had been done, and thousands of men had been
swept away, line after line, in the mad and furious tempest of the
battle. Heavy mists still overhang the field, even dumb Nature
seeming to be in sympathy with the scene, while all around us, as
we march along, are sights at which the most callous turn faint.
Interesting enough we find the evidences of conflict, save only
where human life is concerned.
[Illustration: ON THE MARCH TO AND FROM GETTYSBURG.]
We stop to wonder at the immense furrow yonder which some shell has
ploughed up in the ground; we call one another's attention to a
caisson shivered to atoms by an explosion, or to a tree cut clean
off by a solid shot, or bored through and through by a shell. With
pity we contemplate the poor artillery-horses hobbling, wounded
and mangled, about the field, and we think it a mercy to shoot them
as we pass. But the dead men! Hundreds of torn and distorted bodies
yet on the field, although thousands already lie buried in the
trenches. Even the roughest and rudest among us marches awed and
silent, as he is forced to think of the terrible suffering endured
in this place, and of the sorrow and tears there will be among the
mountains of the North and the rice-fields of the far-off South.
We were quiet, I remember, very quiet, as we marched off that great
field; and not only then, but for days afterwards, as we tramped
through the pleasant fields of Maryland. We had little to say, and
we all were pretty busily thinking. Where were the boys who, but
a week before, had marched with us through those same fragrant
fields, blithe as a sunshiny morn in May? And so, as I have told
you, when those young ladies and gentlemen came out to the end
of that Maryland village to meet and cheer us after the battle,
as they had met and cheered us before it, we did not know how
heavy-hearted we were until, in response to their song of "Rally
round the Flag, Boys!" some one proposed three cheers for them. But
the cheers would not come. Somehow, after the first hurrah, the
other two stuck in our throats or died away soundless on the air.
And so we only said: "God bless you, young friends; but we can't
cheer to-day, you see!"
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XII.
THROUGH "MARYLAND, MY MARYLAND."
Our course now lay through Maryland, and we performed endless
marches and countermarches over turnpikes and through field and
forest.
After crossing South Mountain,--but stop, I just _must_ tell you
about that, it will take but a paragraph or two. South Mountain
Pass we entered one July evening, after a drenching rain, on the
Middletown side, and marched along through that deep mountain
gorge, with a high cliff on either side, and a delightful stream
of fresh water flowing along the road; emerging on the other side
at the close of day. Breaking off the line of march by the right
flank, we suddenly crossed the stream, and were ordered up the
mountain-side in the gathering darkness. We climbed very slowly at
first, and more slowly still as the darkness deepened and the path
grew steeper and more difficult. At about nine o'clock, orders were
given to "sleep on arms," and then, from sheer fatigue, we all fell
sound asleep, some lying on the rocks, some sitting bolt upright
against the trees, some stretched out at full length on beds of
moss or clumps of bushes.
What a magnificent sight awaited us the next morning! Opening
our eyes at peep o' day, we found ourselves high up on top of a
mountain-bluff overlooking the lovely valley about Boonesboro. The
rains were past; the sun was just beginning to break through the
clouds; great billows of mist were rolling up from the hollows
below, where we could catch occasional glimpses of the movements of
troops,--cavalry dashing about in squads, and infantry marching in
solid columns. What may have been the object of sending us up that
mountain, or what the intention in ordering us to fell the trees
from the mountain-top and build breastworks hundreds of feet above
the valley, I have never learned. That one morning amid the mists
of the mountain, and that one grand view of the lovely valley
beneath, were to my mind sufficient reason for being there.
Refreshed by a day's rest on the mountain-top, we march down into
the valley on the 10th, exhilarated by the sweet, fresh mountain
air, as well as by the prospect, as we suppose, of a speedy
end being put to this cruel war. For we know that the enemy is
somewhere crossing the swollen Potomac back into Virginia, in a
crippled condition, and we are sure he will be finally crushed in
the next great battle, which cannot now be many hours distant.
And so we march leisurely along, over turnpikes and through
grain-fields, on the edge of one of which, by and by, we halt in
line of battle, stack arms, and, with three cheers, rush in a
line for a stake-and-rider fence, with the rails of which we are
to build breastworks. It is wonderful how rapidly that Maryland
farmer's fence disappears! Each man seizing a rail, the fence
literally walks off, and in less than fifteen minutes it reappears
in the shape of a compact and well-built line of breastworks.
