BURNSIDE'S CAMPAIGN.
McCLELLAN'S INACTION--VISIT AND LETTERS OF LINCOLN TO HIM--SUPERSEDED
BY BURNSIDE--THE POSITION AT FREDERICKSBURG--ATTACK UPON THE
HEIGHTS--THE RESULT--GENERAL BURNSIDE'S LACK OF JUDGMENT--PRESIDENT
LINCOLN'S NATURAL APTITUDE FOR STRATEGY--BRAVERY OF THE
SOLDIERS--THRILLING INCIDENTS OF THE BATTLE--GALLANTRY OF THE IRISH
BRIGADE.
After the battle of the Antietam, Lee withdrew to the neighborhood of
Winchester, where he was reinforced, till at the end of a month he had
about sixty-eight thousand men. McClellan followed as far as the
Potomac, and there seemed to plant his army, as if he expected it to
sprout and increase itself like a field of corn. Ten days after he
defeated Lee on the Antietam, he wrote to the President that he
intended to stay where he was, and attack the enemy if they attempted
to recross into Maryland! At the same time, he constantly called for
unlimited reinforcements, and declared that, even if the city of
Washington should be captured, it would not be a disaster so serious
as the defeat of his army. Apparently it did not occur to General
McClellan that these two contingencies were logically the same. For if
Lee could have defeated that army, he could then have marched into
Washington; or if he could have captured Washington without fighting
the army whose business it was to defend it, the army would thereby be
substantially defeated.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE AND STAFF.]
On the 1st of October the President visited General McClellan at his
headquarters, and made himself acquainted with the condition of the
army. Five days later he ordered McClellan to {192} "cross the
Potomac, and give battle to the enemy, or drive him south." The
despatch added, "Your army must move now, while the roads are good. If
you cross the river between the enemy and Washington, and cover the
latter by your operation, you can be reinforced with thirty thousand
men." Nevertheless, McClellan did not stir. Instead of obeying the
order, he inquired what sort of troops they were that would be sent to
him, and how many tents he could have, and said his army could not
move without fresh supplies of shoes and clothing. While he was thus
paltering, the Confederate General Stuart, who had ridden around his
army on the peninsula, with a small body of cavalry rode entirely
around it again, eluding all efforts for his capture. On the 13th the
President wrote a long, friendly letter to General McClellan, in which
he gave him much excellent advice that he, as a trained soldier, ought
not to have needed. A sentence or two will suggest the drift of it:
"Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you cannot do what the
enemy is constantly doing? ... In coming to us, he [the enemy] tenders
us an advantage which we should not waive. We should not so operate as
to merely drive him away.... It is all easy if our troops march as
well as the enemy, and it is unmanly to say they cannot do it." The
letter had outlined a plan of campaign, but it closed with the words,
characteristic of Lincoln's modesty in military matters, "This letter
is in no sense an order." Twelve days more of fine weather were
frittered away in renewed complaints, and such inquiries as whether
the President wished him to move at once or wait for fresh horses, for
the general said his horses were fatigued and had sore tongue. Here
the President began to show some impatience, and wrote: "Will you
pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the
battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?" The general replied that
they had been scouting, picketing, and making reconnoissances, and
that the President had done injustice to the cavalry. Whereupon Mr.
Lincoln wrote again: "Most certainly I intend no injustice to any, and
if I have done any I deeply regret it. To be told, after more than
five weeks' total inaction of the army, and during which period we had
sent to that army every fresh horse we possibly could, amounting in
the whole to 7,918, that the cavalry horses were too much fatigued to
move, presented a very cheerless, almost hopeless, prospect for the
future, and it may have forced something of impatience into my
despatches." That day, October 26, McClellan began to cross the
Potomac; but it was ten days (partly owing to heavy rains) before his
army was all on the south side of the river, and meanwhile he had
brought up new questions for discussion and invented new excuses for
delay. He wanted to know to what extent the line of the Potomac was to
be guarded; he wanted to leave strong garrisons at certain points, to
prevent the army he was driving southward before him from rushing
northward into Maryland again; he discussed the position of General
Bragg's (Confederate) army, which was four hundred miles away beyond
the mountains; he said the old regiments of his command must be filled
up with recruits before they could go into action.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN NEWTON.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL E. V. SUMNER.]
