Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected
without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have
been retained as printed.
Words printed in italics are marked with underlines: _italics_.
The Song of the Rappahannock
_Sketches of the Civil War_
By
Ira Seymour Dodd
New York
Dodd, Mead and Company
1898
_Copyright, 1897, 1898,_
BY THE S. S. MCCLURE COMPANY.
_Copyright, 1898,_
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
TO MY COMRADES
_The Living and the Dead_
THESE MEMORIES OF OUR DAYS OF WARFARE
ARE AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
Preface
What is herein written was begun and for the most part completed before
the Spanish War Cloud was more than a distant and doubtful threat.
But out of its passing storm a rainbow arch has risen, fairer and
sweeter than even the sunshine of victory to the eyes of those who
stood in opposing ranks as foemen thirty years ago. We learned, not
hatred, but profound respect for each other on those grimly fought
fields of Civil Strife. During these years of retrospect and reflection
the respect has been ripening into a warmer feeling; and now our hearts
swell with deep and solemn thankfulness for the open evidence of our
perfect welding into One Mighty Nation under whose Old Flag men of the
South stand joined with men of the North in invincible brotherhood.
Henceforth memories of that older crisis can no longer be dividing or
exclusive possessions, but each fragment of its story becomes part of
the common heritage of American manhood.
To the kindness of the Editors of "McClure's Magazine," in which
several of the sketches composing this little book first appeared, the
author desires to express his obligations.
I. S. D.
RIVERDALE ON THE HUDSON
October 1, 1898.
Contents
Page
THE SONG OF THE RAPPAHANNOCK 1
THE MAKING OF A REGIMENT 39
THE HOUSEHOLD OF THE HUNDRED THOUSAND 99
A LITTLE BATTLE 143
ONE YOUNG SOLDIER 165
SACRIFICE 202
The Song of the Rappahannock
The Song has been silent for more than thirty years. In another thirty
years it will cease to be a living memory save to a handful of very old
men. But those who once heard can never forget its weird, fantastic,
sinister tones. Sometimes it was a fearful yet persuasive whisper
addressed to you personally; again it would burst in uncontrolled
passion into a chorus of awful and discordant screams mingled with
thunderous and reverberating roar. With marvellous range of tone and
expression it was, however, always one Song with one fateful burden.
I was a young soldier of the Army of the Potomac in those days; one of
the several thousand who wore the white cross of the Second Division of
the Sixth Army Corps, and the Song in all its variations became a
familiar sound.
For instance, once when we were occupying the hills north of the
Rappahannock, nearly half the regiment were on the sick list by reason
of the bad water which supplied our camp. Down by the river bank,
perhaps a mile and a half away was a spring of good clear water. "Joe"
and myself, both non-commissioned officers, thought we must at all
hazards keep fit for duty, and on alternate mornings one of us would
make the trip to fill our canteens. Wide and open fields lay between us
and the spring and I think I never crossed that open space without
hearing the Song. Preceding a distant detonation from beyond the river
a faint quavering whistle would come, growing louder as with apparently
increasing hurry it drew near. It seemed to speak in fascinating,
insinuating tone of some very special message to you alone; then
suddenly, with venomous buzz in your very ear while your heart stood
still it would speed by and die away again in the farther distance. It
was the voice of a minié bullet from the rifle of some sharpshooter on
the Confederate picket line. But the range was long, the risk slight,
as such things went, and not to be compared, so Joe and I thought, to
the very real danger of the camp water.
Toward evening one of our field batteries would gallop down to the
river bank and open fire upon those troublesome sharpshooters; then the
heavy guns on the other side would make reply and a new variation of
the Song would be heard--a very Wagnerian orchestral effect: the quick
crack of the field guns, the more distant boom of the siege cannon, the
scream of shells rushing hither and thither through the evening air,
always with that rising and falling cadence, that mournful moan, that
peculiar hurrying, threatening, almost speaking quaver which, once
heard goes with you evermore, so that years afterwards you hear it in
your dreams.
Those big shells from the enemy's guns three miles away made regular
evening visits to our camp. They seldom did any real harm. When we
first occupied the position, a few tents were pitched too near the
crest of the hill within sight of the gunners beyond; but after one of
those tents had been torn to rags and the head of a poor fellow
standing near had been neatly shorn off, everything came down behind
the slope out of view; and though we were always favoured with our
vesper serenade and close calls were not uncommon, no one else, I
think, was seriously hurt.
The evening performance had, if not an appreciative, certainly a grimly
critical audience. A veteran in the adjoining regiment calmly proceeds
with the all-important business of boiling his coffee until a shell
explodes uncomfortably close. Then you hear his disgusted growl: "The
damned rascals! They spoil my supper every night!" and the answering
jeer of his comrades: "Jim, did you hear what that one said? It said,
'Which 'un, which 'un, which 'un, _you_!'"