But scarcely is the work completed when we are ordered into the
road again, and up this we advance a half-mile or so, and form
in line on the left of the road and on the skirt of another
wheat-field. We are about to stack arms and build a second line of
works, when--
Z-i-p! z-i-p! z-i-p!
Ah! It is music we know right well by this time! Three light puffs
of smoke rise yonder in the wheat-field, a hundred yards or so
away, where the enemy's pickets are lying concealed in the tall
grain. Three balls go singing merrily over my head--intended, no
doubt, for the lieutenant, who is acting-adjutant, and who rides
immediately in front of me, with a bandage over his forehead, but
who is too busy forming the line to give much heed to his danger.
"We'll take you out o' that grass a-hopping, you long-legged
rascals!" shouts Pointer, as the command is given:
"Deploy to right and left as skirmishers,"--while a battery of
artillery is brought up at a gallop, and the guns are trained on
a certain red barn away across the field, from which the enemy's
sharpshooters are picking off our men.
Bang! Hur-r-r! Boom! One, two, three, four shells go crashing
through the red barn, while the shingles and boards fly like
feathers, and the sharpshooters pour out from it in wild haste.
The pickets are popping away at one another out there along the
field and in the edge of the wood beyond; the enemy is driven
in and retreats, but we do not advance, and the expected battle
does not come off after all, as we had hoped it would. For in the
great war-council held about that time, as we afterwards learned,
our generals, by a close vote, have decided not to risk a general
engagement, but to let the enemy get back into Virginia again,
crippled, indeed, but not crushed, as every man in the ranks
believes he well might be.
As we step on the swaying pontoons to recross the Potomac into old
Virginia, there are murmurs of disappointment all along the line.
"Why didn't they let us fight? We could have thrashed them now,
if ever we could. We are tired of this everlasting marching and
countermarching up and down, and we want to fight it out and be
done with it."
But for all our feelings and wishes, we are back again on the south
side of the river, and the column of blue soon is marching along
gayly enough among the hills and pleasant fields about Waterford.
We did not go very fast nor very far those hot July days, because
we had very little to eat. Somehow or other our provision trains
had lost their reckoning, and in consequence we were left to
subsist as best we could. We were a worn, haggard-looking, hungry,
ragged set of men. As for me--out at knee and elbow, my hair
sticking out in tufts through holes in the top of my hat, my shoes
in shreds, and my haversack empty--I must have presented a forlorn
appearance indeed. Fortunately, however, blackberries were ripe
and plentiful. All along the road and all through the fields,
as we approached Warrenton, these delicious berries hung on the
vines in great luscious clusters. Yet blackberries for supper and
blackberries for breakfast give a man but little strength for
marching under a July sun all day long. So Corporal Harter and I
thought, as we sat one morning in a clover-field where we were
resting for the day, busy boiling a chicken at our camp-fire.
"Where did you get that chicken, Corporal?" said I.
"Well, you see, Harry, I didn't steal her, and I didn't buy her,
neither. Late last night, while we were crossing that creek, I
heard some fellow say he had carried that old chicken all day since
morning, and she was getting too heavy for him, and he was going to
throw her into the creek; and so I said I'd take her, and I did,
and carried her all night, and here she is now in the pan, sizzling
away, Harry."
"I'm afraid, Corporal, this is a fowl trick."
"Fair or fowl, we'll have a good dinner, any way."
With an appetite ever growing keener as we caught savory whiffs
from the steaming mess-pan, we piled up the rails on the fire and
boiled the biddy, and boiled, and boiled, and boiled her from morn
till noon, and from noon to night, and couldn't eat her then, she
was so tough!
"May the dogs take the old grizzle-gizzard! I'm not going to break
my teeth on this old buzzard any more," shouted the corporal, as
he flung the whole cartilaginous mass into a pile of brush near by.
"It _was_ a fowl trick, after all, Harry, wasn't it?"
Thus it chanced that, when we marched out of Warrenton early
one sultry summer morning, we started with empty stomachs and
haversacks, and marched on till noon with nothing to eat. Halting
then in a wood, we threw ourselves under the trees, utterly
exhausted. About three o'clock, as we lay there, a whole staff of
officers came riding down the line--the quartermaster-general of
the Army of the Potomac and staff, they said it was. Just the very
man we wanted to see! Then broke forth such a yell from hundreds of
famished men as the quartermaster-general had probably never heard
before nor ever wished to hear again:
"Hard-tack!"
"Coffee!"
"Pork!"
"Beef!"
"Sugar!"
"Salt!"
"Pepper!"
"Hard-tack! Hard-tack!"
