hearts. We knew our comrades were thinking them, but only some very
special or confidential occasion brought such thoughts to our lips.
When "dying for home and country" is an event quite likely to happen in
the way of your ordinary duty of next week or to-morrow, it becomes at
once a matter too trite to be interesting as a subject of conversation,
and too solemn for common talk, with men of Anglo-Saxon breed. Now this
deep, widespread, though seldom-spoken sentiment explains, as nothing
else can, the enormous sacrifices which were constantly and willingly
made in our war,--especially when along with it due account is taken of
the character of our armies. By far the largest number of enlistments
were made at the age of eighteen (which often meant seventeen or even
sixteen), and the average age of our men was twenty-five years. The
Nation gave its best; the dew of its youth, the distilled essence of
American manhood flowed into the armies of both North and South. And
when we who went forth with those hosts read the statistics which show
that the death-harvest of battle alone--to say nothing of the far
larger reaping of disease and exhaustion--reached the awful figures of
two hundred thousand, an indescribably solemn feeling comes over us:
for we know well that it was not the easily spared who gave their
lives; we know that the dreadful vintage of our battle-fields was rich
with the blood of the young, the bright, the brave, the promising.
Military critics may show, to their own satisfaction at least, how
battles might have been fought less expensively, but the significant
fact remains that, with the exception of Bull Run, which after all was
but a small affair between two newly gathered and as yet unorganised
armies, there was never a complete rout; there was not one decisive
victory on either side; there was no Waterloo, the war ended simply by
the exhaustion of the South, and the long succession of battles was
fought by men who did not, who would not know when they were beaten.
Lee and Longstreet and Hill; Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and Meade are
names that will never look contemptible among the world's military
leaders, yet the men who followed even more than the generals who led,
made our war what it was.
A few instances taken from the story of regiments which I happened to
know may help to make this clear. These incidents are typical of the
fighting and the sacrifice which was common to both armies. None of
them are really exceptional unless it be that of the First Minnesota,
and even that might be paralleled in sacrifice several times in both
Union and Confederate armies.
The story of the First Minnesota at Gettysburg seems almost an
anachronism in this nineteenth century. It carries one back to the
heroic ages with a suggestion of the Iliad or of the Spartans at
Thermopylæ. Its truly modern phase is the matter-of-fact manner in
which our military historians pass it by with barest mention as a mere
tactical incident of a wholesale battle-field, and the consequent
ignorance of the American public concerning one of the most romantic
incidents of our history.
Minnesota was too young in those days to have many native sons, and her
generous quota of volunteers was filled with scions of that truest
American Aristocracy, the Commonwealth Founders whose motto is
"Westward Ho!" Out of Eastern homes, scattered all the way from Maine
to Michigan, these bold spirits had come to the North Star State to
carve careers for themselves, and their country's call to arms met with
quick and whole-souled response. The First Minnesota regiment was
fortunate in its commanders. Three colonels had risen from it to the
command of brigades, two of them regular army officers under whose
rigid schooling the regiment gained a high reputation for discipline
and efficiency. But Colville who commanded at Gettysburg, was a typical
Westerner, tall, ungainly, with strong and homely face of the Lincoln
stamp. It is said that when his turn for promotion came he at first
refused, thinking himself unfit; but the moment of supreme trial showed
his mistaken modesty.
Perhaps you have seen a thunder-cloud lie black and threatening in the
west on a sultry summer day. Slowly it masses its lurid bulk, while you
ask yourself anxiously where and when it will strike. So Meade and his
generals, unprepared as yet with their scattered corps slowly arriving,
watched Lee's army on the second of July, the really decisive day of
Gettysburg; for Pickett's grand charge on the morrow was but a last
desperate attempt to retrieve an already lost cause.
About four o'clock in the afternoon the marshalled storm marched forth
roaring in the fury of Longstreet's tremendous assault upon the exposed
line of our Third Corps, and from then until dark, along the
Emmettsburgh Road, in the Peach Orchard, about Throstle's farm-house,
amid the Rocks of the Devil's Den, up and over Round Top, to and fro
through the bloody Wheat Field such a combat raged as the world had not
seen since Waterloo.