The ring of the bursting shells was not the least impressive of the
notes of the Song. It is hard to describe; but strange as it may seem
to say so it was certainly music, often with absolutely sweet tones
like the sudden stroke of a bell, followed by the singing hum, in
curious harmony of the rushing of jagged iron fragments through the
air. One of the friends of my boyhood was a musical genius, a pianist
of no mean power who had studied his profession in Germany. The
democratic makeup of our army is illustrated by the fact that, in the
early sixties this man enlisted as a private soldier. And he used to
amuse himself while lying in the trenches by noting the varying keys of
the music of moaning and bursting shells.
But the Song was not always harmless or ineffectual. No one knows
precisely how many men suffered wounds and death beside the banks of
the pretty, placid Rappahannock. It is within bounds to put the number
at fifty thousand. The war history of that region is peculiar. It is a
tale of incessant and resultless strife, seldom without at least the
intermittent fire of opposing picket lines. Three of the greatest, most
deadly, yet most indecisive battles of the war were fought there.
The veil of time has begun to fall over the actual agonies of the
nation while the fury of that great war tempest lingered; but some of
us remember how real it was, and the Song of the Rappahannock seems its
very voice. It was Delphic in the ambiguity of its utterance. Neither
the pæan of victory nor the wail of the conquered, it was the breath of
the Titanic struggle with its bitter pain, its dark suspense, its grim
and terrible stress and strain.
In early May, that sweet season when in Virginia springtime is just
passing into summer, we came to the banks of the Rappahannock, ready to
take our destined share in the battle of Chancellorsville. The river
was no stranger: we had formed its intimate acquaintance in December
during the bloody days of Fredericksburg; and now, separated from the
main body of the army which had crossed about fifteen miles above, we
found ourselves once more facing the old battle-ground with its
familiar sleepy town, its wide fields and amphitheatre of gentle hills
spread out in portentous panorama before us. Peace seemed to have
settled down upon the scene, blotting out all memory of strife; yet we
knew the semblance was but a mocking phantasm, for our comrades of the
First Corps stirred up a very hornet's nest of enemies and had a sharp
brush before they could lay their pontoon bridge. And though with this
exception the Song was ominously silent in our front, we could hear its
distant voice from up the river.
On one day it rose into an angry roar, and immediately afterward the
First Corps received marching orders, went filing past us along the
river road toward the sound of the Song, and the Sixth was left alone.
On Saturday night our time came. It was a lovely evening full of the
breath of spring-time; but our hearts were very solemn as, in the
darkness and in sternly enforced silence our lines crept across the
pontoon bridge out into the fields full of the ghosts of December's
awful sacrifices and finally, with rifles loaded and with battle
provision of sixty rounds of cartridge to every man, we halted before
the spectral outlines of the Fredericksburg hills.
Then in low tones the order passed from company to company: "Lie down
where you are. Let every man keep his gun by his side. Do not take off
any of your equipments; do not even loosen your belts. Keep silence!"
A battery moves like a group of shadows out a little way to the front;
we can hear the subdued orders of the officers; the unlimbering and
loading of the guns; and then all is quiet along the Rappahannock.
Beyond the guns we know there are pickets whose duty it is to wake and
watch; but soon all along the inner lines the May moon shines
peacefully on rows of sleeping men. By to-morrow night many of them
will lie very quiet in another and a deeper sleep.
Dawn comes soon in May, and the first gray light brought the Song. With
hum and buzz like that of ghostly insects the bullets came stealing
over from the enemy's skirmish line. It was a grim awakening and its
first impression inexpressibly mournful. Each singing bullet seemed to
chant a dirge--and the morning air held a very graveyard chill.
Swearing is a common dialect with soldiers, but not an oath was heard
as that morning Song began. Everyone was solemn; we were thinking of
home and of loved ones, and there was a great despairing sense of
separation in our hearts. I think almost any man who has seen war would
tell the same story and count those moments of the skirmish firing in
the gray dawn on the brink of battle among the most gloomy of his life.
But hark! The batteries are opening fire, the Song is bursting into
fuller voice; and up and down the line orders ring out sharply,
"Attention, battalion!" There is movement now, it brings life and
dispels the gloom. There is marching and countermarching for better
position and soon the line is placed in a sunken road whose banks
protect us against the enemy's shot and shell, while just behind, on
slightly higher ground our own batteries fire over our heads. And so
the morning passes; the Song, never silent sometimes swells out
clamorously; and anon it sinks to intermittent growls.
Suddenly, about noontime, there is a restless movement along the line;
staff officers are galloping furiously hither and thither; something is
in the air. We are ordered to unsling our knapsacks and pile them
together. Meantime our batteries open a furious fire. The men say to
each other, "The bulldogs are barking, and our turn is coming!" And as
the Song swells with their baying, by quick orders our line is formed
for the charge. We must storm those hills flaming with the fire of the
Confederate cannons. A few breathless moments that seem like hours, and
suddenly our batteries cease fire, the expected order is given, and the
line surges forward.
I make no attempt to tell how the Sixth Corps on that Sunday morning
won the Fredericksburg heights, storming successfully though with
fearful loss, the very same works from which the army had been beaten
back in December.