The quartermaster and staff put their spurs to their horses and
dashed away in a cloud of dust, and at last, about nightfall, we
got something to eat.
By the way, this reminds me of an incident that occurred on one of
our long marches; and I tell it just to show what sometimes is the
effect of short rations.
It was while we were lying up at Chancellorsville in an immense
forest that our supply of pork and hard-tack began to give out.
We had, indeed, carried with us into the woods eight full days'
rations in our knapsacks and haversacks; but it rained in torrents
for several days, so that our hard-tack became mouldy, the roads
were impassable, transportation was out of the question, and we
were forced to put ourselves on short allowance.
"I wish I had some meat, Harry," said Pete Grove, anxiously
inspecting the contents of his haversack; "I'm awful hungry for
meat."
"Well, Pete," said I, "I saw some jumping around here pretty lively
a while ago. Maybe you could catch it."
"_Meat_ jumping around here? Why what do you mean?"
"Why frogs, to be sure--frogs, Pete. Did you never eat frogs?"
"Bah! I think I'd be a great deal hungrier than I am now, ever to
eat a frog! Ugh! No, indeed! But where is he? I'd like the fun of
hunting him, anyhow."
So saying, he loaded his revolver, and we sallied forth along the
stream, and Pete, who was a good marksman, in a short time had laid
out Mr. Froggy at the first shot.
"Now, Pete, we'll skin him, and you shall have a feast fit for a
king."
So, putting the meat into a tin cup with a little water, salt, and
pepper, boiling it for a few minutes, and breaking some hard-tack
into it when done, I set it before him. I need hardly say that when
he had once tasted the dish he speedily devoured it, and when he
had devoured it, he took his revolver in hand again, and hunted
frogs for the rest of that afternoon.
* * * * *
Drum and fife have more to do with the discipline of an army than
an inexperienced person would imagine. The drum is the tongue
of the camp. It wakes the men in the morning, mounts the guard,
announces the dinner-hour, gives a peculiar charm to dress-parade
in the evening, and calls the men to quarters with its pleasant
tattoo at night. For months, however, we had had no drums. Ours
had been lost, with our knapsacks, at Gettysburg. [And I will here
pause to say that if any good friend across the border has in his
possession a snare-drum with the name and regiment of the writer
clearly marked on the inside of the body, and will return the same
to the owner thereof, he will confer no small favor, and will be
overwhelmed with an ocean of thanks!]
[Illustration: "I'VE GOT HIM, BOYS!"]
We did not know how really important a thing a drum is until,
one late September day, we were ordered to prepare for a
dress-parade--a species of regimental luxury in which we had not
indulged since the early days of June.
"Major, you don't expect us drummer-boys to turn out, do you?"
"Certainly. And why not, my boy?"
"Why, we have no drums, Major!"
"Well, your fifers have fifes, haven't they? We'll do without the
drums; but you must all turn out, and the fifers can play."
So when we stood drawn up in line on the parade-ground among the
woods, and the order was given:
"Parade rest! Troop, beat off!"
Out we drummers and fifers wheeled from the head of the line, with
three shrill fifes screaming out the rolls, and started at a slow
march down the line, while every man in the ranks grinned, and we
drummer-boys laughed, and the officers joined us, until at last the
whole line, officers and men alike, broke out into loud haw-haws at
the sight. The fifers couldn't whistle for laughing, and the major
ordered us all back to our places when only half down the line,
and never even attempted another parade until a full supply of
brand-new drums arrived for us from Washington.
Then the major picked out mine for me, I remember, and it proved to
be the best in the lot.
CHAPTER XIII.
PAINS AND PENALTIES.
Among all civilized nations the "rules of war" seem to have been
written with an iron hand. The laws by which the soldier in
the field is governed are of necessity inexorable, for strict
discipline is the chief excellence of an army, and a ready
obedience the chief virtue of the soldier. Nothing can be more
admirable in the character of the true soldier than his prompt and
unquestioning response to the trumpet-call of duty. The world can
never forget, nor ever sufficiently admire, a Leonidas with his
three hundred Spartans at Thermopylæ, the Roman soldier on guard
at the gates of the perishing Pompeii, or the gallant six hundred
charging into the "valley of death" at Balaklava. Disobedience to
orders is the great sin of the soldier, and one that is sure to
be punished, for at no other time does Justice wear so stern and
severe a look as when she sits enthroned amidst the camps of armed
men.
