If any one, taking up this book casually, should wonder why it was
written, it may suffice to observe that "Gettysburg" is probably
destined to mark an Epoch of the Republic;--as being one of the very
few decisive battles of the Great Rebellion. Accordingly, whosoever
took any part in it may hope to share its immortality of glory.
But, says one, the militia were not engaged in the battle. True;
neither was the reserve of eleven thousand men, under General French,
at Frederick and elsewhere. Yet who would withhold from these veterans
the honor of having been participators in the great struggle? They had
their part to play--not so direct, nor conspicuous, nor important a
part as they played whose valor won the day, yet important withal.
Enough for the militia, they offered their lives for the Fatherland,
and stood instant, waiting only for orders to hurry into the front of
battle.
To the militia force, mainly of the cities of New York and Brooklyn,
was from the first entrusted the defence of the valley of the
Susquehanna. The Army of the Potomac could afford no protection to
Harrisburg and the rich agricultural regions lying around it. For
General Hooker, notwithstanding his vigilance and activity, had not
prevented the advance corps of the enemy, under General Ewell, from
penetrating to the very banks of the Susquehanna. Whether or not he
cared to prevent it, is not here considered. A little later, to be
sure, Lee became evidently alarmed on account of his extended line and
made haste to contract it. But during the few days of panic that
intervened between the first appearance of the enemy along the
Susquehanna and their hasty departure therefrom, nothing stood between
them and Harrisburg save the militia, whom General Halleck in his
Official Report reviewing the military operations of the year 1863, saw
fit to allude to as follows:--
"Lee's army was supposed to be advancing against Harrisburg, which
was garrisoned by State militia, upon which little or no reliance
could be placed."
York had fallen; and, notwithstanding the Mayor of that city--be his
name forever buried in oblivion--went out to meet the enemy hoping
doubtless to secure his favor by craven submission, a heavy ransom had
been exacted for its exemption from pillage. A rebel detachment had
fallen upon and put to flight the force guarding the bridge over the
Susquehanna at Columbia, and thus compelled the burning of that fine
structure; while Ewell with the main body of his corps was moving
cautiously up toward Harrisburg. Finally, when within five miles of
Bridgeport Heights, having driven in the force of skirmishers
who--militia, be it observed--had for several days gallantly held in
check the head of the advancing column, he halted. The state capital
was a tempting prize, but scarcely worth to him the risk of a desperate
battle. The gates of the city were shut, and Ewell hesitated to hurl
his masses against them. It is not now pertinent to enquire what might
have resulted had he chosen to attack. He did not attack, and the
capital of Pennsylvania was spared the shame of having to pass beneath
the yoke of a conqueror. To the militia of New York and Brooklyn, in
the main, is due the praise of having saved her that humiliation.
The reason which prompted this bold and enterprising commander to
observe unusual circumspection in his advance up the Cumberland Valley
is obvious. He held the extreme right of the rebel line, whose left
could not have been much short of fifty miles distant. The militia of
Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey and New York, had been summoned in haste
to the border, and for ten days they had been pouring down in unknown
numbers. Thus Ewell found himself confronted by an unreckoned host,
whose numbers would naturally, by one in his exposed situation, be
magnified. The position of defence was a strong one, and to have failed
in an assault upon it might easily have involved his destruction, and,
as a consequence, the destruction of the whole rebel army. Could he
have had a day or two longer to enable him to gain correct information
of the strength of the works, and of the garrison, he would not
probably have hesitated to attempt the capture of the place. But the
action of the great drama was now moving forward with startling
rapidity. Meade was concentrating on the flank of Lee, who saw that not
a day was to be lost in distant and secondary expeditions. Ewell was
accordingly recalled with all haste; and happy had it been for the
Union cause had the General commanding the Department of the
Susquehanna been early enough apprised of the hurried withdrawal of the
enemy to make the services of the militia available at Gettysburg.
But the defence of Harrisburg, which was the main objective of General
Lee in his raid up the Susquehanna Valley, is not the only title which
the New York Militia hold to the gratitude of Pennsylvania and of the
Nation. Who shall undertake to say how far the result of the battle of
Gettysburg was determined by the fact of Union militia reinforcements
being near at hand--their strength vastly over-estimated, there is no
doubt, by both armies? Indeed there was reason to suppose, and many
believed, while the battle was raging, that they had already come up
and were actually engaged. The moral effect of such a report circulated
through the ranks of contending forces, and even half credited, is
immense. The one it fills with enthusiasm and animates to heroic
endurance, for it summons them to victory; the other it fills with
terror, and makes effort seem useless, for it is to them the omen of
coming defeat. Nevertheless there can be little doubt that at the close
of the third day of conflict the rebel army was still a powerful
host--its organization not irreparably broken, its numbers equal if
not, indeed, superior to those opposed to it. True, it had been
repulsed with terrible slaughter, but it was far from being vanquished,
for it was made up of hardy and oft victorious veterans, to whom
repulse was not defeat. General Meade did not feel strong enough to
assume the offensive; and who shall undertake to say that there had yet
arisen an imperious necessity for the withdrawal of Lee across the
Potomac, except as involved in this very matter of reinforcements?
With regard to the ungenerous disparagement contained in the remarks of
General Halleck it is quite likely that he merely meant to say that the
troops hurriedly collected at Harrisburg were untried, and therefore
ought not to be entrusted with any critical service. But the words, as
they stand, carry with them a sweeping detraction and are nothing less
than calumnious. The Brooklyn Twenty-Third--or rather the Division,
taken as a whole, with which it was incorporated--has only to point to
its record as given very imperfectly in the following History, and
especially to the farewell orders of General Meade, and of the
commander of the Division, Brigadier General W. F. Smith, to whom the
nation is now looking as a military chieftain of great promise, for a
vindication of its fair name.