Away at the rear, a mile behind the battle's outmost edge, on the slope
of that ridge against which the storm spent itself at last, Battery C,
Fourth United States Artillery, goes into position, and the First
Minnesota, weakened now by the detachment of two companies for other
duty, is ordered to its support. The eight companies number two hundred
and sixty-two men: a slender battalion, for their dead and wounded have
been left behind on a score of hard-fought fields.
Unlike many of our battles Gettysburg was fought in the open country,
and from the vantage ground upon which the little regiment stood the
scene of strife was spread before them in full view. With eager eyes
and anxious hearts they watch the fury of the oncoming tempest. For
half an hour it sways hither and thither; the pressure upon our too
extended lines is becoming fearful. Can the Third Corps men endure it?
No; slowly, grimly, stubbornly fighting they are borne backward. There
is a bad break yonder at the Peach Orchard, a very wrestle of demons
about Bigelow's guns at Throstle's; in the Wheat Field the ripening
grain is sodden with the wine of that dark harvest which the Pale
Reaper is gathering; he is triumphant now. The moments have counted out
almost an hour of deepening disaster. The advanced guard of the storm,
the wrack sent hustling before the gale, is sweeping up the slope.
Around the flaming battery, past the silent solid line of the First
Minnesota pours the pallid throng of wounded and of fugitives, the
fragments of torn regiments, and behind it all, with awful impact, the
storm advances, rolling inward like an oncoming tide. Its advancing
waves are breaking at the very foot of the slope, when a new spirit
appears upon the scene. Hancock has come. Without waiting for the
reinforcements following at his order, he rides alone into the very
vortex of the hellish din. His masterful presence is like magic. Order
begins to shape itself out of the confusion, a new line of resistance
is quickly patched from rallied regiments rendered hopeful by word that
help is coming. But before the new line is complete, while as yet a
yawning gap is unfilled, from behind a clump of trees the Confederate
brigades of Wilcox and Barksdale suddenly emerge. They see their
opportunity and, flushed with victory, with wild yells they charge
directly at the gap in the new line. Consternation seizes every one.
The gunners of the battery begin to desert their pieces; the First
Minnesota is left alone. But that regiment has never been known to
disobey an order, and its men stand firm. It is one of those moments
big with fate whose issue can be met only by lightning-like decision
and supreme sacrifice. Hancock's glance lights upon the little lonely
unbroken regiment. Instantly he is beside Colville. Pointing to the
advancing masses, he says,--
"Do you see those lines? Charge them!"
Colville's answer is the command, "Attention, battalion! Forward,
double quick!"
Every man knew what it meant. It was a call to death, but not one
hesitated. Down the gentle slope they go in perfect order, two hundred
and sixty against three thousand. The Confederate line, blazing with
fire is now only a short hundred yards away. The ranks of the little
regiment are rapidly thinned, but they go forward faster and faster.
One of them said,--
"We were only afraid there wouldn't be enough of us left by the time we
reached them to make any impression on the enemy."
At the bottom of the slope is a little brook, its bed dry with summer
heat, its banks lined with bushes. The enemy reach it first, and the
rough crossing somewhat disorders their front line. Colville seizes his
desperate chance: "Charge!" He roars the command, and down come the
bayonets in level gleaming row, and at full run the men of the North
dash straight at the faces of the astonished foe. One who saw it all
says,--
"The men are not made who will stand before bayonets coming at them
with such speed and such evident desperation."
The front line of the enemy recoils, breaks, its men flee backward and
throw the second line into confusion. The brook's bed is empty now.
Again Colville clutches the moment: "Halt! Fire!"
It is frightfully short range, the volley is feeble only in volume, for
every shot tells and there is a hideous gap in the disordered brown
ranks.
