CAPTAIN COLBURNE MARCHES AND FIGHTS WITH CREDIT.
The consideration of Mr. Colburne's letter induces me to take up once
more the thread of that young warrior's history. In the early part of
this month of May, 1863, we find him with his company, regiment and
brigade, encamped on the bank of the Red River, just outside of the once
flourishing little city of Alexandria, Louisiana. Under the protection
of a clapboard shanty, five feet broad and ten feet high, which three or
four of his men have voluntarily built for him, he is lying at full
length, smoking his short wooden pipe with a sense of luxury; for since
he left his tent at Brashear City, four weeks previous, this is the
first shelter which he has had to protect him from the rain, except one
or two ticklish mansions of rails, piled up by Henry of the
"obstropolous" laughter. The brigade encampment, a mushroom city which
has sprung up in a day, presenting every imaginable variety of temporary
cabin, reaches half a mile up and down the river, under the shade of a
long stretch of ashes and beeches. Hundreds of soldiers are bathing in
the reddish-ochre current, regardless of the possibility that the thick
woods of the opposite bank may conceal Rebel marksmen.
Colburne has eaten his dinner of fried pork and hardtack, has washed off
the grime of a three days' march, has finished his pipe, and is now
dropping gently into a soldier's child-like yet light slumber. He does
not mind the babble of voices about him, but if you should say "Fall
in!" he would be on his feet in an instant. He is a handsome model of a
warrior as he lies there, though rougher and plainer in dress than a
painter would be apt to make him. He is dark-red with sunburn; gaunt
with bad food, irregular food, fasting and severe marching; gaunt and
wiry, but all the hardier and stronger for it, like a wolf. His coarse
fatigue uniform is dirty with sleeping on the ground, and with marching
through mud and clouds of dust. It has been soaked over and over again
with rain or perspiration, and then powdered thickly with the
fine-grained, unctuous soil of Louisiana, until it is almost stiff
enough to stand alone. He cannot wash it, because it is the only suit he
has brought with him, and because moreover he never knows but that he
may be ordered to fall in and march at five minutes' notice.
Yet his body and even his mind are in the soundest and most enviable
health. His constant labors and hardships, and his occasional perils
have preserved him from that enfeebling melancholy which often infects
sensitive spirits upon whom has beaten a storm of trouble. Always in the
open air, never poisoned by the neighborhood of four walls and a roof,
he never catches cold, and rarely fails to have more appetite than food.
He has borne as well as the hardiest mason or farmer those terrific
forced marches which have brought the army from Camp Beasland to
Alexandria on a hot scent after the flying and scattering rebels. His
feet have been as sore as any man's; they have been blistered from toe
to heel, and swollen beyond their natural size; but he has never yet
laid down by the roadside nor crawled into an army wagon, saying that
he could march no further. He is loyal and manly in his endurance, and
is justly proud of it. In one of his letters he says, "I was fully
repaid for yesterday's stretch of thirty-five miles by overhearing one
of my Irishmen say, while washing his bloody feet, 'Be ----! but he's a
hardy man, the Captin!'--To which another responded, 'An' he had his
hands full to kape the byes' courage up; along in the afthernoon, he was
a jokin' an' scoldin' an' encouragin' for ten miles together. Be ----!
an' when _he_ gives out, it 'ull be for good rayson.'"
From Alexandria, Banks suddenly shifted his army to the junction of the
Red River with the Mississippi, and from thence by transport to a point
north of Port Hudson, thus cutting it off from communication with the
Confederacy. In this movement Weitzel took command of the Reserve
Brigade and covered the rear of the column. By night it made prodigious
marches, and by day lay in threatening line of battle. The Rebel
Cavalry, timid and puzzled, followed at a safe distance without
attacking. Now came the delicious sail from Simmsport to Bayou Sara,
during which Colburne could lounge at ease on the deck with a sense of
luxury in the mere consciousness that he was not marching, and repose
his mind, his eyes, his very muscles, by gazing on the fresh green
bluffs which faced each other across the river. To a native of hilly New
England, who had passed above a year on the flats of Louisiana, it was
delightful to look once more upon a rolling country.