In different sections of the army, various expedients were resorted
to for the purpose of correcting minor offences. What particular
shape the punishment should assume depended very much upon the
inventive faculty of the Field and Staff, or of such officers of
the line as might have charge of the case.
Before taking the field, a few citizen sneak-thieves were
discovered prowling amongst the tents. These were promptly drummed
out of camp to the tune of the "Rogue's March," the whole regiment
shouting in derision as the miserable fellows took to their heels
when the procession reached the limits of the camp, where they were
told to begone and never show their faces in camp any more, on pain
of a more severe treatment.
[Illustration: DRUMMING SNEAK-THIEVES OUT OF CAMP.]
If, as very seldom happened, it was an enlisted man who was caught
stealing, he was often punished in the following way: A barrel,
having one end knocked out and a hole in the other large enough to
allow one's head to go through, was slipped over the culprit's
shoulders. On the outside of the barrel the word THIEF! was
printed in large letters. In this dress he presented the ludicrous
appearance of an animated meal-barrel; for you could see nothing
of him but his head and legs, his hands being very significantly
confined. Sometimes he was obliged to stand or sit (as best he
could) about the guard-house, or near by the colonel's quarters,
all day long. At other times he was compelled to march through the
company streets and make the tour of the camp under guard.
Once in the field, however, sneak-thieves soon disappeared. Nor was
there frequent occasion to punish the men for any other offences.
Nearly, if not quite all of the punishments inflicted in the field
were for disobedience in some form or other. Not that the men were
wilfully disobedient. Far from it. They knew very well that they
must obey, and that the value of their services was measured wholly
by the quality of their obedience. It very rarely happened, even
amid the greatest fatigue after a hard day's march, or in the face
of the most imminent danger, that any one refused his duty. But
after a long and severe march, a man is so completely exhausted
that he is likely to become irritable and to manifest a temper
quite foreign to his usual habit. He is then not himself, and may
in such circumstances do what at other times he would not think of
doing.
Thus it once happened in my own company that one of the boys took
it into his head to kick over the traces. We had had a long hot
day's march through Maryland on the way down from Gettysburg, and
were quite worn out. About midnight we halted in a clover field on
a hillside for rest and sleep. Corporal Harter, who was the only
officer, commissioned or non-commissioned, that we had left to us
after Gettysburg, called out:
"John D----, report to the adjutant for camp guard."
Now John, who was a German, by the way, did not like the prospect
of losing his sleep, and had to be summoned a second time before
replying:
"Corporal, ich thu's es net!" (Corporal, I won't do it.)
Tired though we all were, we could not help laughing at the
preposterous idea of a man daring to disobey the corporal. As
the boys jerked off their accoutrements and began to spread down
their gum-blankets on the fragrant clover wet with the dew, they
were greatly amused at this singular passage between John and the
corporal.
"Come on, John. Don't make a Dutch dunce of yourself. You know you
_must_ go."
"Ich hab' dir g'sawt, ich thu's es net" (I have told you I won't do
it), insisted John.
"Pitch in, John!" shouted some one from his bed in the clover.
"Give it to him in Dutch; that'll fetch him."
"Oh, hang it!" said the corporal. "Come on, man. What do you mean?
You know you've got to go."
"Ich hab' dir zwei mohl g'sawt, ich thu's es gar net" (I have told
you twice that I will certainly not do it).
"Ha! ha! It beats the Dutch!" said some one.
"Something rotten in Denmark!" exclaimed another.
"Put him in the guard-house!" suggested a third from under his
gum-blanket.
"Plague take the thing!" said the corporal, perplexed. "Pointer,"
continued he, "put on your accoutrements again, get your gun, and
take John under arrest to the adjutant."
"Come on, John," said Pointer, buckling on his belt, "and be mighty
quick about it too. I don't want to stand about here arguing all
night; I want to get to roost. Come along!"
The men leaned up on their elbows in their beds on the clover,
interested in knowing how John would take _that_.
"Well," said he, scratching his head and taking his gun in hand,
"Corporal, ich glaub' ich det besser geh" (Corporal, I guess I'd
better go).
"Yes," said Pointer with a drawl, "I guess you 'besser' had, or
the major'll make short work with you and your Dutch. What in the
name of General Jackson did you come to the army for, if you ain't
a-going to obey orders?"
If while we were lying in camp a man refused his duty, he was at
once haled to the guard-house, which is the military name for
lock-up. Once there, at the discretion of the officers, he was
either simply confined and put on bread and water, or maybe
ordered to carry a log of wood, or a knapsack filled with stones,
"two hours on and two off," day and night, until such time as he
was deemed to have done sufficient penance. In more extreme cases
a court-martial was held, and the penalty of forfeiture of all pay
due, with hard labor for thirty days, or the like, was inflicted.