[Illustration: CONFEDERATE SHARP-SHOOTERS ON THE HEIGHTS OF
FREDERICKSBURG.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL J. J. BARTLETT.]
McClellan was a sore puzzle to the people of the loyal States. But
large numbers of his men still believed in him, and--as is usual in
such cases--intensified their personal devotion in proportion as the
distrust of the people at large was increased. After crossing the
Potomac, he left a corps at Harper's Ferry, and was moving southward
on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, while Lee moved in the same
direction on the western {193} side, when, on November 7, the
President solved the riddle that had vexed the country, by relieving
him of the command.
The successor of General McClellan was Ambrose E. Burnside, then in
his thirty-ninth year, who was graduated at West Point fifteen years
before, had commanded cavalry during the Mexican war, had invented a
breech-loading rifle which was commercially unsuccessful, and at the
breaking out of the rebellion was treasurer of the Illinois Central
Railroad. When the First Rhode Island Regiment went to Washington,
four days after the President's first call for troops, Burnside was
its colonel. He commanded a brigade at the first battle of Bull Run;
led an expedition that captured Roanoke Island, New Berne, and
Beaufort, N. C., in January, 1862; and commanded one wing of
McClellan's army at South Mountain and Antietam. Whether he was
blameworthy for not crossing the Antietam early in the day and
effecting a crushing defeat of Lee's army, is a disputed question. It
might be worth while to discuss it, were it not that he afterward
accepted a heavier responsibility and incurred a more serious
accusation. The command of the Army of the Potomac had been offered to
him twice before, but he had refused it, saying that he "was not
competent to command such a large army." When the order came relieving
McClellan and appointing him, he consulted with that general and with
his staff officers, making the same objection; but they took the
ground that as a soldier he was bound to obey without question, and so
he accepted the place, as he says, "in the midst of a violent
snow-storm, with the army in a position that I knew little of." These
two generals were warm personal friends, and McClellan remained a few
days to put Burnside in possession, as far as possible, of the
essential facts in relation to the position and condition of the
forces.
[Illustration: ATTACK ON FREDERICKSBURG, DECEMBER, 1862.]
{194} [Illustration: THE STONE WALL UNDER MARYE'S HEIGHTS. (From a War
Department photograph.)]
At this time the right wing of Lee's army, under Longstreet, was near
Culpeper, and the left, under Jackson, was in the Shenandoah Valley.
Their separation was such that it would require two days for one to
march to the other. McClellan said he intended to endeavor to get
between them and either beat them in detail or force them to unite as
far south as Gordonsville. Burnside not only did not continue this
plan, but gave up the idea that the Confederate army was his true
objective, assumed the city of Richmond to be such, and set out for
that place by way of the north bank of the Rappahannock and the city
of Fredericksburg, after consuming ten days in reorganizing his army
into three grand divisions, under Sumner, Hooker, and Franklin. On the
15th of November he began the march from Warrenton; the head of his
first column reached Falmouth on the 17th, and by the 20th the whole
army was there. By some blunder (it is uncertain whose) the pontoon
train that was to have met the army at this point, and afforded an
immediate crossing of the river, did not arrive till a week later; and
by this time Lee, who chose to cover his own capital and cross the
path of his enemy, rather than strike at his communications, had
placed his army on the heights south and west of Fredericksburg, and
at once began to fortify them. His line was about five and a half
miles long, and was as strong as a good natural {195} position,
earthworks, and an abundance of artillery could make it. He could not
prevent Burnside from crossing the river; for the heights on the left
bank rose close to the stream, commanding the intermediate plain, and
on these heights Burnside had one hundred and forty-seven guns. What
with waiting for the pontoons and establishing his base of supplies at
Acquia Creek, it was the 10th of December before the National
commander was ready to attempt the passage of the stream. He planned
to lay down five bridges--three opposite the city and the others two
miles below--and depended upon his artillery to protect the engineers.
Before daybreak on the morning of the 11th, in a thick fog, the work
was begun; but the bridges had not spanned more than half the distance
when the sun had risen and the fog lifted sufficiently to reveal what
was going on. A detachment of Mississippi riflemen had been posted in
cellars, behind stone walls, and at every point where a man could be
sheltered on the south bank; and now the incessant crack of their
weapons was heard, picking off the men that were laying the bridges.