It was through an atmosphere of scalding heat and stifling dust that the
brigade marched up the bluffs of Bayou Sara and over the rounded
eminences which stretched on to Port Hudson. The perspiration which
drenched the ragged uniforms and the pulverous soil which powdered them
rapidly mixed into a muddy plaster; and the same plaster grimed the
men's faces out of almost all semblance to humanity, except where the
dust clung dry and gray to hair, beard, eyebrows and eyelashes. So
dense was the distressing cloud that it was impossible at times to see
the length of a company. It seemed as if the men would go rabid with
thirst, and drive the officers mad with their pleadings to leave the
ranks for water, a privilege not allowable to any great extent in an
enemy's country. A lovely crystal streamlet, running knee-deep over
clean yellow sand, a charming contrast to black or brown bayous with
muddy and treacherous banks, was forded by the feverish ranks with
shouts and laughter of child-like enjoyment. But it was through volumes
of burning yet lazy dust, soiling and darkening the glory of sunset,
that the brigade reached its appointed bivouac in a large clearing, only
two miles from the rebel stronghold, though hidden from it by a dense
forest of oaks, beeches and magnolias.
It is too early to tell, it is even too early to know, the whole truth
concerning the siege of Port Hudson. To an honest man, anxious that the
world shall not be humbugged, it is a mournful reflection that perhaps
the whole truth never will be known to any one who will dare or care to
tell it. We gained a victory there; we took an important step towards
the end of the Rebellion; but at what cost, through what means, and by
whose merit? It was a capital idea, whosesoever it was, to clean out
Taylor's Texans and Louisianians from the Teche country before we
undertook the siege of Gardner's Arkansians, Alabamians, and
Mississippians at Port Hudson. But for somebody's blunder at that
well-named locality, Irish Bend, the plan would have succeeded better
than it did, and Taylor would not have been able to reorganize, take
Brashear City, threaten New Orleans, and come near driving Banks from
his main enterprise. As it was we opened the siege with fair prospects
of success, and no disturbing force in the rear. The garrison, lately
fifteen or twenty thousand strong, had been reduced to six thousand, in
order to reinforce Vicksburg; and Joe Johnston had already directed
Gardner to destroy his fortifications and transfer all his men to the
great scene of contest on the central Mississippi. Banks arrived from
Simmsport just in time to prevent the execution of this order. A smart
skirmish was fought, in which we lost more men than the enemy, but
forced Gardner to retire within his works, and accept the eventualities
of an investment.
At five o'clock on the morning of the 27th of May, Colburne was awakened
by an order to fall in. Whether it signified an advance on our part, or
a sally by the enemy, he did not know nor ask, but with a soldier's
indifference proceeded to form his company, and, that done, ate his
breakfast of raw pork and hard biscuit. He would have been glad to have
Henry boil him a cup of coffee; but that idle freedman was "having a
good time," probably sleeping, in some unknown refuge. For two hours the
ranks sat on the ground, musket in hand; then Colburne saw the foremost
line, a quarter of a mile in front, advance into the forest. One of
Weitzel's aids now dashed up to Carter, and immediately his
staff-officers galloped away to the different commanders of regiments.
An admonishing murmur of "Fall in, men!"--"Attention, men!" from the
captains ran along the line of the Tenth, and the soldiers rose in their
places to meet the grand, the awful possibility of battle. It was a long
row of stern faces, bronzed with sunburn, sallow in many cases with
malaria, grave with the serious emotions of the hour, but hardened by
the habit of danger, and set as firm as flints toward the enemy. The old
innocence of the peaceable New England farmer and mechanic had
disappeared from these war-seared visages, and had been succeeded by an
expression of hardened combativeness, not a little brutal, much like the
look of a lazy bull-dog. Colburne smiled with pleasure and pride as he
glanced along the line of his company, and noted this change in its
physiognomy. For the purpose for which they were drawn up there they
were better men than when he first knew them, and as good men as the sun
ever shone upon.
