IN THE THICK OF THE FIGHT
Company F at Newberne, N.C. The Fight at Batchelor's Creek. The
Goldsboro Expedition. The Battle of Kingston. The Gum Swamp
Expedition.
Breaking camp, the 46th left the beautiful, placid scenery about
Springfield, its silver river, its silent mountains, for Boston, where
they embarked for North Carolina, November 5th, 1862. They sailed out
of Boston Harbor in the teeth of a winter gale which increased so in
fury that the boat was compelled to put back. When they finally did
leave, the sea was still very rough and they had a slow, stormy
passage.
It goes without saying that many of the men were ill. The boat was
crowded, the accommodations insufficient, and numbers of the Mountain
Boys had never been on the water before. To the confusion of handling
such a body of men was added inexperience in such work. The members of
Company F would have fared badly had it not been for the forethought
of their boy captain. It seemed as if he had passed beforehand in
mental review, the experiences of these weeks and anticipated their
needs. Out of his own funds, he laid in a stock of medicines and
delicacies for the sick. Indeed, those who know, say that he expended
all of his pay in sutler's stores and various things to make his men
more comfortable. Night and day, he was with those who suffered,
cheering, sympathizing, nursing. He was the life of the ship. His men
saw that his kindness and comradeship were not of the superficial
order, but genuine, sincere, a part of his very self and they became,
if possible, more passionately attached to him than ever.
The placid Neuse river was a glad sight when at last they reached its
mouth and steamed up to Newberne, North Carolina. General Burnside had
already captured the town and Company F began army duties in earnest
with garrison work in the little Southern city, with its long dull
lines of earthworks, its white tents, its fleet of gunboats floating
lazily on the river. The constant tramp of soldiers' feet echoed along
the side-walks of this erstwhile quiet, Southern town. Sentries stood
on the corners challenging passers-by, wharves creaked under the loads
of ordnance and quartermasters' stores. Army wagons and ambulances
were constantly passing in the street, all strange and novel at first
to the Mountain Boys but soon familiar. Drilling and guard duty
filled their days. Morning and afternoon they drilled, and the actual
possession of the enemies' country, the warlike aspect of everything
about them, made drilling a far more real and important matter than it
had seemed at home. Captain Conwell felt his responsibility and threw
himself into the work with an earnestness that infected his men. They
would rather drill with him two hours than with any other officer a
half hour. They not only caught the contagion of his enthusiasm, but
he changed the dull, monotonous drudgery of it, into real, fascinating
work by marching them into seemingly hopeless situations and then in
some unexpected and surprising way, extricating them. Nor did he
spare himself any of the unpleasant phases of the work. One day, the
Colonel, while drilling the regiment, noticed that many of the men of
Company F marched far out of their places to avoid a mudhole in the
road. He marched and countermarched them over the same ground to
compel the men to keep their rank and file regardless of the mud.
Captain Conwell saw his object, and himself plunged into the mire, his
men followed, and were thus saved the reprimand which threatened.
During these days, Captain Conwell kept up with the law studies
abandoned at Yale. Every spare minute, he devoted to his books and
committed to memory, one whole volume of Blackstone during the term of
his first enlistment Not many of the soldiers so used their hours
off duty. But it is this turning of every minute to account that has
enabled Dr. Conwell to accomplish so much. He has made his life count
for a half dozen of most person's by never wasting a moment.
The monotony of garrison duty was broken first by a small fight at
Batchelor's Creek, seven miles above Newbern, but only four companies
were engaged. The Mountain Boys saw the first blood spilled at
Kingston and gained there the first glimpse of the horrors of war.
Nearly the entire marching force was sent into the interior on this
expedition, known as the Goldsboro expedition, the object being to cut
the Weldon railroad at Goldsboro, North Carolina. It was a hard march
with short and uncertain halts and occasional cavalry skirmishes. At
Kingston, they met the enemy in force. The Confederates were massed
about the bridge over the Neuse river and held it bravely till the
charge of the 9th New Jersey and 10th Connecticut drove them from
their position and left the woods and a little open field covered with
the dead and dying. The 46th Massachusetts followed the retreating
army and had that first experience with the grim, bloody side of war
that always makes such a strong impression on the green soldier.