One after another of the blue-coats reeled with a bullet in his brain,
fell into the water, and was carried down by the current, till the
losses were so serious that it was impossible to continue the work. At
the lower bridges the sharp-shooters, who there had no shelter but
rifle-pits in the open field, were dislodged after a time, and by noon
those bridges were completed. But along the front of the town they had
better shelter, the National guns could not be depressed enough to
shell them, and the work on the three upper bridges came to a
standstill. Burnside tried bombarding the town, threw seventy tons of
iron into it, and set it on fire; but still the sharp-shooters clung
to their hiding places, and when the engineers tried to renew their
task on the bridges, under cover of the bombardment, they were
destroyed by the same murderous fire.
At last General Hunt, chief of artillery, suggested a solution
of the difficulty. Three regiments that volunteered for the
service--the Seventh Michigan, and the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Massachusetts--crossed the river in pontoon boats, under the fire of
the sharp-shooters, landed quickly, and drove them out of their
fastness, capturing a hundred of them, while the remainder escaped to
the hills. The bridges were then completed, and the crossing was
begun; but it was evening of the 12th before the entire army was on
the Fredericksburg side of the river.
On the morning of the 13th Burnside was ready to attack, and Lee was
more than ready to be attacked. He had concentrated his whole army on
the fortified heights, Longstreet's corps forming his left wing and
Jackson's his right, with every gun in position, and every man ready
and knowing what to expect. The weak point of the line, if it had any,
was on the right, where the ground was not so high, and there was
plenty of room for the deployment of the attacking force. Here
Franklin commanded, with about half of the National army; and here,
according to Burnside's first plan, the principal assault was to be
made. But there appears to have been a sudden and unaccountable change
in the plan; and when the hour for action arrived Franklin was ordered
to send forward a division or two, and hold the remainder of his force
ready for "a rapid movement down the old Richmond road," while Sumner
on the right was ordered to send out two divisions to seize the
heights back of the city. Exactly what Burnside expected to do next,
if these movements had been successful, nobody appears to know.
The division chosen to lead Franklin's attack was Meade's. This
advanced rapidly, preceded by a heavy skirmish line, while his
batteries firing over the heads of the troops shelled the heights
vigorously. Meade's men crossed the railroad under heavy fire, that
had been withheld till they were within close range, penetrated
between two divisions of the first Confederate line, doubling back the
flanks of both and taking many prisoners and some battle-flags, scaled
the heights, and came upon the second line. By this time the momentum
of the attack was spent, and the fire of the second line, delivered on
the flanks as well as in front, drove them back. The divisions of
Gibbon and Doubleday had followed in support, which relieved the
pressure upon Meade; and when all three were returning unsuccessful
and in considerable confusion, Birney's moved out and stopped the
pursuing enemy.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL RICHARD H. ANDERSON, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL CADMUS M. WILCOX, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL ROBERT RANSOM, JR., C. S. A.]
Sumner's attack was made with the divisions of French and Hancock,
which moved through the town and deployed in columns under the fire of
the Confederate batteries. This was very destructive, but was not the
deadliest thing that the men had to meet. Marye's Hill was skirted
near its base by an old sunken road, at the outer edge of which was a
stone wall; and in this road were two brigades of Confederate
infantry. It could hardly be seen, at a little distance, that there
was a road at all. When French's charging columns had rushed across
the open ground under the artillery fire that ploughed through and
through their ranks, they suddenly confronted a sheet of flame and
lead from the rifles in the sunken road. The Confederates here were so
{196} numerous that each one at the wall had two or three behind to
load muskets and hand them to him, while he had only to lay them flat
across the wall and fire them as rapidly as possible, exposing
scarcely more than his head. Nearly half of French's men were shot
down, and the remainder fell back. Hancock's five thousand charged in
the same manner, and some of them approached within twenty yards of
the wall; but within a quarter of an hour they also fell back a part
of the distance, leaving two thousand of their number on the field.