At last the Lieutenant-Colonel's voice rang out, "Battalion, forward.
Guide right. March!"
To keep the ranks closed and aligned in any tolerable fighting shape
while struggling through that mile of tangled forest and broken ground,
was a task of terrible difficulty. Plunging through thickets, leaping
over fallen trees, a continuous foliage overhead, and the fallen leaves
of many seasons under foot, the air full of the damp, mouldering smell
of virgin forest, the brigade moved forward with no sound but that of
its own tramplings. It is peculiar of the American attack that it is
almost always made in line, and always without music. The men expected
to meet the enemy at every hillock, but they advanced rapidly, and
laughed at each other's slippings and tumbles. Every body was breathless
with climbing over obstacles or running around them. The officers were
beginning to swear at the broken ranks and unsteady pace. The
Lieutenant-Colonel, perceiving that the regiment was diverging from its
comrades, and fearing the consequences of a gap in case the enemy should
suddenly open fire, rode repeatedly up and down the line, yelling,
"Guide right! Close up to the right!" Suddenly, to the amazement of
every one, the brigade came upon bivouacs of Union regiments quietly
engaged in distributing rations and preparing breakfast.
"What are you doing up here?" asked a Major of Colburne.
"We are going to attack. Don't you take part in it?"
"I suppose so. I don't know. We have received no orders."
Through this scene of tardiness, the result perhaps of one of those
blunders which are known in military as well as in all other human
operations, Weitzel's division steadily advanced, much wondering if it
was to storm Port Hudson alone. The ground soon proved so difficult that
the Tenth, unable to move in line of battle, filed into a faintly marked
forest road and pushed forward by the flank in the ordinary column of
march. The battle had already commenced, although Colburne could see
nothing of it, and could hear nothing but a dull _pum-pum-pum_ of
cannon. He passed rude rifle-pits made of earth and large branches,
which had been carried only a few minutes previous by the confused rush
of the leading brigade. Away to the right, but not near enough to be
heard above the roar of artillery, there was a wild, scattering musketry
of broken lines, fighting and scrambling along as they best could over
thicketed knolls, and through rugged gullies, on the track of the
retiring Alabamians and Arkansans. It was the blindest and most
perplexing forest labyrinth conceivable; it was impossible to tell
whither you were going, or whether you would stumble on friends or
enemies; the regiments were split into little squads from which all
order had disappeared, but which nevertheless advanced.
The Tenth was still marching through the woods by the flank, unable to
see either fortifications or enemy, when it came under the fire of
artillery, and encountered the retiring stream of wounded. At this
moment, and for two hours afterward, the uproar of heavy guns, bursting
shells, falling trees and flying splinters was astonishing, stunning,
horrible, doubled as it was by the sonorous echoes of the forest.
Magnolias, oaks and beeches eighteen inches or two feet in diameter,
were cut asunder with a deafening scream of shot and of splitting
fibres, the tops falling after a pause of majestic deliberation, not
sidewise, but stem downwards, like a descending parachute, and striking
the earth with a dull shuddering thunder. They seemed to give up their
life with a roar of animate anguish, as if they were savage beasts, or
as if they were inhabited by Afreets and Demons.