Then the heroes fling themselves into the bed of the brook. It is a
good extempore rifle-pit. They have but one care now, they will obey,
not only the letter but the spirit of their orders, they will hold back
that threatening mass while they can, and sell their lives dearly. They
fire carefully, calmly, every shot meant to hit and hurt; and for a few
moments longer fear of that desperate little wasp's nest in the brook
holds thousands in check. But only for a few moments. The wasp's nest
must be exterminated, and from the front of them, from the right of
them, from the left of them, a concentrated and increasingly fatal fire
rains. Fainter and fainter come the answering ring of rifle-shots from
the little brook. The bed is no longer dry, it runs with blood.
But at last Hancock's reinforcements arrive. He has not forgotten his
forlorn hopes. Not a regiment but a brigade, two of them, three of them
he hurries to the rescue, and "the First Minnesota is relieved."
Fifteen minutes ago they were two hundred and sixty-two. Now there
are _forty-seven_ able to stand up and be counted! But not one is
"missing." No prisoners have been taken from their ranks, none have
shirked or deserted. Only one man of the colour-guard remains, but he
carries out their gloriously torn flag in triumph. Colville is
desperately wounded, all the field officers have fallen, only one
captain is left. Two hundred and fifteen, out of two hundred and
sixty-two, lie along the slope or in the bloody little brook. This is
the high-water mark of heroic sacrifice. General Hancock said of it:--
"There is no more gallant deed in history. I was glad to find such a
body of men at hand willing to make the terrible sacrifice that the
occasion demanded. I ordered those men in because I saw that I must
gain five minutes' time. Reinforcements were coming on the run, but I
knew that before they could reach the threatened point, the
Confederates, unless checked, would seize the position. I would have
ordered that regiment in if I had known that every man would be killed.
It had to be done."
One might have thought the First Minnesota extinguished. Far from it.
At nightfall the two outlying companies came in, and with the
forty-seven survivors a miniature battalion was formed in command of
the brave surviving captain. On the eventful morrow, the day of final
victory, the First Minnesota was again in the thick of the storm where
the topmost waves of Pickett's charge spent their fury. And as though
conscious that common work was no longer fit for them, they bore
themselves with exaltation. A shot cut away the staff of their precious
colours and killed the last man of the colour-guard. Instantly the
standard was seized by another hand and borne far forward into the
thick of the fight; a flag was wrested from the enemy, and after the
battle their shattered staff was spliced with the captured one. But
their captain and sixteen good men were added to the roll of sacrifice.
One reason why such an exploit as that of the First Minnesota is not
better known, is that sacrifices only a little less extreme were all
too common in our war, and upon both sides. Colonel Fox, in his
carefully compiled book on "Regimental Losses," gives a list of
sixty-four Union regiments, and a similar and equally gruesome one of
Confederates, who suffered losses in single battles ranging from eighty
to fifty per cent of their number, and he remarks that these frightful
sacrifices are not those of massacres or blunders, but such as were met
with in hard stand-up, give-and-take fighting.
Now a loss of thirty per cent is considered severe, and forty per cent
extreme, in modern warfare.
The gallant British Light Brigade which Tennyson's noble poem has made
immortal went into their famous charge at Balaklava six hundred and
seventy-three strong. Their loss was two hundred and forty-seven, or
not quite thirty-seven per cent. None the less do they deserve the
crown which genius has given them. They were as truly martyrs to duty
as though every one had fallen.
The severest regimental loss in the war between France and Germany fell
upon the Sixteenth German Infantry at Mars-le-Tour. Forty-nine per cent
of their number were killed, wounded, or missing. But the German
regiments are three thousand strong, comparable only to our brigades.
And this sacrifice of the brave Germans brings to mind the strikingly
similar one of my old comrades of the Vermont Brigade at the battle of
the Wilderness.
Brigades in our army were commonly composed of half-a-dozen regiments
more or less, often from widely separated States; but there were
exceptions. The Sixth Army Corps would scarcely have known itself
without the Jersey Brigade in its first division, and the Vermont
Brigade in its second. Both became famous, and their integrity as
exclusively State organisations was broken only once, when for nearly a
year the regiment in which I served was brigaded with the Vermonters.