Three other divisions advanced to the attack, but with no better
result; and all of them remained in a position where they were just
out of reach of the rifles in the sunken road, but were still played
upon by the Confederate artillery.
Burnside now grew frantic, and ordered Hooker to attack. That officer
moved out with three divisions, made a reconnoissance, and went back
to tell Burnside it was useless and persuade him to give up the
attempt. But the commander insisted, and so Hooker's four thousand
rushed forward with fixed bayonets, and presently came back like the
rest, leaving seventeen hundred dead or wounded on the field.
The entire National loss in this battle was twelve thousand six
hundred and fifty-three in killed, wounded, or missing, though some of
the missing afterward rejoined their commands. Hancock's division lost
one hundred and fifty-six officers, and one of his regiments lost
two-thirds of its men. The Confederate loss was five thousand three
hundred and seventy-seven. Four brigadier-generals were killed in this
battle; on the National side, Generals George D. Bayard and Conrad F.
Jackson; on the Confederate, Generals Thomas R. R. Cobb and Maxcy
Gregg. In the night the Union troops brought in their wounded and
buried some of their dead. Severe as his losses had been, Burnside
planned to make a fresh attempt the next day, with the Ninth Corps
(his old command), which he proposed to lead in person; but General
Sumner dissuaded him, though with difficulty. In the night of the
15th, in the midst of a storm, the army was withdrawn to the north
bank of the Rappahannock, and the sorry campaign was ended.
If it had been at all necessary to prove the courage and discipline of
the National troops, Fredericksburg proved it abundantly. There were
few among them that December morning who did not look upon it as
hopeless to assault those fortified slopes; yet they obeyed their
orders, and moved out to the work as if they expected victory,
suffering such frightful losses as bodies of troops are seldom called
upon to endure, and retiring with little disorder and no panic. The
English correspondent of the London _Times_, writing from Lee's
headquarters, exultingly predicted the speedy decline and fall of the
American Republic. If he had been shrewd enough to see what was
indicated, rather than what he hoped for, he would have written that
with such courage and discipline as the Army of the Potomac had
displayed, and superior resources, the final victory was certain to be
theirs, however they might first suffer from incompetent commanders;
that the Republic that had set such an army in the field, and had the
material for several more, was likely to contain somewhere a general
worthy to lead it, and was not likely to be overthrown by any
insurrection of a minority of its people.
[Illustration: BRIGADIER-GENERAL T. F. MEAGHER.]
[Illustration: COLONEL ROBERT NUGENT. (Afterward Brevet
Brigadier-General.)]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL G. A. DE RUSSEY.]
There never was any question of the gallantry or patriotism of General
Burnside, but his woful lack of judgment in the conduct of the battle
of Fredericksburg (or perhaps it should be said, in fighting a battle
at that point at all) has ever remained inexplicable. His own attempt
to explain it, in his official report, is brief, and is at least manly
in the frankness with which he puts the entire blame upon himself. He
wrote: "During my preparations for crossing at the place I had first
selected, I discovered that the enemy had thrown a large portion of
his force down the river and elsewhere, thus weakening his defences in
front, and also thought I discovered that he did not anticipate the
crossing of our whole force at Fredericksburg; and I hoped by rapidly
throwing the whole command over at that place to {197} separate, by a
vigorous attack, the forces of the enemy on the river below from the
forces behind and on the crest in the rear of the town, in which case
we could fight him with great advantage in our favor. To do this we
had to gain a height on the extreme right of the crest, which height
commanded a new road lately made by the enemy for purposes of more
rapid communication along his lines, which point gained, his positions
along the crest would have been scarcely tenable, and he could have
been driven from them easily by an attack on his front in connection
with a movement in the rear of the crest.... Failing in accomplishing
the main object, we remained in order of battle two days--long enough
to decide that the enemy would not come out of his strongholds to
fight us with infantry--after which we recrossed to this side of the
river unmolested, without the loss of men or property. As the day
broke, our long lines of troops were seen marching to their different
positions as if going on parade--not the least demoralization or
disorganization existed. To the brave officers and soldiers who
accomplished the feat of thus recrossing the river in the face of the
enemy, I owe everything. For the failure in the attack I am
responsible, as the extreme gallantry, courage, and endurance shown by
them was never exceeded, and would have carried the points had it been
possible. The fact that I decided to move from Warrenton on to this
line rather against the opinion of the President, Secretary of War,
and yourself, and that you left the whole movement in my hands,
without giving me orders, makes me the only one responsible."