The unusually horrible clamor and the many-sided nature of the danger
had an evident effect on the soldiers, hardened as they were to scenes
of ordinary battle. Grim faces turned in every direction with hasty
stares of alarm, looking aloft and on every side, as well as to the
front, for destruction. Pallid stragglers who had dropped out of the
leading brigade drifted by the Tenth, dodging from trunk to trunk in an
instinctive search for cover, although it was visible that the forest
was no protection, but rather an additional peril. Every regiment has
its two or three cowards, or perhaps its half-dozen, weakly-nerved
creatures, whom nothing can make fight, and who never do fight. One
abject hound, a corporal with his disgraced stripes upon his arm, came
by with a ghastly backward glare of horror, his face colorless, his eyes
projecting, and his chin shaking. Colburne cursed him for a poltroon,
struck him with the flat of his sabre, and dragged him into the ranks of
his own regiment; but the miserable creature was too thoroughly unmanned
by the great horror of death to be moved to any show of resentment or
even of courage by the indignity; he only gave an idiotic stare with
outstretched neck toward the front, then turned with a nervous jerk,
like that of a scared beast, and rushed rearward. Further on, six men
were standing in single file behind a large beech, holding each other by
the shoulders, when with a stunning crash the entire top of the tree
flew off and came down among them butt foremost, sending out a cloud of
dust and splinters. Colburne smiled grimly to see the paralyzed terror
of their upward stare, and the frantic flight which barely saved them
from being crushed jelly. A man who keeps the ranks hates a skulker, and
wishes that he may be killed, the same as any other enemy.
"But in truth," says the Captain, in one of his letters, "the sights and
sounds of this battle-reaped forest were enough to shake the firmest
nerves. Never before had I been so tried as I was during that hour in
this wilderness of death. It was not the slaughter which unmanned me,
for our regiment did not lose very heavily; it was the stupendous clamor
of the cannonade and of the crashing trees which seemed to overwhelm me
by its mere physical power; and it made me unable to bear spectacles
which I had witnessed in other engagements with perfect composure. When
one of our men was borne by me with half his foot torn off by a round
shot, the splintered bones projecting clean and white from the ragged
raw flesh, I grew so sick that perhaps I might have fainted if a brother
officer had not given me a sip of whiskey from his canteen. It was the
only occasion in my fighting experience when I have had to resort to
that support. I had scarcely recovered myself when I saw a broad flow of
blood stream down the face of a color-corporal who stood within
arm's-length of me. I thought he was surely a dead man; but it was only
one of the wonderful escapes of battle. The bullet had skirted his cap
where the fore-piece joins the cloth, forcing the edge of the leather
through the skin, and making a clean cut to the bone from temple to
temple. He went to the rear blinded and with a smart headache, but not
seriously injured. That we were not slaughtered by the wholesale is
wonderful, for we were closed up in a compact mass, and the shot came
with stunning rapidity. A shell burst in the centre of my company,
tearing one man's heel to the bone, but doing no other damage. The
wounded man, a good soldier though as quiet and gentle as a bashful
girl, touched his hat to me, showed his bleeding foot, and asked leave
to go to the rear, which I of course granted. While he was speaking,
another shell burst about six feet from the first, doing no harm at all,
although so near to Van Zandt as to dazzle and deafen him."
Presently a section of Bainbridge's regular battery came up, winding
slowly through the forest, the guns thumping over roots and fallen
limbs, the men sitting superbly erect on their horses, and the
color-sergeant holding his battle-flag as proudly as a knight-errant
ever bore his pennon. In a minute the two brass Napoleons opened with a
sonorous _spang_, which drew a spontaneous cheer from the delighted
infantry. The edge of the wood was now reached, and Colburne could see
the enemy's position. In front of him lay a broad and curving valley,
irregular in surface, and seamed in some places by rugged gorges, the
whole made more difficult of passage by a multitude of felled trees, the
leafless trunks and branches of which were tangled into an inextricable
_chevaux de frise_. On the other side of this valley rose a bluff or
table-land, partially covered with forest, but showing on its cleared
spaces the tents and cabins of the Rebel encampments. Along the edge of
the bluff, following its sinuosities, and at this distance looking like
mere natural banks of yellow earth, ran the fortifications of Port
Hudson. Colburne could see Paine's brigade of Weitzel's division
descending into the valley, forcing its bloody way through a roaring
cannonade and a continuous screech of musketry.
An order came to the commander of the Tenth to deploy two companies as
skirmishers in the hollow in front of Bainbridge, and push to the left
with the remainder of the regiment, throwing out other skirmishers and
silencing the Rebel artillery. One of the two detached companies was
Colburne's, and he took command of both as senior officer. At the moment
that he filed his men out of the line a murmur ran through the regiment
that the Lieutenant-Colonel was killed or badly wounded. Then came an
inquiry as to the whereabouts of the Major.
