and we find the enemy missing. We are passing over surface which was
fighting ground yesterday and last night; encountering the dead in
both blue and gray, a most gruesome sight, at the same time driving
back the rebel skirmishers until we come in sight of the Confederate
earthworks, when we halt and throw up works for our own protection.
Even danger and death can not wipe out human or, at least, boyish
nature. Near the brief halting place are mulberry trees, fairly black
with luscious, well ripened fruit, and not even rebel riflemen can
keep Yankee berry-pickers out of those tempting branches. We soon
advance, however, across a field and towards a railroad-cut some
distance ahead of us, and to reach it we have to run the risk of the
foe's rifles and cannon, snugly entrenched beyond the cut. We make
a rush for this cut and the tumbles that some of the men take in
entering it are funny even in battle's din. Colonel Davis's well known
avoirdupois gained such momentum in the rapid rush that halting on the
brink was quite impossible, and he rolled rapidly down the declivity.
There is skirmishing all day and an artillery duel in the afternoon.
Just at dark, a rapid movement is made across a ravine and orders are
quietly passed that when the Colonel's hat is raised on the point
of his sword, we are to rush forward to the edge of a bank, so near
and yet so far below the rebel works that they cannot depress their
cannon sufficiently to hit us. Officers are summoned later to brigade
headquarters where they are informed that there will be a night attack,
but, for some reason, changes come in the programme and in a new
position we again throw up breastworks. In an exposed condition, we lie
in them through the night and are saluted in the morning of Sunday, the
19th, by the enemy's fire at closer range.
[Sidenote: JUNE 19, '64]
The 19th falls on Sunday, though the particular day of the week
gives these soldiers very little concern, since each successive
twenty-four-hours is only one day more of "smoke and roar and
powder-stench" and of this particular interval, General Warren has
only the words, "Remained in position. Loss about three hundred." If
remaining in position brought such a record as this, what would it have
been had there been another effort to advance? The night before had
seen very vigorous work in the trenches and men tried to strengthen
them against possible attack, and so close were the workman to each
other and so emphatic their strokes, George A. Farrar of "E" was
wounded in the knee by a pickaxe and was obliged to go to the hospital.
Nothing in the world finds more ready and willing workers than the
throwing up of breastworks that may be used for defense and, under the
spur of hostile missiles, the laziest become most industrious. At such
times there are no suggestions that the other fellow ought to do it,
but everyone is doing something, if it is no more than loosening earth
with a bayonet or case-knife and throwing up the results with a cup
or tin-plate, hoping thus to stop a vagrant bullet. Continuous rattle
of musketry recalls the noise of the Wilderness and, with the evident
skill of the sharpshooters, it behooves everyone to lie low. Writes
one poor fellow, somewhat discouraged, "When shall we get through
this terrible campaign?" Another says, "The Thirty-ninth is about five
hundred yards (others put the distance as low as eighty yards) from
the Confederate works and our skirmishers are on a hillside, across a
ravine. At nightfall, we begin on the works again." This, doubtless,
is the point referred to by Captain Porter, years afterward, when at a
reunion of the Regiment, he said, "our skirmishers were among the first
to establish the line at what was afterward the Crater, blown up on the
30th of July, 1864, and that line was pushed nearest to the rebel line,
not excepting that of Fort Stedman and Fort McGilvery, by twenty yards."
Of the 20th, an officer records, "We worked till two o'clock last
night, and turned out at four this morning. The rebel sharpshooters
are on the lookout for a man careless enough to show himself. I am
twenty-four years old to-day." Another scribe in the same company
enters these words, "Wish I were at home to-day for it is our boy's
birthday," so closely does the absent soldier keep in heart and mind
to the loved ones at the hearthstone. While there is a trend towards
the west, General Griffin's Division (First) reaching the Jerusalem
plank-road and the Second Corps crossing it, our portion of the Fifth
Corps, except as a part of the Brigade moves off to the left to help
fill the gap made by the withdrawal of Griffin, remains as before. The
21st varies little from yesterday, men keeping pretty closely to their
places, the least exposure bringing attention from the enemy, and men
are wounded in spite of all care to the contrary. One of Burnside's
colored regiments is digging a traverse out to the picket line. Extreme
vigilance continues into the night, through fear of an assault by the
enemy, and at about 9 p. m., the most of the Regiment goes on picket.
Picket duty on the 22nd requires vigilance, "Yank" and "Reb" exchange
compliments whenever opportunity offers and Jonas P. Barden, Company
A, is killed. Quite late in the evening, the Regiment is relieved and
retires to its former location, the same being not remote from the
spot which in a few weeks would be known as the "Crater," and somewhat
further to the Union left, opposite prominencies will be called Forts
Sedgwick and Mahone, or in army parlance, Forts "Hell and Damnation."
It is on this day that the Second Corps suffers one of the severest set
backs in its entire history, the enemy succeeding in getting at its
left flank, in a manner unprecedented, and in carrying off four cannon
and more than two thousand prisoners.