When Burnside's plan was submitted to the President and General
Halleck, there was considerable opposition to it, and when finally
Halleck informed Burnside that the President consented to that plan,
he added significantly: "He thinks it will succeed if you move
rapidly; otherwise not." Though Mr. Lincoln was not a soldier, his
natural aptitude for strategy has been much discussed, and it is
therefore interesting to remember this saving clause in his consent to
the experiment of Fredericksburg. How near the National troops, with
all their terrible disadvantages, came to piercing the lines of the
enemy on Marye's Hill, we know from the testimony of General
Longstreet, who says: "General Lee became uneasy when he saw the
attacks so promptly renewed and pushed forward with such persistence,
and feared the Federals might break through our lines. After the third
charge he said to me, 'General, they are massing very heavily, and
will break your line, I am afraid.'" Longstreet represents himself as
having no such fears whatever, but it further appears from his
testimony that when in the night they captured an officer on whom they
found an order for renewal of the battle the next day, General Lee
immediately gave orders for the construction of a new line of
rifle-pits and the placing of more guns in position.
General Lee, instead of following up his good fortune by counter
attack, went off to Richmond to suggest other operations. No such
fierce criticism for not reaping the fruits of victories has ever been
expended upon him as some of the National commanders have had to
endure for this fault, though many of his and their opportunities were
closely parallel. In Richmond he was told by Mr. Davis that the
Administration considered the war virtually over, but he knew better.
[Illustration: RELIEF FOR THE WOUNDED.]
[Illustration: A HASTY MEAL.]
[Illustration: ZOUAVE COLOR-BEARER AT FREDERICKSBURG.]
The story of the battle, so far as its strictly military aspect is
concerned, is extremely simple, and makes but a short though dreadful
chapter in the history of the great struggle. But it was full of
incidents, though mostly of the mournful kind, and the reader would
fail to get any adequate conception of what was done and suffered on
that field without some accounts written at the time by participants.
General Meagher, commanding the Irish brigade, made an interesting
report, in which he pictured graphically the manner in which that
organization went into the action and the treatment that it received.
A few extracts will include the most interesting passages. "The
brigade never was in finer spirits and condition. The arms and
accoutrements were in perfect order. The required amount of ammunition
was on hand. Both officers and men were comfortably clad, and it would
be difficult to say whether those who were to lead or those who were
to follow were the better prepared or the more eager to discharge
their duty. A few minutes {198} after four o'clock P.M., word was
conveyed to me that a gallant body of volunteers had crossed the river
in boats and taken possession of the city of Fredericksburg.
Immediately on the receipt of this news, an order reached me from
Brigadier-General Hancock to move forward the brigade and take up a
position closer to the river. In this new position we remained all
night. At seven o'clock the following morning we were under arms, and
in less than two hours the head of the brigade presented itself on the
opposite bank of the river. Passing along the edge of the river to the
lower bridge, the brigade halted, countermarched, stacked arms, and in
this position, ankle-deep in mud, and with little or nothing to
contribute to their comfort, in complete subordination and good heart,
awaited further orders. An order promulgated by Major-General Couch,
commanding the corps, prohibited fires after nightfall. This order was
uncomplainingly and manfully obeyed by the brigade. Officers and men
lay down and slept that night in the mud and frost, and without a
murmur, with heroic hearts, composed themselves as best they could for
the eventualities of the coming day. A little before eight o'clock
A.M., Saturday, the 13th inst., we received orders to fall in and
prepare instantly to take the field. The brigade being in line, I