"By Jove! it wouldn't be a dangerous job to hunt for him," chuckled Van
Zandt.
"Why? Where is he?" asked Colburne.
"I don't believe, by Jove! that I could say within a mile or two. I only
know, by Jove! that he is _non est inventus_. I saw him a quarter of an
hour ago charging for the rear with his usual impetuosity. I'll bet my
everlasting salvation that he's in the safest spot within ten miles of
this d----d unhealthy neighborhood."
The senior captain took command of the regiment, and led it to the left
on a line parallel with the fortifications. Colburne descended with his
little detachment, numbering about eighty muskets, into that Valley of
the Shadow of Death, climbing over or creeping under the fallen trunks
of the tangled labyrinth, and making straight for the bluff on which
thundered and smoked the rebel stronghold. As his men advanced they
deployed, spreading outwards like the diverging blades of a fan until
they covered a front of nearly a quarter of a mile. Every stump, every
prostrate trunk, every knoll and gulley was a temporary breastwork, from
behind which they poured a slow but fatal fire upon the rebel gunners,
who could be plainly seen upon the hostile parapet working their pieces.
The officers and sergeants moved up and down the line, each behind his
own platoon or section, steadily urging it forward.
"Move on, men. Move on, men," Colburne repeated. "Don't expose
yourselves. Use the covers; use the stumps. But keep moving on. Don't
take root. Don't stop till we reach the ditch."
In spite of their intelligent prudence the men were falling under the
incessant flight of bullets. A loud scream from a thicket a little to
Colburne's right attracted his attention.
"Who is that?" he called.
"It is Allen!" replied a sergeant. "He is shot through the body. Shall I
send him to the rear?"
"Not now, wait till we are relieved. Prop him up and leave him in the
shade."
He had in his mind this passage of the Army Regulations: "Soldiers must
not be permitted to leave the ranks to strip or rob the dead, nor even
to assist the wounded, unless by express permission, which is only to be
given after the action is decided. The highest interest and most
pressing duty is to win the victory, by which only can a proper care of
the wounded be ensured."
Turning to a soldier who had mounted a log and stood up at the full
height of his six feet to survey the fortifications, Colburne shouted,
"Jump down, you fool. You will get yourself hit for nothing."
"Captain, I can't see a chance for a shot," replied the fellow
deliberately.
"Get down!" reiterated Colburne; but the man had waited too long
already. Throwing up both hands he fell backward with an incoherent
gurgle, pierced through the lungs by a rifle-ball. Then a little Irish
soldier burst out swearing, and hastily pulled his trousers to glare at
a bullet-hole through the calf of his leg, with a comical expression of
mingled surprise, alarm and wrath. And so it went on: every few minutes
there was an oath of rage or a shriek of pain; and each outcry marked
the loss of a man. But all the while the line of skirmishers advanced.
The sickishness which troubled Colburne in the cannon-smitten forest had
gone, and was succeeded by the fierce excitement of close battle, where
the combatants grow angry and savage at sight of each other's faces. He
was throbbing with elation and confidence, for he had cleaned off the
gunners from the two pieces in his front. He felt as if he could take
Port Hudson with his detachment alone. The contest was raging in a
clamorous rattle of musketry on the right, where Paine's brigade, and
four regiments of the Reserve Brigade, all broken into detachments by
gullies, hillocks, thickets and fallen trees, were struggling to turn
and force the fortifications. On his left other companies of the Tenth
were slowly moving forward, deployed and firing as skirmishers. In his
front the Rebel musketry gradually slackened, and only now and then
could he see a broad-brimmed hat show above the earth-works and hear the
hoarse whistle of a Minie-ball as it passed him. The garrison on this
side was clearly both few in number and disheartened. It seemed to him
likely, yes even certain, that Port Hudson would be carried by storm
that morning. At the same time, half mad as he was with the glorious
intoxication of successful battle, he knew that it would be utter folly
to push his unsupported detachment into the works, and that such a
movement would probably end in slaughter or capture. Fifteen or twenty,
he did not know precisely how many, of his soldiers had been hit, and
the survivors were getting short of cartridges.