I am not a military critic, I can tell only what one very young and
obscure soldier saw and felt.
I was a serjeant, and on that day my especial duty was that of "left
general guide." The regiment was comparatively new and raw, and in our
rush across the rough ploughed fields under the awful fire of the
enemy's batteries we were thrown into some confusion. With great
presence of mind our lieutenant-colonel halted us, ordered the men to
lie down, and then called for "guides on a line." That meant that I and
the two other guides, one on the right and one in the centre, were to
stand up and take position by which the regiment could align itself. I
sprang to my feet, soon caught the line from the others, and there we
stood while the regiment crawled up and "dressed" by us. It was a
trying situation; and the Song! it was deafening. The air was full of
wild shrieks of grape and shrapnel; the ringing shells were bursting
all about with maddening and stunning detonations. I remember, as I
stood there for those few moments I seemed indeed to have lost all
sense of fear, and yet I wondered whether I was actually myself and
whether my head was really on or off my shoulders.
Then, as we raced forward once more and neared the enemy's position, I
remember that at regular intervals bullets would strike close to my
feet and throw stinging little showers of gravel in my face. I thought
little of it at the time, but among the prisoners captured were some
sharpshooters who had been posted off at our left; and when I heard how
those fellows had bragged about the number of shots they had fired at
individual officers in our regiment, then I understood. My place as
guide had brought me into view, and one of those skirmishers had tried
to pick me off but had each time made a little too much allowance for
my running.
When we neared the face of the hill against which our charge was
directed the storm of fire first went harmlessly over our heads, then
it ceased; and stumbling through a thicket of brush and felled trees,
we came suddenly upon a great, frowning earthwork. How its yellow sides
loomed up! And just over its edge the muzzles of two great brass guns
gaped at us; but everything within was silent as death. The same
thought flashed through every mind. "They are lying low for us, and
presently we shall look into the barrels of a row of rifles and receive
their deadly volley at this short range!" For an instant the regiment
as one man recoiled and faltered. Then a serjeant from one of the
centre companies stepped forth. I can see him now, a handsome,
fair-haired young fellow. With cool and quiet voice he called, "Boys,
let's see what's inside of this thing!" and straight up the slope of
the yellow mound he started and the regiment followed with a cheer. We
found a deserted fort. It had been outflanked by the regiment on our
right. They received from another side the volley which we narrowly
missed and it laid low more than a hundred of their men. Away to our
right, all along the line the charge had been successful and the
heights of Fredericksburg were won.
Is there any intoxication like the joy of victory? For the moment men
forget everything else: fatigue, thirst, wounds, dead and suffering
comrades, the parting shots of fleeing foe. But it is a short-lived
joy; at least ours was, for the victory had been costly and there were
sad gaps in the ranks of all the regiments as we reformed on the crest
of the hills. Moreover, our work was but begun. The Sixth Corps had
been ordered to join Hooker by cutting a road for itself through Lee's
army.
Regaining our knapsacks, we were speedily on the march, the First
Division now in the advance, as ours, the Second, had been in the
morning. Ghastly sights met us as we passed through the old town where
the Light Division had charged; almost every house showed marks of shot
or shell, and here and there on the sidewalks or at street corners, in
the hot sunshine lay the dead bodies of poor heroes whose last battle
was fought. I remember how almost always some comrade's friendly hand
had pulled the corner of a blanket over their swollen and blackening
faces. On we went leaving the town behind, marching along a well-made
high-road into a country of small fields set in the midst of dense and
scrubby pine woods and the afternoon was wearing away when suddenly,
from the direction in which we were going, out of those mysterious
thickets of pine came the Song.
This time there was no prelude of cracking rifles and whispering
bullets; but, as though some mighty hand smote at once all the bass
notes of a great organ the cannonade roared out, swelling louder and
louder all along our front. Soon we reached an open field where an
ammunition train was parked and here we were halted to rest and
replenish our cartridge boxes while the fierce roar of the Song still
thundered until, as we were thus busied, there was a hush--one of those
instant and ominous silences which smite the heart more loudly than any
sound: the Song did not die away, it stopped. And then, after a
breathless moment a new movement of the symphony began. Like the
pattering roar of rain after thunder, or like the long roll from a
hundred tenor drums it swept along and swelled out until the woods
responsive seemed to vibrate to its rattle. It was the file-fire of the
line of battle. We could see nothing, not even the smoke through the
dense forest; we could only listen. "Hark!" said an old soldier
standing near me. "D' ye hear that? Bullets this time: Them's the
little things that kills!"
But swiftly now we are on the march again, pressing toward the sound of
the Song. And soon the wounded begin to appear, making their way past
us toward the rear by the side paths of the road on which we march;
every moment their numbers increase until we find ourselves marching
between two ghastly lines of wounded men: only a detachment from the
growing company of the victims of the Song, only those who can walk.