It was not a kind or judicious act on the part of the military
authorities to assign us thus, but I shall always think it a piece of
good fortune that I once marched and fought with those Green Mountain
men, and friendships made among them are cherished still.
The brigade was like a great family whose consciousness of proud and
romantic traditions and whose singular cohesiveness reminded one of the
Scottish Clans. But its material was most thoroughly American. The men
had the qualities of mountaineers, their reserve, independence, and
resourcefulness, and among the officers were men of high character and
culture, some of whom, like Senator Proctor, have since become
distinguished in civil life.
Stalwart fellows those Vermonters were; above the average in both
intelligence and stature, tireless on the march, cool, bitter, and
persistent fighters.
At well named Savage's Station, one of their regiments had been badly
cut up in an affair which did highest credit to its grit and
discipline, but at the time when we were with them the brigade as a
whole had become noted rather for losses inflicted on the enemy than
for those suffered. None who saw and shared in it, can ever forget
their wonderful fight at Bank's Ford, where at surprisingly small cost
to themselves they repulsed and fearfully punished Early's Confederate
division and saved the Sixth Corps from black disaster.
But such reputations were perilous in our army. The demand for
sacrifice was sure to reach men like these. A year and a day from the
time when they threw off Early's flank attack at Bank's Ford, the
Vermonters found themselves in the midst of the bloody storm-centre of
the most weird, confused, and difficult of the battles of the Army of
the Potomac.
"The Wilderness" is a region the like of which can be found only along
the Southern Atlantic seaboard. For miles, abrupt ridges of clay or
gravel cut with ragged ravines are covered with dense growth of woods
and brush; now scraggy oak, now hedge-like thickets of dwarf pine,--a
gloomy, intricate, intractable region.
But its very difficulties were Lee's advantage. His men knew the
Wilderness; many of them had grown up within it or on its borders. His
plan of battle was simple, daring, and full of peril to his foes.
The road southward from the Fords of the Rapidan by which Grant's army
was compelled to move leads through this region. In the midst of the
forest the north and south road is crossed by two others running nearly
east and west. Down these intersecting roads Lee poured his columns,
striving to strike the dangerously extended Union line in flank, break
it into fragments, and while entangled in the Wilderness play havoc
with it.
At the most important of these road-junctions, at the vital point of
the Union line, the position which must be held at any cost, on the
afternoon of the fifth of May Getty's Division of the Sixth Corps was
posted with the Vermont Brigade in front. They await the arrival of
Hancock with the Second Corps, hoping then to push the enemy, now
retarded in their advance by skirmishers and by the difficult nature of
the ground, away from the danger-point, back into more open country
where more even battle can be had. General Grant grows impatient; he
orders Getty to attack at once without waiting for Hancock. The narrow
road is the only place where artillery can be used. It is occupied by a
battery; the infantry brigades must feel and fight their way through
the thicket on either side. Suddenly the opposing lines meet. Volleys
leap like sheaves of lightning from the brush, men fall by scores,
there are charges and counter-charges; but in that Wilderness maze
where foes phantom-like appear and disappear the bayonet is useless.
The battle settles down to a grim trial of endurance. To stand up is
death; the opposing lines, only a few yards distant from each other,
lie down and fight close to the ground. Neither can advance, because
neither will give way. The men of the South, on their native heath,
taking advantage of every foot of familiar ground, creeping up here or
there where smallest advantage appears, are bent on hewing a path to
the Brock Road. The Vermonters, upon whom now the weight of the battle
is falling, will not yield an inch. Then was seen the close clanship of
those men of the Green Mountains. Like brothers their five regiments
stick together, each ready to help each without confusion, with quick
comprehension of every emergency, cool, desperate, deadly in the blows
they give a common enemy. But their ranks are melting mournfully in the
savage heat of the weird combat; from the Vermont officers especially
the Southern rifles are taking ghastly toll; for while the men fight
lying down, the officers must be on their feet moving from place to
place along the line. One who was there with them says, "One after
another of the officers fell not to rise again, or was borne bleeding
to the rear. The men's faces grew powder-grimed and their mouths black
from biting cartridges; the musketry silenced all sounds, and the air
of the woods was hot and heavy with sulphurous vapour; the tops of the
bushes were cut away by the leaden storm that swept through them."