[Sidenote: JUNE 24, '64]
Everyone is learning caution, but there are mortalities still, as with
S. B. Harris of "H" who is hit in the head and killed on the 23rd. It
is fair to suppose that Union sharpshooters are just as vigilant as
their opponents, and that Death visits, with no show of partiality,
both blue and gray. As the stay in these advanced trenches has not
savored at all of rest, any change seems desirable, hence orders to
move early in the morning of the 24th are heard with pleasure and,
before daylight, we are off to the left to take the places of Second
Corps men who had gone still further to the left, while the Ninth
Corps moves into our vacated places. One very careful observer states
that we lost our way and had to back and fill, as it were, at one time
coming near running into the enemy, who kept up an almost constant
shelling during the change. There seems to be less activity among the
sharpshooters, for which the soldiers are duly grateful. To-day the
original members of the Twelfth Massachusetts, the Fletcher Webster
Regiment, long in the Second Brigade of our Division, draw out of line
and start for home. The recruits, re-enlisted and drafted men of the
Twelfth are to become a part of the Thirty-ninth. The coming into our
ranks of one hundred and twenty-five men from the returning Twelfth,
is the crowning incident of the 25th. One hundred and six more men are
nominally transferred, but they are absent on sick leave, in rebel
prisons or elsewhere, and those received to-day, represent about all
the real additions to come from our friends who, after three years of
arduous labor, are homeward bound. The new position of the Regiment is
across the Petersburg & Norfolk Railroad and the depleted condition
of the 39th, following the campaign, is evident from the fact that
eighteen of the men from the Twelfth Regiment, added to those left in
Company C of the Thirty-ninth, called for just forty three rations in
the entire company.
It was not lack of excitement which prompted a certain Company A man
to a prank which afforded him and his comrades a deal of pleasure,
rather was it a desire for something out of the ordinary that, in
the midst of this, the severest campaign in the progress of the war,
suggested to him a variation. Taking pencil and paper, he wrote, "I
should be happy to correspond with any young lady so disposed; address
G. W. Cheney, Company A, 39th Regt., M. V. M., Second Brigade, Third
Division, Fifth Army Corps, Army of the Potomac." Thinking the idea
too good to be kept secret, he read it to the boys around the campfire
who were delighted with the plan and he had to write another, couched
thus, "I would be pleased to correspond with young ladies, 18 to 22,
with view to matrimony." Both of the ads were sent to the Boston Herald
and the writer thinks they were the first of the kind ever inserted
there. Two weeks later, or after the ads had had time to circulate,
the mail brought one hundred and six answers, representing every state
then in the Union; long letters, short and pithy ones, some perfumed
and embossed; no end of good advice, love, kisses, merry, sporting
fun and blessings; it was understood that the Colonel's good wife
was quite horrified at seeing the ad and there must have been some
uxorious advice to Colonel Davis since, though the next mail had over
two hundred letters for the advertisers, they were all destroyed on
the pretext that there were no such persons in the Regiment as those
addressed. This however did not prevent the enterprising young men
doing extensive corresponding over their own names.
The 26th is a quiet day; the 27th has its alarms with prompt response
but no attack. Long desired rain fell along towards night, but not
enough to satisfy the overheated men and the thirsty earth; so near are
pickets of the opposing armies, they could readily converse without
raising their voices, but they have not, as yet, reached that degree
of familiarity. The 28th, Tuesday, marks a change in the situation in
that we move to the front and right and proceed to throw up a line of
earthworks, stronger than those already in use with the expectation of
thereby affording shelter for suddenly attacked pickets and to better
resist any assault of the enemy. The month of June ends with the Corps
stretched along the Petersburg line, with the Ninth and Eighteenth at
the right and the Second and the Sixth at its left. By seeming common
consent, pickets cease firing, though the heavy guns thunder away;
evidently both Johnnie and Yankee would like a rest; after extremely
hard work, the regimental rolls are got into shape for muster which is
had on the 30th; another sign of semi-permanency is the coming up of
some of the sutlers who are anxious to resume operations, especially in
view of the possible coming of the paymaster. It is in these days that
the 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, Second Corps, which received so
severe a handling at Harris's Farm, May 19th, yet most manfully held
its place, is once more encountered and the ravages of war were never
more apparent than in the fact that only three hundred are reported
present for duty out of eighteen hundred men who left the defenses in
the month of May.
[Sidenote: JULY, '64]
The first third of July, as far as the Thirty-ninth is concerned, is
quite uneventful. The comparative quiet that the men are experiencing
has become a necessity. The persistent bending of the bow, beginning
at the Wilderness, is bringing expected results. The fire of conscious
strength, so evident in the earlier encounters of the campaign, is
nearly burned out and recent trials of courage and endurance have shown
and, future struggles will exhibit, a lacking of that enthusiasm
which characterized the early days of May. Human bodies cannot endure
everything, their limitations are sooner or later determined and
such is the case with these survivors of the terrible exactions so
continuously made. General F. A. Walker says, "Men died of flesh wounds
which, at another time, would merely have afforded a welcome excuse
for a thirty days' sickness leave. The limit of human endurance had
been reached." General Grant, in his Memoirs, writes of the situation
after the assault on the 18th of June, "I now ordered the troops to be
put under cover, and allowed some of the rest which they had so long
needed." It is a protraction of this rest that our men are getting
in earlier July. From the 1st to the 10th of the month, the diary of
General Warren has no entry of greater importance than reference to the
building of a redoubt or the development of some plan on paper and,
though constant vigilance is evident, there are none of the exposure
and tests characteristic of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania.