But there were gruesome sights in that procession of pain. Here a man
holding up his hand across which a bullet has ploughed a bloody track;
there one with a ragged hole through his cheek; then an officer leaning
on two other men, both wounded, the ashy hue of death on his face and
the blood streaming from his breast. This is no picture of the
imagination. I am telling things that I saw, things that burned
themselves into my memory; and I remember that every one of those
wounded men whether his hurt were great or small, was pale as death and
wore a fixed expression, not of terror but of stony despair. They all
walked slowly and wearily and if you asked one of them, "How is the
battle going?" you got the invariable answer, "Our regiment is all cut
to pieces;" and they said it in a tone of tired reproach as though you
ought to know and had insulted them by asking, or else with an
inflection which meant, "Presently you will catch it yourselves." It
was a procession of spectres and cold cheer it furnished for us,
hurrying forward toward the ever-nearing and now frightful tones of the
Song; yet I think the emotion uppermost in our minds was not precisely
fear but a sort of awful curiosity: we burned to see as well as hear
the dreadful mystery beyond the pines; the Song seemed to come from a
deadly but luring siren whose call we must obey.
But night was now coming fast and all the ways began to darken; and
just when we expected to emerge into the heart of battle, as though an
invisible conductor had suddenly raised his wand, as abruptly as it
began the Song ceased and there was a great silence. We had heard
though we had not seen the fight at Salem Church, a bitterly contested
but drawn battle in which many hundreds of brave men fell. The Sixth
Corps had begun to feel the weight of Lee's army.
The night which followed was one of those sweet nights of early summer
when earth seems not to sleep, but to unloosen her bands and lie down
to play with her merry brood of new-born children. Yet there was
strange mystery abroad: everywhere a weird sound--was it of sorrow or
of foreboding, nature's wail or nature's warning? It seemed to mingle
both as the May moon shone down on those who died to-day and those who
were to die to-morrow. I have often heard the spirit-like cry of the
whippoorwill, but never as I heard it that night. It came from every
tree and bush, from every side and all around until it pervaded all the
air. Perhaps I thought more of it because I was not one of the
fortunate ones who could sleep undisturbed. The first serjeant was
among the missing, the second serjeant had to take his duty and I was
obliged to act as "commissary," rouse a detail of sleepy and unwilling
men, stumble through the fields with them until we found the supply
train and bring back a load of rations for the company; but I never
hear a whippoorwill that I do not think of that night.
In the morning we found a little brook near our lines; it was a welcome
friend; it offered us water for coffee and for a much-needed wash and
its banks were speedily lined with chaffing, gossiping, half-dressed
soldiers. But the coffee-pots had scarce begun to send their grateful
fragrance through the lines when that monotonously awful Song broke
forth again. From the hills in our rear which we had victoriously
assaulted yesterday, came screaming shells from an enemy's battery. Our
breakfast was cut short: "Fall in, men!" "Attention, battalion!" The
orders flew from rank to rank, and soon the lines were formed. A
pleasant Virginia mansion stood on rising ground near by, and the
pretty lawn in front offered a good position which was speedily taken
by one of our batteries, the horses ruthlessly trampling down the
flowers and shrubbery; and there before that peaceful home the war-dogs
began their baying answer to the hostile shots. Meantime the regiments
were in motion and as we crossed a field below the house its fleeing
occupants went by us. I was near enough to see them closely: an
intelligent-looking man with his fair, pale wife and two little
children. They were friends of our foes, but every heart ached for them
and we let them pass in respectful silence. I noticed that the man's
face bore the same set, despairing expression that I had seen the day
before in the faces of the wounded men. A new and horrid discord
sounded in the Song as that sad little company went by.
The firing soon ceased; but all the morning we marched and
counter-marched taking up first one, then another position, while now
and then in the valleys below we caught glimpses of the brown ranks of
the Confederates who seemed pouring in from all sides. The situation
was evident even to us in the ranks. Hooker had abandoned the Sixth
Corps and Lee was concentrating all his available force to crush us.
Things looked desperate. I remember that Joe tried all day to keep the
bearings of the river in mind, and proposed that, if worst came to
worst we should, even under fire attempt to swim it rather than go to
Andersonville.
But the day passed quietly, all the afternoon we lay in a little field
with woods on three sides, in apparent security and the men talked and
joked and laughed as though battles were a far-off story. Thus time
wore on, until toward evening a distant cannon shot sounded; then
another, and a spent shell came harmlessly over the tree-tops tumbling
end over end to the ground; and then, all at once, pandemonium seemed
let loose. It was the Song in another of its wild and wonderful
variations. As yesterday at Salem Church there was no prelude of
skirmish fire; but unlike yesterday's evening Song, this did not begin
with the growl of the bulldogs. All instruments of wrath and war seemed
taking part in it, and it came, not from our front alone but from the
right, from the left, from the woods before us; while out in the open
space a battery of ours was savagely firing at an enemy we could not
see. Quickly but quietly we formed in line. Even now I can see my dear
comrade, Serjeant W----, passing along the company front counting off
the files in his grave, careful way. Then he took his place next the
captain, and I saw him no more: he fell in the battle, a noble young
Christian, with a wife and child waiting for him in the far-away home
to which he never returned.