"Steady, men!" he shouted. "Halt! Take cover and hold your position.
Don't waste your powder. Fire slow and aim sure."
The orders were echoed from man to man along the extended, straggling
line, and each one disappeared behind the nearest thicket, stump or
fallen tree. Colburne had already sent three corporals to the regiment
to recount his success and beg for more men; but neither had the
messengers reappeared nor reinforcements arrived to support his proposed
assault.
"Those fellows must have got themselves shot," he said to Van Zandt.
"I'll go myself. Keep the line where it is, and save the cartridges."
Taking a single soldier with him, he hurried rearward by the clearest
course that he could find through the prostrate forest, without minding
the few bullets that whizzed by him. Suddenly he halted, powerless, as
if struck by paralysis, conscious of a general nervous shock, and a
sharp pain in his left arm. His first impulse,--a very hurried
impulse,--was to take the arm with his right hand and twist it to see if
the bone was broken. Next he looked about him for some shelter from the
scorching and crazing sunshine. He espied a green bush, and almost
immediately lost sight of it, for the shock made him faint although the
pain was but momentary.
"Are you hurt, Captain?" asked the soldier.
"Take me to that bush," said Colburne, pointing--for he knew where the
cover was, although he could not see it.
The soldier put an arm round his waist, led him to the bush, and laid
him down.
"Shall I go for help, Captain?"
"No. Don't weaken the company. All right. No bones broken. Go on in a
minute."
The man tied his handkerchief about the ragged and bloody hole in the
coat-sleeve; then sat down and reloaded his musket, occasionally casting
a glance at the pale face of the Captain. In two or three minutes
Colburne's color came back, and he felt as well as ever. He rose
carefully to his feet, looked about him as if to see where he was, and
again set off for the regiment, followed by his silent companion. The
bullets still whizzed about them, but did no harm. After a slow walk of
ten minutes, during which. Colburne once stopped to sling his arm in a
handkerchief, he emerged from a winding gully to find himself within a
few yards of Bainbridge's battery. Behind the guns was a colonel calmly
sitting his horse and watching the battle.
"What is the matter?" asked the Colonel.
"A flesh wound," said Colburne. "Colonel, there is a noble chance ahead
of you. Do you see that angle? My men are at the base of it, and some of
them in the ditch. They have driven the artillerymen from the guns, and
forced the infantry to lie low. For God's sake send in your regiment. We
can certainly carry the place."
"The entire brigade that I command is engaged," replied the Colonel.
"Don't you see them on the right of your position?"
"Is there no other force about here?" asked Colburne, sitting down as he
felt the dizziness coming over him again.
"None that I know of. This is such an infernal country for movements
that we are all dislocated. Nobody knows where anything is.--But you had
better go to the rear, Captain. You look used up."
Colburne was so tired, so weak with the loss of blood, so worn out by
the heat of the sun, and the excitement of fighting that he could not
help feeling discouraged at the thought of struggling back to the
position of his company. He stretched himself under a tree to rest, and
in ten minutes was fast asleep. When he awoke--he never knew how long
afterwards--he could not at first tell what he remembered from what he
had dreamed, and only satisfied himself that he had been hit by looking
at his bloody and bandaged arm. An artilleryman brought him to his full
consciousness by shouting excitedly, "There, by God! they are trying a
charge. The infantry are trying a charge."
Colburne rose up, saw a regiment struggling across the valley, and heard
its long-drawn charging yell.
"I must go back," he exclaimed. "My men ought to go in and support those
fellows." Turning to the soldier who attended him he added, "Run! Tell
Van Zandt to forward."
The soldier ran, and Colburne after him. But he had not gone twenty
paces before he fell straight forward on his face, without a word, and
lay perfectly still.