addressed, separately, to each regiment a few words, reminding it of
its duty, and exhorting it to acquit itself of that duty bravely and
nobly to the last. Immediately after, the column swept up the street
toward the scene of action, headed by Col. Robert Nugent, of the
Sixty-ninth, and his veteran regiment--every officer and man of the
brigade wearing a sprig of evergreen in his hat, in memory of the land
of his birth. The advance was firmly and brilliantly made through this
street under a continuous discharge of shot and shell, several men
falling from the effects of both. Even whilst I was addressing the
Sixty-ninth, which was on the right of the brigade, three men of the
Sixty-third were knocked over, and before I had spoken my last words
of encouragement the mangled remains of the poor fellows--mere masses
of torn flesh and rags--were borne along the line to the hospital of
French's division. Emerging from the street, having nothing whatever
to protect it, the brigade encountered the full force and fury of the
enemy's fire, and, unable to resist or reply to it, had to push on to
the mill-race, which may be described as the first of the hostile
{199} defences. Crossing this mill-race by means of a single bridge,
the brigade, diverging to the right, had to deploy into line of
battle. This movement necessarily took some time to execute. The
Sixty-ninth, under Colonel Nugent, being on the right, had to stand
its ground until the rest of the brigade came up and formed. I myself,
accompanied by Lieutenant Emmet of my staff, crossed the mill-race on
foot from the head of the street through which the column had
debouched. Trudging up the ploughed field as well as my lameness would
permit me, to the muddy crest along which the brigade was to form in
line of battle, I reached the fence on which the right of the
Sixty-ninth rested. I directed Colonel Nugent to throw out two
companies of his regiment as skirmishers on the right flank. This
order was being carried out, when the other regiments of the brigade,
coming up with a brisk step and deploying in line of battle, drew down
upon themselves a terrific fire. Nevertheless the line was beautifully
and rapidly formed, and boldly advanced, Colonel Nugent leading on the
right, Col. Patrick Kelly, commanding the Eighty-eighth, being next in
line, both displaying a courageous soldiership which I have no words,
even with all my partiality for them, adequately to describe. Thus
formed, under the unabating tempest and deluge of shot and shell, the
Irish brigade advanced against the rifle-pits, the breastworks, and
batteries of the enemy.... The next day, a little after sunrise, every
officer and man of the brigade able again to take the field, by order
of Brigadier-General Hancock, recrossed to Fredericksburg and took up
the same position, on the street nearest the river, which we had
occupied previous to the advance, prepared and eager, notwithstanding
their exhausted numbers and condition, to support the Ninth Corps in
the renewal of the assault of the previous day, that renewal having
been determined on by the general-in-chief. Of the one thousand two
hundred I had led into action the day before, two hundred and eighty
only appeared on that ground that morning. This remnant of the Irish
brigade, still full of heart, still wearing the evergreen, inspired by
a glowing sense of duty, sorrowful for their comrades, but emboldened
and elated by the thought that they had fallen with the proud bravery
they did--this noble little remnant awaited the order that was once
more to precipitate them against the batteries of the enemy."
Gen. Aaron F. Stevens (afterward member of Congress), who at that time
commanded the Thirteenth New Hampshire Regiment, made an interesting
report, in the course of which he said: "Just after dark we moved to
the river, and crossed without opposition the pontoon-bridge near the
lower end of the city. My regiment took up its position for the night
in Caroline Street, one of the principal streets of the city, and
threw out two companies as pickets toward the enemy. At an early hour
on Saturday morning, the eventful and disastrous day of the battle, we
took up our position with the brigade under the hill on the bank of
the river, just below the bridge which we crossed on Thursday night.