Presently our orders came, and we moved at double-quick past the wood
out into a larger field which sloped gently toward a dry ditch and then
rose in the same manner on the farther side. Coming over the opposite
crest of the slope, in full view was a brigade of the enemy; another
body of them was well up into the wood in front of the field we were
leaving; beside us now was our battery already mentioned: we could hear
the captain shouting his orders for the timing of the shells in seconds
and half-seconds. It was getting too hot for him: his horses were
beginning to fall and to save his guns he was, as we passed him,
calling out to his men to "limber up and be off."
Every incident of that scene is wonderfully vivid to me even to-day. I
was conscious of none of "the frenzy of battle," but, instead, every
sense seemed more than naturally quickened. I remember that, as we
entered the larger field and the panorama of war opened full before me
and the Song roared its diapason I thought and said to myself, "How
inexpressibly grand this is!" And I noticed everything: the very colour
of the ground and of the evening light and the brown ranks of the
oncoming foe; and a little tragedy that was being enacted at one side,
which I always think of as illustrative of the sort of stuff which was
to be found in that old Army of the Potomac and of the grit which makes
the Anglo-Saxon the hardest of all men to conquer. A small regiment of
veterans, either a Maine or a Wisconsin regiment--I never certainly
knew which--was in that field, and as we came near they were being
outflanked by the enemy who were penetrating the woods at close range.
Their position was untenable, they were suffering severely and the
regulation move for them would have been to fall back; but instead they
deliberately changed front and moved up nearer, wheeling slowly by
battalion, not an easy manoeuvre even on the parade ground; and they
did it without ceasing or even slackening their fire; and all the while
they had to close up the gaps left in their ranks by men who were
dropping, dropping, dropping, to the savage fire of the foe.
I suppose the commander of the division thought such raw troops as we,
fit only for sacrifice. At any rate, we were rushed to the bottom of
the field and posted in the ditch to check the onset of a Confederate
brigade as best we might. It is needless to say that we suffered
severely, or that we could hold our desperate position only for a
little while. But our fire must have told, for the enemy swerved to the
right as we opened on them; yet they kept coming on and soon began to
outflank us.
The same strange intensity of perception with which I entered the field
stayed with me and photographed its scenes upon my mind. I can see the
man several files away, just too far for me to reach, who vexed me
because in his excitement he would, every time he fired shoot before he
aimed with his rifle pointed toward the sky; and little S----, a boy
whom we were all fond of, shot through the body yet coolly walking off
toward the rear saying, "Well, boys, I'm hit!" And I can hear our brave
but eccentric lieutenant-colonel shouting: "Give it to them! Give them
Blissom!" And I remember that just above my head there seemed to be a
stratum of flying bullets so that in loading, every time I was about to
raise my arm to ram down the charge I said to myself, "Here goes a
bullet through this arm." And yet, at the same time I noticed the
vicious snips with which the grass-blades all about were being cut. How
any one escapes in close battle is a mystery; yet the killed and
wounded are almost always a small minority.
Strange to say, the companies on the left, which were most exposed held
out longest and when, as was inevitable the regiment broke, many of
their men and officers refused to run but retired fighting stubbornly.
I remember how one captain, a fiery little man tried to hold his men
together, how he implored and threatened and swore at them and drew his
revolver upon them and at last, when it was no use flung himself down
upon the ground and cried like a baby; and how another, a tall German
whose company was next to ours held his men to their work nobly until
they could be held no longer, and then with slow and moody steps walked
up that deadly slope muttering oaths to himself and switching off the
grass-blades with his sword. Some veterans who saw him told me
afterward that they expected every moment to see him drop.
Our regiment was not the only broken one: the whole front line was
apparently gone; the sudden savage charge of twice our number was
sweeping everything before it. As the fragments of our company retired
up the slope of the field, a few, of whom I happened to be one came to
a slightly sunken road, a mere farm track, but in it lay the Sixth
Regiment of the old Vermont Brigade. As they saw us they called out,
"Rally on us, boys!" and we gladly accepted the invitation. Several
weeks before I had been on duty on the picket line: it was the reserve
and we were allowed to kindle fires, and all night by the blazing logs
I had talked to a young Vermonter, a plain Green Mountain farmer lad,
and we had made a soldier's friendship. When I came to the sunken road
the first man I saw in that prone line of men was my camp-fire friend.
I called out to him and dropped by his side. Others of our men did
likewise and we lengthened out their too short line by about a dozen
files.
It was apparently the last desperate hope of the corps. Our division
commander, sitting on his horse and watching us is reported to have
said to one of his aides, "If that line breaks, we're gone!"
We lay at full length on the ground, silent save for the exhortation of
the officers: "Hold your fire, boys!" "Keep quiet, there!" "Down with
that rifle!" For we had reached the point where heed of consequences
was gone and a cold recklessness had taken possession of us and it was
hard to restrain the men.