"Tying up by the thumb" was sometimes adopted. Down in front of
Petersburg, out along the Weldon Railroad, I once saw thirteen
colored soldiers tied up by their thumbs at a time. Between two
pine-saplings a long pole had been thrown across and fastened at
either end about seven feet from the ground. To this pole thirteen
ropes had been attached at regular intervals, and to each rope a
darky was tied by the thumb in such a way that he could just touch
the ground with his heel and keep the rope taut. If any one will
try the experiment of holding up his arm in such a position for
only five minutes, he will appreciate the force of the punishment
of being tied up by the thumbs for a half day.
In some regiments they had a high wooden horse, which the offender
was made to mount; and there he was kept for hours in a seat as
conspicuous as it was uncomfortable.
One day, down in front of Petersburg, a number of us had been
making a friendly call on some acquaintances over in another
regiment. As we were returning home we came across what we took
to be a well, and wishing a drink we all stopped. The well in
question, as was usual there, was nothing but a barrel sunk in
the ground; for at some places the ground was so full of springs
that, in order to get water, all you had to do was to sink a box
or barrel, and the water would collect of its own accord. Stooping
down and looking into the well in question, Andy discovered a man
standing in the well and bailing out the water.
"What's he doing down there in that hole?" asked some one of our
company.
"He says he's in the gopher-hole," said Andy, with a grin.
"Gopher-hole! What's a gopher-hole!"
"Why," said the guard, who was standing near by, and whom we had
taken for the customary guard on the spring, "you see, comrades,
our colonel has his own way of punishin' the boys. One thing he
won't let 'em do--he won't let 'em get drunk. They may drink as
much as they want, but they must not get drunk. If they do, they
go into the gopher-hole. Jim, there, is in the gopher-hole now.
That hole has a spring in the bottom, and the water comes in pretty
fast; and if Jim wants to keep dry he's got to keep dippin' all the
time, or else stand in the water up to his neck--and Jim isn't so
mighty fond o' water neither."
Late in the fall of 1863, while we were lying in camp somewhere
among the pine woods along the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, we
were one day marched out to witness the execution of a deserter.
Instances of desertion to the enemy's lines were extremely rare
with us; but whenever they occurred, the unfortunate offenders, if
caught, were dealt with in the most summary manner, for the doom of
the deserter is death.
The poor fellow who was to suffer the highest penalty of military
law on the present occasion was, we were informed, a Maryland boy.
Some months previously he had deserted his regiment for some cause
or other, and had gone over to the enemy. Unfortunately for him it
happened that in one of the numerous skirmishes we were engaged in
about that time, he was taken prisoner, in company with a number of
Confederate soldiers. Unfortunately, also, for the poor fellow, it
chanced that he was captured by the very company from which he had
deserted. The disguise of a Confederate uniform, which might have
stood him in good stead had he fallen into any other hands, was
now of no avail. He was at once recognized by his former comrades
in arms, tried by court-martial, found guilty, and sentenced to be
shot.
So, one October morning, orders came to the effect that the whole
division was to turn out at one o'clock, to witness the execution
of the sentence. I need hardly say that this was most unwelcome
news. Nobody wished to see so sad a sight. Some of the men begged
to be excused from attendance, and others could not be found when
our drums beat the "assembly;" for none could well endure, as they
said, "to see a man shot down like a dog." It was one thing to
shoot a fellow mortal, or to see him shot, in battle; but this
was quite a different thing. A squad of men had been detailed to
shoot the poor fellow, Elias Foust, of our company, being among
the number. But Elias, to his credit be it recorded, begged off,
and had some one else appointed in his stead. One could not help
but pity the men who were assigned to this most unpleasant duty,
for if it be painful only to see a man shot, what must it not be
to shoot him with your own hand? However, in condescension to this
altogether natural and humane aversion to the shedding of blood,
and in order to render the task as endurable as possible, the
customary practice was observed:--On the morning of the execution
an officer, who had been appointed for the purpose, took a number
of rifles, some twelve or fourteen in number, and loaded all of
them carefully with powder and ball, _except one_, this one being
loaded with blank cartridge, that is, with powder only. He then
mixed the guns so thoroughly that he himself could scarcely tell
which guns were loaded with ball and which one was not. Another
officer then distributed the guns to the men, not one of whom
could be at all certain whether his particular gun contained a ball
or not, and all of whom could avail themselves of the full benefit
of the doubt in the case.