For two horrible hours this went on, until the arrival of the advanced
division of the Second Corps brought relief. Fresh troops were sent in
to hold the road, and the Vermonters were ordered to withdraw. This was
easier said than done. Each side was holding the other as in a vice.
Finally a daring but costly charge by one regiment, concentrating the
enemy's fire upon it alone, made possible the retirement of the others
in good order. The Vermont Brigade had held the road until
reinforcements made it secure for that day at least, but at frightful
cost. "Of five colonels of the brigade only one was left unhurt. Fifty
of the best line officers were killed or wounded; a thousand Vermont
soldiers fell that afternoon."
Darkness closed the battle for that day, but night brought little rest.
The wounded had to be sought--too often vainly sought in the dark amid
the thickets; from suspicious skirmish lines frequent gleam and rattle
of nervous, fitful volleys flashed, startling the darkness, and at the
dawn of day the battle opened with renewed fury. Again the bereft and
decimated brigade was called to perilous and responsible duty, which
they nobly fulfilled; and when the second evening came, they could
count their total loss. Out of less than twenty-eight hundred who had
gone into battle over twelve hundred had fallen, among whom were
three-fourths of the officers on duty. The greater part of this loss
fell within the two hours of the first day's fight in the woods.
It was then that the colonel of the Second Regiment was wounded, went
to the rear, had his hurt dressed, returned to his post, and as he went
along the line speaking words of cheer to his men was struck by a
second bullet and instantly killed. His place was taken by the
lieutenant-colonel, "a boy in years but of approved valour," who also
was presently stricken down with a death wound, leaving the regiment
without a field officer. It is worth noting that these two young
officers both rose from lieutenancies to the command of their regiment,
and both came out of those choice homes in which more than almost
anywhere else on earth culture and conscience meet. They were sons of
New England ministers. The faces of some of those fallen Vermonters
rise before me to-day. There was the colonel of the Sixth, in whose
regiment, along with a few comrades, I found myself at the time of the
final onset of the Confederates at Bank's Ford. A thrill of admiration
always goes through me whenever I think of the superbly calm courage
with which he held us down in the sunken road in face of that charging
whirlwind which, had it reached us, would have swept us away like
chaff. I can hear his voice even now, as when the foe was almost upon
us it rang out above the noise of battle in clear command, "Rise!
Fire!"
Alas, he was one of the Wilderness victims: a Christian gentleman,
reverenced and beloved by his men and fellow-officers. And the captain
of that company whose line we lengthened, he too met a pathetically
heroic death. Early in the afternoon's fight in the woods he received a
severe wound in the head: a wound which, as one of his comrades told
me, was more than enough to have sent most men out of the battle. His
men all loved him, and they begged him to go to the rear and have his
hurt cared for. But with the blood streaming down his face, and the
anger of battle in his strong soul, he sternly refused, saying, "It is
the business of no live man to go to the rear at a time like this!" A
few moments later, and again he was struck by a bullet in the thigh. He
retired a short distance, took off his sash, bound up his second wound,
returned to his place in the line, and while cheering his men a third
bullet found this hero's heart and silenced his voice forever.
The sacrifice of the Vermont Brigade was not one of numbers only.
Ghastly incidents abounded in that Wilderness battle-field. One of
them, told me in a letter from a Fifth Corps comrade, is unique in its
horror. He was severely wounded, and, finding himself useless on the
line of battle, tried to make his way to the rear. After several narrow
escapes from capture, he came to a little open field. Here a number of
others, like himself wounded, were gathered, and faint from loss of
blood and from hunger they sat down together and tried to eat a little
from shared rations of such as had any.
The little field, scarce a hundred yards across, had been the scene of
conflict earlier in the day, and hundreds of dead and mortally wounded
lay scattered about it.
Close by where they sat down lay a young soldier from a Connecticut
regiment, frightfully shot in the breast so that his lungs protruded.
His life was slowly, painfully ebbing away.