On came the Confederates, their "rebel yell" now sounding shrill and
clear; and they were firing as they came with so deadly an aim that
several of our officers who rose up slightly the better to control
their men were hit and fell back dead or wounded.
They crossed the ditch where our regiment had been and we could see
each separate star and bar upon their red battle-flags and their slouch
hats pulled down to shield their eyes from the setting sun, and then
their very faces. I remember how I singled out one after another and
admired certain big brown beards as they swarmed up the slope straight
toward us.
They were almost on us--some of the men said, not ten feet away, but
perhaps imagination shortened the distance--when the Vermont colonel,
who, as I remember wore a long, black rubber coat over his uniform and
looked like a Methodist parson shouted out the command: "Rise! Fire!"
Like spectres looming from the grave, the line of men stood up, and the
Song shrieked out in one awful death-laden volley. The field before us
was changed as though by some dire magic. A moment before it had been
filled with a yelling, charging host; now it was suddenly cleared. As
though an October gust had swept across that May evening, away down to
the bottom of the field and beyond the ground was strewn with brown,
prostrate forms; but they were not leaves, they were dead and wounded
men!
The little Vermont regiment had repulsed and shattered a charging
Louisiana brigade. We followed up our volley with a counter-charge, our
own regiment meanwhile had rallied and joined us, and when we came to
the ditch where we had at first been posted dead men lay across and
within it, and from their midst living men who had sought refuge from
our fire arose, waving their hands in token of surrender: among these
the colonel commanding the Confederate brigade.
As he stood up a big, impetuous Scotch-Irishman confronted him with his
bayonet, and the savage exclamation:
"Give me yer soord or I'll r--run ye through!"
The colonel was a stately Southern gentleman whose soldierly spirit was
unbroken by misfortune.
"No!" he sternly replied, looking disdainfully at the levelled steel.
"I yield my sword to no private. Show me a commissioned officer!"
It is hard to say how it might have ended, for Hodge was a dour man;
but our lieutenant-colonel was fortunately close at hand. He ordered
the soldier away and received the officer's surrender in a manner
worthy of them both.
The setting sun was throwing its parting gleams across that awful
little field, the Song had sobbed itself into silence, the Sixth Corps
was saved, and night's curtain fell upon the last scene in the drama of
Chancellorsville.
The Making of a Regiment
The process by which men were made soldiers in our late war was one of
the most remarkable things in that phenomenal conflict. Men who had no
taste for military life, no desire for martial glory, and none save the
most rudimentary military training were enlisted, uniformed, organised
into regiments, officered often with those as ignorant of war as
themselves, equipped, armed, and sent into the field within a few
months, or even a few weeks, after being mustered into service. And
these raw regiments were speedily moulded into well-disciplined and
effective battalions, fit to be members of a famous army.
All this is history more or less well known, but the way in which the
result was accomplished is not so familiar, and perhaps the experience
of one who was a member of one of these regiments may be worth telling.
I remember--I was but a boy then--how, at the time of the news from
Sumter and the President's first call for troops, the pastor of the
village church spoke on a Sunday morning to a breathless congregation
and closed with the trumpet call, "Who will go to the war?"
Instantly in the gallery one man stood up. He was a veteran who had
served in the regular army in Mexico. There were others, but I mention
him because he was typical. Into the earliest formed regiments went the
few like the soldier of Mexico who had seen actual warfare, also the
pick of the members of the city militia organisations; and into these
first regiments went the enthusiasm of the nation's first burst of
patriotism. Then, too, the delays of the first year of the war gave
opportunity for drill and discipline of the regulation sort, often
under officers of West Point training. These oldest regiments were,
therefore, the flower of the army, and in a peculiar way the model and
foundation of it. But after Gettysburg--indeed, before that memorable
battle--they had become terribly reduced in number, and actually formed
but a fraction of the mighty host.
The history of the later regiments was different. Enthusiasm, though it
did not die, cooled. Something else took its place, something more
truly characteristic of the great crisis. I do not know how to give it
a name. It was a spirit that entered into the nation, a solemn and
compelling impulse that seized upon men whether they would or no. Many
attempted to resist, but successful resistance was blasting to peace of
mind. The voice of this spirit asked insistently, "Why do you not go to
the war?" And it was not easy for an able-bodied man to prove his right
to stay at home. It was in obedience to this impulse that men went into
regiments formed during the year of 1862. The day for illusions was
passing; the grim character of the struggle was becoming too evident.
"Going to the war" meant no possibility of holiday excursion, for the
stress of the crisis hastened new regiments to the front with small
delay; the calls for troops were urgent, and they summoned to serious
work. It was by one of these calls that we were mustered, and it was
marvellous how quickly ten full companies were enlisted in the county.