They bivouacked at Kingston and next day marched to the Weldon
railroad, reaching it at the bridge below Goldsboro, where the
Confederates had massed a large body of troops to protect their lines
of communication and supplies. This was a battle in earnest, the
artillery was deafening, and the enemy repeatedly charged the Union
lines. The Northern batteries were on a knoll in front, and at the
very moment that a long line of gray was seen approaching through this
field and the Massachusetts men were ordered to lie down, so that the
shot and shell could pass over them, their boy captain walked openly
forward to the batteries and stood there in the smoke. Careless of
himself, he yet realized to the full the meaning of this grim duel,
for when the fight was over and the Northern men cheering, he was
silent Captain Walkley asked why he did not cheer with the others.
"Too many hearts made sad to-day," was the significant reply that
showed he counted the cost to its bitter end, though he went forward
none the less bravely.
Long, monotonous days of garrison duty followed for the men, days of
drilling, of idling up and down the streets of the dull Southern town.
But Captain Conwell used his spare minutes to advantage, and when
no work connected with his company or the personal welfare of his
comrades occupied him, he was studying. Then came the order to drive
the Confederates from a fort they were erecting on the Newbern
Railroad about thirty miles inland. This expedition, known as the Gum
Swamp Expedition, was an experience that tested the mettle of the men
and the resources of the young captain, and an experience none of the
survivors ever forgot. It was a forced march, a quick charge. The
Confederates fled leaving their fort unfinished. The Union men having
successfully completed their work, began the return to Newberne, and
here disaster overtook them. The Confederates hung on their rear,
riddling their ranks with shot and shell. Suffering, maddened, with no
way to turn and fight, for the enemy kept themselves well hidden, with
no way of escape ahead if they remained on the road, they plunged into
the swamp, that swept up black and dismal to the very edge of the
highway. The Confederate prisoners with them, warned them of their
danger, but the men were not to be stayed when a deadly rain of the
enemy's balls was thinning their ranks every minute. The swamp was one
black ooze with water up to their waists, a tangle of grass, reeds,
cypress trees, bushes. Loaded down with their heavy clothing, and
their army accoutrements, one after another the men sank from sheer
exhaustion. No man could succor his brother. It was all he could do to
drag himself through the mire that sucked him down like some terrible,
silent monster of the black, slimy depths. But Captain Conwell would
not desert a man. He could not see his comrades left to die before his
very eyes, those men who came right from his own mountain town, his
own boy friends, the ones who had enlisted under him, marched and
drilled with him. Rather would he perish in the swamp with them. He
worked like a Hercules, encouraging, helping, carrying some of the
more exhausted. A wet, straggling remnant reached Newberne. Even then,
when Captain Conwell found that two of his own company were missing,
he plunged back into the swamp to rescue them. Hours passed, and just
as a relief expedition was starting to search for him, he came back,
his hat gone, his uniform torn into rags, but with one of the men with
him and the other left on a fallen tree with a path blazed to lead the
rescuers to him. No heart could withstand such devotion as that. Young
and old, it touched his men so deeply, they could not speak of it
unmoved. They would gladly have died for him if need be, as one
did later, changing by his heroic act the whole current of Russell
Conwell's life.
This same earnest desire to save that made him plunge back into that
swamp, regardless of self, is with him still to-day, now that his
whole soul is consumed with a longing to save men from moral death. He
lets nothing stand in his way of reaching out a succoring hand. Then
it was his comrades that he loved with such unselfish devotion. Now,
every man is his brother and his heart goes out with the same earnest
desire to help those who need help. The genuineness, the unselfishness
of it goes straight to every man's heart. It binds men to him as in
the old days, and it gives them new faith in themselves. The love
of humanity in his heart is, and always has been, a clear spring,
unpolluted by love of self, by ambition, by any worldly thing.