It was one of those peculiarly impressive autumn days when all that
one sees or hears conspires to fill the mind with an indefinable
feeling of sadness. There was the chirp of the cricket in the air,
and the far-away chorus of the myriads of insects complaining that
the year was done. There was all the impressiveness of a dull
sky, a dreamy haze over the field, a yellow and brown tinge on
the forest, accompanied by that peculiarly mournful wail of the
breeze as it sighed and moaned dolefully among the branches of the
pines,--all joining in chanting a requiem, it seemed to me, for the
poor Maryland boy whose sands were fast running out.
At the appointed hour the division marched out and took position in
a large field, or clearing, surrounded on all sides by pine-woods.
We were drawn up so as to occupy three sides of a great hollow
square, two ranks deep and facing inward, the fourth side of
the square (where we could see that a grave had been recently
dug) being left open for the execution. Scarcely were we well in
position, when there came to our ears, wafted by the sighing autumn
wind, the mournful notes of the "Dead March." Looking away in the
direction whence the music came, we could see a long procession
marching sadly and slowly to the measured stroke of the muffled
drum. First came the band, playing the dirge; next, the squad of
executioners; then a pine coffin, carried by four men; then the
prisoner himself, dressed in black trousers and white shirt, and
marching in the midst of four guards; then a number of men under
arrest for various offences, who had been brought out for the sake
of the moral effect it was hoped this spectacle might have upon
them. Last of all came a strong guard.
When the procession had come up to the place where the division
was formed, and had reached the open side of the hollow square,
it wheeled to the left and marched all along the inside of the
line from the right to the left, the band still playing the dirge.
The line was long and the step was slow, and it seemed that they
never would get to the other end. But at long last, after having
solemnly traversed the entire length of the three sides of the
hollow square, the procession came to the open side of it, opposite
to the point from which it had started. The escort wheeled off.
The prisoner was placed before his coffin, which was set down in
front of his grave. The squad of twelve or fourteen men who were to
shoot the unfortunate man took position some ten or twelve yards
from the grave, facing the prisoner, and a chaplain stepped out
from the group of division officers near by, and prayed with and
for the poor fellow a long, long time. Then the bugle sounded. The
prisoner, standing proudly erect before his grave, had his eyes
bandaged, and calmly folded his arms across his breast. The bugle
sounded again. The officer in charge of the squad stepped forward.
Then we heard the command, given as calmly as if on drill,--
"Ready!"
"Aim!"
Then, drowning out the third command, "Fire!" came a flash of
smoke and a loud report. The surgeons ran up to the spot. The
bands and drum-corps of the division struck up a quick-step as
the division faced to the right and marched past the grave, in
order that in the dead form of its occupant we might all see that
the doom of the deserter is death. It was a sad sight. As we
moved along, many a rough fellow, from whom you would hardly have
expected any sign of pity, pretending to be adjusting his cap so as
to screen his eyes from the glare of the westering sun, could be
seen furtively drawing his hand across his face and dashing away
the tears that could not be kept from trickling down the bronzed
and weather-beaten cheek. As we marched off the field, we could
not help being sensible of the harsh contrast between the lively
music to which our feet were keeping step, and the fearfully solemn
scene we had just witnessed. The transition from the "Dead March"
to the quick-step was quite too sudden. A deep solemnity pervaded
the ranks as we marched homeward across the open field and into
the sombre pine-woods beyond, thinking, as we went, of the poor
fellow's home somewhere among the pleasant hills of Maryland, and
of the sad and heavy hearts there would be there when it was known
that he had paid the extreme penalty of the law.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XIV.
A TALE OF A SQUIRREL AND THREE BLIND MICE.
"Andy, what is a shade-tail?"
We were encamped in an oak-forest on the eastern bank of
the Rappahannock, late in the fall of 1863. We had built no
winter-quarters yet, although the nights were growing rather
frosty, and had to content ourselves with our little "dog-tents,"
as we called our shelters, some dozen or so of which now
constituted our company row. I had just come in from a trip through
the woods in quest of water at a spring near an old deserted
log-house about a half-mile to the south of our camp, when,
throwing down my heavy canteens, I made the above interrogatory of
my chum.
Andy was lazily lying at full length on his back in the tent,
reclining on a soft bed of pine-branches, or "Virginia feathers,"
as we called them, with his hands clasped behind his head, lustily
singing--
"Tramp, tramp, tramp! the boys are marching!