Local pride had its influence; the county contained one large
manufacturing town and several important villages. Town vied with
country, and each village with every other, in completing its quota of
men. There were other influences. "A draft" was beginning to be talked
of, and there were some who said, "I would rather volunteer now than be
drafted a few months later." Then, too, for the first time, a bounty
was promised. It was small in comparison with the sums afterwards
offered, but sufficient to turn the scale with waverers. And yet the
chief impulse was that imperious spirit of the hour which had begotten
the feeling in every man's breast that until he had offered himself to
his country he owed an unpaid debt; and when a regiment was actually in
process of organisation in your own neighbourhood, this was brought
home with redoubled force; when friends and neighbours to whom perhaps
the sacrifice was greater than it possibly could be to yourself came
forward, very shame made it difficult to hold back. Men really too old
for service forgot a few years of their life and persuaded the
mustering officer to wink at the deception. Boys, whose too glaring
minority had alone prevented them thus far, yet in whose ardent hearts
the spirit of the hour burned the more hotly by delay, sprang to the
opportunity. In our own company there were a few men over forty-five
years of age, and a much larger number of whom it would be a stretch of
truth to say they were eighteen. It was pretty much the same throughout
the ten companies. There were labouring men and mechanics,
manufacturers and their employees, storekeepers and clerks, a few
farmers, and a few students. There were young men from the best
families in the county and some ne'er-do-wells, but the mass of the
company and of the regiment was composed of plain, intelligent men,
workers in the industries of a busy community. As to nationality, there
were a few Germans and a sprinkling of Irish, but the body of the
regiment was American of old and solid New England and Dutch stock.
We enlisted on a strictly equal footing, and chose our own company
officers. The field officers, the colonel, lieutenant-colonel, and
major, were elected by the company officers and appointed by the
governor of the State. The non-commissioned officers, the serjeants and
corporals, were selected by the captains.
The captain of our own company was a jeweller and an old member of a
city militia organisation. Our first lieutenant was a banker's clerk,
and our second lieutenant a mechanic who had in some way acquired an
excellent knowledge of tactics. These were fair examples of the
officers of the regiment. Out of the forty or more of them, ten had
served in the State militia; a few of these ten had been with the
"three months' men" who were called out at the beginning of the war;
scarcely one of them had ever seen a shot fired in anger; the large
majority, like the mass of the men, were destitute of any real military
knowledge.
As to the colonelcy, the officers had fixed their desires upon a member
of one of the old regiments, a highly qualified man; but the State
authorities, in their inscrutable wisdom refused to appoint him, and
sent us instead a staff officer who, though he had seen some slight
service, was ignorant of infantry tactics and without experience in
actual command. He was, however, an imposing individual, a fine
horseman, with a decidedly military bearing and a self-assurance which
temporarily concealed his defects.
Such, then, was the regiment when it was ready to be mustered into the
service. You might say, "This is not a regiment; it is a mob," and you
would be wrong. The men had gone through no such process of drill as is
considered essential to the making of soldiers, yet they were not
utterly ignorant even in this matter. It would have been hard at that
time to find a young American who did not know something of the
rudiments of infantry tactics. The political campaigns immediately
preceding the war, with their semi-military organisations and their
nightly processions, were a preparation for what followed which has
been too little noticed. And when the war began, in every village "Home
Guards" or drill classes were formed, and Hardee's and Casey's
"Tactics" were well known and carefully studied books. We were all
inexperienced, but only a small minority of the thousand men and
officers were absolutely ignorant of military drill; moreover the mass
of them were intelligent Americans, who learned quickly and easily.
When we left the home camp a few weeks after enrollment, we could march
deceptively well, and the regiment actually received praise for its
fine appearance from spectators whose frequent opportunities had made
them critical. Yet we were sadly defective. To keep step, to march by
companies, to execute self-consciously a few motions of the manual of
arms, is but the alphabet of tactics. The battalion, not the company is
the tactical unit, and until a regiment has mastered the battalion
drill and has learned skirmish work, it is unfit for modern warfare. In
these essential things we were utterly unpractised.
There is also something else more important than drill. With regularly
trained troops perfection of drill is simply the index of discipline.
We were, in fact, very imperfect in both. Our discipline was certainly
lax, yet even this was not wholly lacking. We were not a crowd of
enthusiasts. Even at home we had for a year and a half lived in an
atmosphere of war; the breath of battle from afar had reached us; we
knew something of what it meant to be soldiers and what we were going
into. The spirit of the hour enveloped us, and when we were formally
mustered in and, with our right hands raised to heaven, took the oath
of service, there was no wild cheering; there was instead a feeling of
awe. The soul of the army, the mysterious solidarity of the mighty
compelling organisation, seemed to take possession of us; we knew that
we were no longer our own. Discipline is already half learned when men
are thus made ready for it.
Washington was our first destination. We made the journey in freight
cars, and on our arrival went into camp under canvas for the first
time. It was shortly after the battle of Antietam, and the city was
half camp, half hospital. Everywhere one met the monotonous blue
uniforms: officers hurrying hither and thither; wounded convalescents,
pale and weary, strolling about; sentries and squads of provost guards;
occasionally a brigade of dusty and tattered veterans from the front,
marching through the streets; and near the railroad stations,
train-loads of wounded men who had been brought in from the overcrowded
field hospitals, lying on the floors of box cars, the stench of their
undressed hurts filling the air. Everywhere the atmosphere of war
emptied of its glamour!
