THE REACTION--DEPRESSION--BITTING COLD--SHARP HUNGER AND SAD REFLEXION.
“Of being taken by the Insolent foe.”--Othello.
The night that followed was inexpressibly dreary: The high-wrought
nervous tension, which had been protracted through the long hours
that the fight lasted, was succeeded by a proportionate mental
depression, such as naturally follows any strain upon the mind.
This was intensified in our cases by the sharp sting of defeat, the
humiliation of having to yield ourselves, our horses and our arms into
the possession of the enemy, the uncertainty as to the future, and the
sorrow we felt at the loss of so many of our comrades.
Company L had suffered very severely, but our chief regret was for the
gallant Osgood, our Second Lieutenant. He, above all others, was our
trusted leader. The Captain and First Lieutenant were brave men, and
good enough soldiers, but Osgood was the one “whose adoption tried,
we grappled to our souls with hooks of steel.” There was never any
difficulty in getting all the volunteers he wanted for a scouting
party. A quiet, pleasant spoken gentleman, past middle age, he looked
much better fitted for the office of Justice of the Peace, to which
his fellow-citizens of Urbana, Illinois, had elected and reelected
him, than to command a troop of rough riders in a great civil war. But
none more gallant than he ever vaulted into saddle to do battle for
the right. He went into the Army solely as a matter of principle, and
did his duty with the unflagging zeal of an olden Puritan fighting for
liberty and his soul’s salvation. He was a superb horseman--as all the
older Illinoisans are and, for all his two-score years and ten, he
recognized few superiors for strength and activity in the Battalion. A
radical, uncompromising Abolitionist, he had frequently asserted that
he would rather die than yield to a Rebel, and he kept his word in this
as in everything else.
As for him, it was probably the way he desired to die. No one believed
more ardently than he that
Whether on the scaffold high,
Or in the battle’s van;
The fittest place for man to die,
Is where he dies for man.
Among the many who had lost chums and friends was Ned Johnson, of
Company K. Ned was a young Englishman, with much of the suggestiveness
of the bull-dog common to the lower class of that nation. His fist was
readier than his tongue. His chum, Walter Savage was of the same surly
type. The two had come from England twelve years before, and had been
together ever since. Savage was killed in the struggle for the fence
described in the preceding chapter. Ned could not realize for a while
that his friend was dead. It was only when the body rapidly stiffened
on its icy bed, and the eyes which had been gleaming deadly hate when
he was stricken down were glazed over with the dull film of death, that
he believed he was gone from him forever. Then his rage was terrible.
For the rest of the day he was at the head of every assault upon the
enemy. His voice could ever be heard above the firing, cursing the
Rebels bitterly, and urging the boys to “Stand up to ’em! Stand right
up to ’em! Don’t give a inch! Let them have the best you got in the
shop! Shoot low, and don’t waste a cartridge!”
When we surrendered, Ned seemed to yield sullenly to the inevitable.
He threw his belt and apparently his revolver with it upon the snow. A
guard was formed around us, and we gathered about the fires that were
started. Ned sat apart, his arms folded, his head upon his breast,
brooding bitterly upon Walter’s death. A horseman, evidently a Colonel
or General, clattered up to give some directions concerning us. At the
sound of his voice Ned raised his head and gave him a swift glance;
the gold stars upon the Rebel’s collar led him to believe that he was
the commander of the enemy. Ned sprang to his feet, made a long stride
forward, snatched from the breast of his overcoat the revolver he had
been hiding there, cocked it and leveled it at the Rebel’s breast.
Before he could pull the trigger Orderly Sergeant Charles Bentley, of
his Company, who was watching him, leaped forward, caught his wrist
and threw the revolver up. Others joined in, took the weapon away, and
handed it over to the officer, who then ordered us all to be searched
for arms, and rode away.
All our dejection could not make us forget that we were intensely
hungry. We had eaten nothing all day. The fight began before we had
time to get any breakfast, and of course there was no interval for
refreshments during the engagement. The Rebels were no better off than
we, having been marched rapidly all night in order to come upon us by
daylight.
Late in the evening a few sacks of meal were given us, and we took the
first lesson in an art that long and painful practice afterward was to
make very familiar to us. We had nothing to mix the meal in, and it
looked as if we would have to eat it dry, until a happy thought struck
some one that our caps would do for kneading troughs. At once every
cap was devoted to this. Getting water from an adjacent spring, each
man made a little wad of dough--unsalted--and spreading it upon a flat
stone or a chip, set it up in front of the fire to bake. As soon as it
was browned on one side, it was pulled off the stone, and the other
side turned to the fire. It was a very primitive way of cooking and I
became thoroughly disgusted with it. It was fortunate for me that I
little dreamed that this was the way I should have to get my meals for
the next fifteen months.
After somewhat of the edge had been taken off our hunger by this food,
we crouched around the fires, talked over the events of the day,
speculated as to what was to be done with us, and snatched such sleep
as the biting cold would permit.