Here we remained under arms the entire day, our position being about a
mile distant from the line of the enemy's batteries. Occasionally,
during the day, fragments of shell from his guns reached us or passed
over us, falling in the river and beyond, doing but little damage. One
of our own guns, however, on the opposite bank of the river, which
threw shells over us toward the enemy, was so unfortunately handled as
to kill two men and wound several others in our brigade. As yet all
the accounts which I have seen or read, from Union or rebel sources,
approach not in delineation the truthful and terrible panorama of that
bloody day. Twice during the day I rode up Caroline Street to the
centre of the city toward the point where our brave legions were
struggling against the terrible combination of the enemy's artillery
and infantry, whose unremitting fire shook the earth and filled the
plain in rear of the city with the deadly missiles of war. I saw the
struggling hosts of freedom stretched along the plain, their ranks
ploughed by the merciless fire of the foe. I saw the dead and wounded,
among them some of New Hampshire's gallant sons, borne back on the
shoulders of their comrades in battle, and laid tenderly down in the
hospitals prepared for their reception, in the houses on either side
of the street as far as human habitations extended. I listened to the
roar of battle and the groans of the wounded and dying. I saw in the
crowded hospitals the desolation of war; but I heard from our brave
soldiers no note of triumph, no word of encouragement, no syllable of
hope that for us a field was to be won. In the stubborn, unyielding
resistance of the enemy I could see no point of pressure likely to
yield to the repeated assaults of our brave soldiers, and so I
returned to my command to wait patiently for the hour when we might be
called to share in the duty and danger of our brave brethren engaged
in the contest. By stepping forward to the brow of the hill which
covered us, a distance of ten yards, we were in full view of the rebel
stronghold--the batteries along the crest of the ridge called
Stansbury Hill and skirting Hazel Run. For three-fourths of an hour
before we were ordered into action, I stood in front of my regiment on
the brow of the hill and watched the fire of the rebel batteries as
they poured shot and shell from sixteen different points upon our
devoted men on the plains below. It was a sight magnificently
terrible. Every discharge of enemy's artillery and every explosion of
his shells were visible in the dusky twilight of that smoke-crowned
hill. There his direct and enfilading batteries, with the vividness,
intensity, and almost the rapidity, of lightning, hurled the
messengers of death in the midst of our brave ranks, vainly struggling
through the murderous fire to gain the hills and the guns of the
enemy. Nor was it any straggling or ill-directed fire. The arrangement
of the enemy's guns was such that they could pour their concentrated
and incessant fire upon any point occupied by our assailing troops,
and all of them were plied with the greatest skill and animation.
During all this time the rattle of musketry was incessant.
"About sunset there was a pause in the cannonading and musketry, and
orders came for our brigade to fall in. Silently but unflinchingly the
men moved out from under their cover, and, when they reached the
ground, quickened their pace to a run. As the head of the column came
in sight of the enemy, at a distance of about three-fourths of a mile
from their batteries, when close to Slaughter's house, it was saluted
with a shower of shell from the enemy's guns on the crest of the hill.
It moved on by the flank down the hill into the plain beyond, crossing
a small stream which passes through the city and empties into Hazel
Run, then over another hill to the line of railroad. We moved at so
rapid a pace that many of the men relieved themselves of their
blankets and haversacks, and in some instances of their great-coats,
which in most cases were lost. By counter-march, we extended our line
along the railroad, the right resting toward the city, and the left
near Hazel Run. The words, 'Forward, charge!' ran along the lines. The
men sprang forward, and moved at a run, crossed the railroad into a
low muddy swamp on the left, which reaches down to Hazel Run, the
right moving over higher and less muddy ground, all the time the
batteries of the enemy concentrating their terrible fire and {200}
pouring it upon the advancing lines. Suddenly the cannonading and
musketry of the enemy ceased. The shouts of our men also were hushed,
and nothing was heard along the line save the command: 'Forward,
men--steady--close up.' In this way we moved forward, until within
about twenty yards of the celebrated stone wall. Before we reached the
point of which I have been speaking, we came to an irregular ravine or
gully, into which, in the darkness of night, the lines plunged, but
immediately gained the opposite side, and were advancing along the
level ground toward the stone wall. Behind that wall, and in
rifle-pits on its flanks, were posted the enemy's infantry--according
to their statements--four ranks deep; and on the hill, a few yards
above, lay in ominous silence their death-dealing artillery. It was
while we were moving steadily forward that, with one startling crash,
with one simultaneous sheet of fire and flame, they hurled on our
advancing lines the whole terrible force of their infantry and
artillery. The powder from their musketry burned in our very faces,
and the breath of their artillery was hot upon our cheeks. The 'leaden
rain and iron hail' in an instant forced back the advancing lines upon
those who were close to them in the rear; and before the men could be
rallied to renew the charge, the lines had been hurled back by the
irresistible fire of the enemy to the cover of the ravine or gully
which they had just passed. The enemy swept the ground with his guns,
killing and wounding many--our men in the meantime keeping up a
spirited fire upon the unseen foe."
[Illustration: MARCHING THROUGH TENNESSEE.]
[Illustration: GENERAL GRANT DIRECTING THE DISPOSITION OF TROOPS.]