The Capital was the sore heart of the nation, and our glimpse of it was
a wholesome lesson. It sobered us; it took away all lingering sense of
insubordination, and taught us the relentless power of the mighty
machine of which we had become a part, and into which we knew we must
be fitted.
In a few days we were sent to Frederick City, and our army life began
in earnest. For more than a week we slept without tents, upon the
ground, under the open sky. We also took final leave of railroad
transportation. We had to learn the use of our feet and the meaning of
the march. After a short stay at Frederick, orders came to proceed to
Hagerstown. Western Maryland was at that time strongly held by the
Union forces, yet it was not a perfectly secure country. It was subject
to raids of the enemy's cavalry, and there was a spice of danger in our
march. We proceeded by easy stages; though, unseasoned as we were, the
ten or twelve miles a day with our heavy loads seemed long enough; and
at night when we made our bivouac we took carefully guarded positions
and threw out pickets. Once there was a rumour that Stewart's raiders
were in the neighbourhood, and our colonel made us a little speech in
his bravado style. He told us that we must not load our muskets, "that
he greatly preferred the bayonet!" Fortunately, we were unmolested.
Everywhere along our march through that beautiful Maryland hill country
we saw the marks of war. We crossed the famous South Mountain and a
corner of the Antietam battlefield. There were groups of lonely graves
by the road-side, and here and there the white tents of lingering field
hospitals. On one night we camped near Phil. Kearney's old brigade, one
regiment of which had come from our own neighbourhood. Some of us went
over to their camp to visit friends whom we had not seen since the
beginning of the war. We saw the evening dress parade of that choice
regiment. They were fresh from the perils and hardships of the
campaign; their ranks were sadly thinned, their clothes worn to rags,
many of the men were nearly shoeless; but their rifles and their
fighting equipments were in perfect order, and their dress parade was
performed with a precision which could scarcely have been surpassed had
they been a battalion of regulars in garrison with spotless uniforms
and white gloves.
When we reached Hagerstown we found that we were assigned to a brigade
of veterans, Yankees from the far North, who had come from their
ancestral mountain farms at the first call of their country. They were,
in many respects, a contrast to our friends whose dress parade we had
witnessed. For those military forms and ceremonies so dear to the heart
of the professional soldier they had small regard. They were noted
foragers. Their commander, an officer of the regular army who
afterwards became a distinguished division chief, said of them with
mingled vexation and admiration, "I never saw such men. It is
impossible to tire them out. No matter how far or how hard you march
them, at night they will be all over the country stealing pigs and
chickens." Their five regiments were all from one State, and their
_esprit de corps_ was very strong. With quaint Yankee drawl they
used to boast, "This old brigade has never been broke, and it never
shall be." And I think they made good their word to the end. They
obeyed their officers with prompt devotion, but only because they knew
that this was a necessary part of discipline; they had small reverence
for rank or place. One of them once said to me, "When I am on guard, if
I see an officer coming I always try to be at the other end of my beat,
so that I won't have to salute him." And yet in small essentials these
men were very precise soldiers. One evening one of them came over from
his regiment to visit us. The enemy suddenly opened fire from his
batteries away beyond the river. It was a common occurrence. There was
no special danger; the regiments were not even formed in line; yet this
veteran promptly took his leave. "You know," he said, "that when firing
begins a man ought to be in his place in his own company." It was so
always. With all their independence and contempt for conventionalities,
the discipline prevailing in that brigade was really most rigid. They
were not fond of reviews, and took no special pains to make a show on
such occasions; but to see the splendid line they kept in that deadly
charge on the Fredericksburg heights, when one of their small regiments
lost over a hundred men in a few moments, was enough to bring tears of
admiration from a soldier's eyes; and at Salem Heights, when at evening
Stonewall Jackson's men, concentrated in overwhelming force, came down
upon us in sudden, savage charge, and the brigade at our right was
"smashed like a pitcher thrown against a rock," when every other hope
seemed gone, these Yankees stood firm, with unbroken ranks, and saved
the Sixth Corps from disaster.
These were the soldiers whose example became our chief teacher in the
art of war. Greenhorns as we were, they received us kindly into their
fellowship, and, while they criticised freely, they were ever ready to
give us full meed of praise for anything we did well.
We were scarcely settled in our brigade camp before orders came which
set the whole army in motion. From picturesque Hagerstown we marched
toward the Potomac, and encamped for a few days in a grove of
magnificent oaks. There was some musical talent of the popular sort in
our regiment, and it had crystallised into a glee club whose free
concerts about the camp-fires were the delight of the whole brigade and
did much to make us pleasantly acquainted with our new friends. One of
the men was an expert performer on the banjo, and he had brought his
dearly beloved instrument with him. Poor fellow, he was more fit for
the concert-room than for a soldier's life, and a few weeks afterward
he succumbed to the toil of the march. He "straggled" and was gobbled,
banjo and all, by the Confederate cavalry, and we saw him no more.