Cheer up, comrades, they will come!
And beneath the starry flag
We shall breathe the air again--"
"What's that?" asked he, ceasing his song before finishing the
stanza, and rising up on his elbow.
"I asked whether you could tell me what a shade-tail is?"
"A shade-tail! Never heard of it before. Don't believe there is any
such thing. I know what a buck-tail is, though. There's one," said
he, pulling a fine specimen out from under his knapsack. "That just
came in the mail while you were gone. The old buck that chased the
flies with that brush for many a year was shot up among the Buffalo
mountains last winter, and my father bought his tail of the man who
killed him, and has sent it to me. It cost him just one dollar."
Buck-tails were in great demand with us in those days, and happy
indeed was the man who could secure so fine a specimen as Andy now
proudly held in his hand.
"But isn't it rather large?" inquired I. "And it's nearly all
white, and would make an excellent mark for some Johnny to shoot
at, eh?"
"Never you fear for that. 'Old Trusty' up there," said he,
pointing to his gun hanging along underneath the ridge-pole of the
tent,--"'Old Trusty' and I will take care of Johnny Reb."
"But, Andy," continued I, "you haven't answered my question yet.
What is a shade-tail?"
"A shade-tail," said he, meditatively,--"how should I know? I
know precious well what a _detail_ is, though; and I'm on one for
to-morrow. We go across the river to throw up breastworks."
"I forgot," said I, "that you have not studied Greek to any extent
yet. If you live to get home and go back to school again at the old
Academy, and begin to dig Greek roots in earnest, you will find
that a shade-tail is a--squirrel. For that is what the old Greeks
called the bonny bush-tail. Because, don't you see, when a squirrel
sits up on a tree with his tail turned up over his back, he makes a
shade for himself with his tail, and sits, as it were, under the
shadow of his own vine and fig-tree."
"Well," said Andy, "and what if he does? What's to hinder him?"
"Nothing," answered I, entering the tent and lying down beside him
on the pile of Virginia feathers; "only I saw one out here in the
woods as I came along, and I think I know where his nest is; and
if you and I can catch him, or, what would be better still, if we
can capture one of his young ones (if he has any), why we might
tame him and keep him for a pet. I've often thought it would be a
fine thing for us to have a pet of some kind or other. Over in the
Second Division, there is one regiment that has a pet crow, and
another has a kitten. They go with the men on all their marches,
and they say that the kitten has actually been wounded in battle,
and no doubt will be taken or sent up North some day and be a great
curiosity. Now why couldn't we catch and tame a shade-tail?"
"Yes," said Andy, becoming a little interested; "he could be taught
to perch on Pointer's buck-horns in camp, and could ride on your
drum on the march."
Pointer, you must know, was the tallest man in the company,
and therefore stood at the head of the line when the company
was formed. When we enlisted, he brought with him a pair of
deer-antlers as an appropriate symbol for a Buck-tail company,--no
doubt with the intention of making both ends meet. Now the idea of
having a live tame squirrel to perch on Pointer's buck-horns was a
capital one indeed.
But as the first thing to be done in cooking a hare is to catch the
hare, so we concluded that the first thing to be done in taming
a squirrel was to catch the squirrel. This gave us a world of
thought. It would not do to shoot him. We could not trap him. After
discussing the merits of smoking him out of his hole, we determined
at last to risk cutting down the tree in which he had his home, and
trying to catch him in a bag.
That afternoon, when we thought he would likely be at home taking a
nap, having provided ourselves with an axe, an old oat-bag, and a
lot of tent rope, we cautiously proceeded to the old beech-tree on
the outskirts of the camp, where our intended pet had his home.
"Now, you see, Andy," said I, pointing up to a crotch in the tree,
"up there is his front door; there he goes out and comes in. My
plan is this: one of us must climb the tree and tie the mouth of
the bag over that hole somehow, and come down. Then we will cut the
tree down, and when it falls, if old shade-tail is at home, like as
not he'll run into the bag; and then, if we can be quick enough, we
can tie a string around the bag, and there he is!"
Andy climbed the tree and tied the bag. After he had descended, we
set vigorously to work at cutting down the beech. It took us about
half an hour to make any serious inroad upon the tough trunk. But
by and by we had the satisfaction of seeing the tree apparently
shiver under our blows, and at last down it came with a crash.