But it is not on account of any supposed historic value attaching to
the story it tells, that this book has been written. It was undertaken
rather as a memorial of the campaign of the Twenty-Third Regiment and
of other regiments with which it was from time to time associated,
interesting chiefly to the men who participated in the events
described, and to their friends. These will find herein a portraiture,
faithful so far as it goes, of the daily life they led amid the
monotony of the camp, the excitement of the siege, the perpetual worry
of the bivouac; of the martial achievements they performed, and some
they narrowly escaped performing; in a word, of the sum total of the
services they rendered to the Nation during those momentous Thirty
Days.
The statistics of the book have been compiled with care and fidelity.
The distances of that part of the line of march which lay in
Cumberland, Adams and Franklin counties, Pennsylvania, have been
measured off carefully on elaborate county maps, kindly loaned for the
purpose by Colonel Everdell. For the remainder of the route, no similar
guides being accessible, only approximate results were attainable. If
any one is disappointed to find these distances shorter than his own
rough estimates, he is reminded that the reckoning is made in those
tantalizing "Pennsylvania" miles--probably the longest on the
globe--with which we became so painfully familiar.
Having for the sake of the general reader scrupulously avoided
throughout the following narrative all allusions of a merely private or
personal interest, I should be wanting in good feeling, were I to let
this opportunity pass without paying my respects to those of my
companions in arms, to whom I am indebted for friendship, for kindness
and for sympathy. I am the more incited to make this acknowledgment
from the belief that I am not alone in cherishing such grateful
recollections--that many a heart will respond tenderly to all I shall
say.
Who of my company can soon forget the tender solicitude of Acting
Captain Shepard for his men--on the march, helping the weary by bearing
their burdens at the expense of his own strength, itself delicate; at
the bivouac, providing suitable care for the sick; and ever prompt to
spend himself for his command in a hundred delicate and unnoticed ways?
Or, the intelligent activity of Acting First Lieutenant Van Ingen, the
thorough disciplinarian and dashing officer; to whose energy and
forethought the company were primarily indebted, at the end of many a
hard day's march, for an early cup of hot coffee, and a bed of rails
which otherwise had been a bed of mud? Nor should I do justice to my
emotions did I fail to bear record to the prudence and sagacity of
Acting Second Lieutenant Hunter, whose dignity of character, finely
blended with genial humor, at once commanded the respect and secured
the attachment of his men; who was watchful against danger and cool in
the midst of it; who knew his duty as a soldier and loyally discharged
it, however distasteful it might sometimes be to himself or his
command.
Nor can I forget the genial and capable Sergeant-Major Ogden, as ready
to surrender his horse to a foot-sore soldier as to cheer the drooping
spirits of his company by his patriotic and exuberant singing while
"marching along"; Dr. Bennett, the amiable and popular Assistant
Surgeon; Story, the ever-punctual and faithful Orderly, who had the art
to soften distasteful requirements by a gentlemanly suavity; Sergeant
Blossom, self-respecting and respected, perpetually finding something
to do to render the general hardships more endurable, and going about
it with so little ostentation that it too often passed unappreciated;
Hazard, genial, impulsive, generous; Howland, who, on the march, bore
the heaviest burden with the least murmuring; and with exemplary
fidelity was ever to be found in his place as the guide of the company,
plodding along unfalteringly; Corporal Hurlbut, snatching from an
exhausted comrade the musket which was dragging him down, to bear it
upon his own weary shoulders; Thornton, whose common sense and merry
wit and kindly disposition gave him an entrance to every heart; Allen,
modest, amiable, faithful in duty; Deland, with a heart big enough to
contain the regiment; Van Ingen, tender of sympathies as a girl, and
strong in every manly virtue; now greeting with kindly recognition some
neglected and unnoticed soldier; now helping another to bear his
burden, though struggling wearily under his own.
Green be the memory, too, of Shick, who kept the pot boiling while the
rest slept, on many and many a dismal night, that they might have
cooked rations for the morrow's journey; and Wales, the intelligent
counsellor; and Stevens, spirited, attentive, generous, and a model of
personal tidiness; and Hubbell, who hid beneath a mask of indifference
a warm and generous heart; and Lockwood, the upright, trusty and solid
soldier; and Palmer and Johnson and Burr--members of the regiment only
during the campaign--who won the praise of all by their affable manners
and their assiduity in whatsoever capacity. And finally, I greet with
grateful remembrance thee, O youthful Hood, whose winning manners early
gave thee the key to my heart; and thee, Oliver, handsome as Apollo and
a thousand times more useful, the mirror of virtue and refinement,
whose praises were on every lip for every soldierly quality.
Would that I might add to this pleasing roll of personal acquaintance
and friendship the names of others of my comrades, as genial, true and
gallant, doubtless, as the regiment affords, but whom it was not my
happiness to know.
I must content myself, in closing these prefatory remarks, with
expressing my thankfulness for having been permitted to share in a
glorious service with as noble and gallant a regiment as ever offered
itself, a free sacrifice, on the altar of Country and Liberty.
It is due to the Twenty-Third Regiment that I should not conclude
without observing that the memorial which follows is not in any sense
to be considered as representing that regiment. Having been connected
with the Twenty-Third only during its absence, it would be simply a
piece of impertinence in me to claim to speak for it. And this very
circumstance of being an outsider has given me an advantage. For,
unconscious of any motive except to tell the truth and render praise
where I believed it to be due, I have felt at liberty to say many
things which modesty would have forbidden a member to say, as well as
some things which one representing the regiment might have thought had
better been left unspoken. I have aimed to give, simply, truthfully,
the story of the life we led, in all its lights and shadows, as far as
my limited opportunities furnished the materials.