We both ran toward the bag as fast as we could, ready to secure
our prize; but we found, alas! that squirrels sometimes have two
doors to their houses, and that while we had hoped to bag our
bush-tail at the front door, he had merrily skipped out the back
way. For scarcely had the tree reached the ground, when we both
beheld our intended pet leaping out of the branches and running up
a neighboring tree as fast as his legs could carry him.
"Plague take it!" said Andy, wiping the perspiration from his face,
"what shall we do now? I guess you'd better run to camp and get a
little salt to throw on his tail."
"Never mind," said I, "we'll get him yet, see if we don't. I see
him up there behind that old dry limb peeping out at us--there he
goes!"
Sure enough, there he did go, from tree-top to tree-top,
"lickerty-skoot," as Andy afterward expressed it, and we after him,
quite losing our heads, and shouting like Indians.
As ill luck would have it, our shade-tail was making straight for
the camp, on the outskirts of which he was discovered by one of the
men, who instantly gave the alarm--"A squirrel! a squirrel!" In a
moment all the boys in camp not on duty came running pell-mell,
Sergeant Kensill's black-and-tan terrier, Little Jim (of whom more
anon), leading the way. I suppose there must have been about a
hundred men together, and all yelling and shouting too, so that
the poor squirrel checked his headlong course high up on the dead
limb of a great old oak-tree. Then, forming a circle around the
tree, with "Little Jim" in the midst, the boys began to shout and
yell as when on the charge,--
"Yi-yi-yi! Yi-yi-yi!"
Whereat the poor squirrel was so terrified, that, leaping straight
up and out from his perch into open space, in sheer affright and
despair, down he came tumbling tail over head into the midst of the
circle, which rapidly closed about him as he neared the ground.
With yells and cheers that made the wood ring, a hundred hands were
stretched out as if to catch him as he came down. But Little Jim
beat them all. True to his terrier blood and training, he suddenly
leaped up like a shot, seized the squirrel by the nape of the neck,
gave him a few angry shakes, which ended his agony, and carried him
off triumphantly in his mouth to the tent of his owner, Sergeant
Kensill, of Company F.
That evening, as we sat in our tent eating our fried hard-tack,
Andy remarked, while sipping his coffee from his black tin cup,
that if buck-tails were as hard to catch as shade-tails, they were
well worth a dollar apiece any day; and that he believed a crow, or
one of those young pigs we found running wild in the woods when we
came to that camp, or something of that sort, would make a better
pet than a squirrel.
"Well," said I, "we caught those pigs, anyhow, didn't we? But
didn't they squeal! Fortunately they were so much like oysters that
they couldn't get away from us, and all found their way into our
frying-pans at last."
"I fail to apprehend your meaning," said Andy, with mock gravity,
setting down his black tin cup on the gum-blanket. "By what right
or authority, sir, do you presume to tell me that a pig is like an
oyster?"
"Why, don't you see? A pig is like an oyster _because he can't
climb a tree_! And that's the reason why we caught him."
"Bah!" exclaimed Andy; "that's a miserable joke, that is."
"Yet you must admit that it is a most happy circumstance that a pig
cannot climb a tree, or we should have missed more than one good
meal of fresh pork. Yet although we failed to make a pet of the
squirrel because he _could_ climb a tree, and of the pig because he
_could not_, we shall make a pet of something or other yet. Of that
I am certain."
It was some months later, and not until we were safely established
in winter-quarters, that we finally succeeded in our purpose of
having something to pet. I was over at Brigade headquarters one
day, visiting a friend who had charge of several supply-wagons.
Being present while he was engaged in overhauling his stores, I
found in the bottom of a large box, in which blankets had been
packed away, a whole family of mice. The father of the family
promptly made his escape; the mother was killed in the capture, and
one little fellow was so injured that he soon died; but the rest,
three in number, I took out unhurt. As I laid them in the palm of
my hand, they at once struck me as perfect little beauties. They
were very young and quite small, being no larger than the end of my
finger, with scarcely any fur on them, and their eyes quite shut.
Putting them into my pocket and covering them with some cotton
which my friend gave me, I started home with my prize. Stopping
at the surgeon's quarters on reaching camp, I begged a large
empty bottle (which I afterward found had been lately filled with
pulverized gum arabic), and somewhere secured an old tin can of
the same diameter as the bottle. Then I got a strong twine, went
down to my tent, and asked Andy to help me make a cage for my pets,
which with pride I took out of my pocket and set to crawling and
nosing about on the warm blankets on the bunk.
"What are you going to do with that bottle?" inquired Andy.
"Going to cut it in two with this string," said I, holding up my
piece of tw
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