To supplement the somewhat stilted rations furnished by the commissary
department, the sanitary commission is sending in a variety of
vegetables, fresh and dried, as well as fruits that are most gratefully
received by the men and they are working a great improvement in
general health. In our Regiment, appearances begin to resemble those
of winter quarters since roll calls, three times a day, are in order,
falling-in with guns and equipments. Ground is cleared for inspection
and those formal ordeals are had as of old, and guns have to be cleaned
up accordingly; prayer-meetings also are resumed. The 4th, usually
so noisy at home, is just the reverse in our particular locality,
though away off to the right, Butler and Smith fire salutes. In the
Fifth Corps, the impression apparently is that we have had noise
enough of late. In the evening, the pickets on both sides celebrate a
bit with cheers, perhaps in behalf of ancestors who, both North and
South, fought for a common cause. The weather continues very hot and
mutual forbearance permits the men to stretch their tents as awnings
back of the earthworks into which they are ready to tumble instantly,
should occasion arise. Heavy details are made of men for labor on a
new fort in process of erection to the southwest of our position, to
be called, at first, Fort Warren, but later to take the name of our
Colonel who, all unconscious of the fact, is rapidly approaching the
day of his departure. On the 7th of July the Third Division of the
Sixth Corps is detached and, by way of the James and Chesapeake Bay, is
sent to Baltimore to head off near Frederick, Maryland, the movement
of General Early and his men on Washington. This Confederate officer
had been ordered to leave the vicinity of Cold Harbor on the 13th of
June, and to proceed towards the Shenandoah Valley for the purpose of
making trouble for General David Hunter, who had been operating in that
section, Lee evidently thinking that his lessened battle front could
afford the withdrawal. A considerable battle followed on the 9th, at
Monocacy Junction, where Lew Wallace with a force made up of local
militia and certain Ohio one hundred days' men and the Third Division
of the Sixth Corps, was able to hold the Confederates long enough to
permit the arrival in Washington of the remaining two divisions of
the Sixth, the same leaving City Point the night of the 9th, and to
successfully repel the rebel assault upon Fort Stevens on the 12th.
Considerable effort was necessary to persuade General Grant that any
portion of the Confederate army was missing from his front, luckily
he was convinced in time to send a sufficient force to Washington to
destroy all of Early's expectations.
[Sidenote: JULY 11, '64]
The comparative calm of the first third of July was rudely broken on
the 11th. The day had begun much as usual and, from five o'clock in the
morning till five-thirty in the afternoon, there was the regular round
of camp and other duties when, for some unexplained reason, the enemy
began a fierce fire of artillery on our rations-train. As hitherto,
nearly all of the shells exploded way back of our lines but one, and a
man states distinctly in his diary, "the only one," struck close beside
Colonel Davis and, exploding, wounded him so severely that he died
very soon afterward, 7 p. m. Private Mentzer of "A," long years later,
recalls the sad happening thus: "Streets, tents, stockades, properly
aligned; camps, graded and drained; constant discipline, inspections,
dress parades, deportment, all better than those of any other regiment
I ever saw, tell me that Colonel Davis did his work thoroughly and
well. He sat on a rustic seat or bench, talking with a friend (Asst.
Surgeon of the Thirteenth), none other near, save a detail of pickets,
of whom I was one, just reported at headquarters, when a shell burst
and tore his body dreadfully, still he was the commander to the end."
Lieut. J. H. Dusseault, "H," describes the sad event thus:
"The first shot fired, which we were wont to call the five o'clock
express, hit a tree about fifty feet in front of our lines, cutting it
off some forty feet from the ground; the rebels were really shelling
our baggage train, some distance in the rear. Hitting the tree
deflected the shell so that it passed downward through the canopy of
leaves, arranged for shade above the officers' quarters, and burst
under the Colonel, who was sitting cross-legged on a rustic seat
with Assistant Surgeon L. W. Hixon of the Thirteenth Massachusetts.
Both men were thrown down and the lower part of Colonel Davis' body
seemed completely torn to pieces. My own quarters being not more than
ten feet away, I was able to see the missile as it passed downward,
after striking the tree. I helped pull the Colonel into his pit. His
mind was clear and I heard him converse with Lieut. Colonel Peirson
to the purport that he would be colonel now. To this Colonel Peirson
replied, 'Oh no! You are going to get out of this.' The wounded
officer, however, insisted that it was all over with him and he gave
certain directions to the Lieut. Colonel saying that he would like to
have him recommend Capt. F. R. Kinsley to be Lieut. Colonel and, his
passion for details being strong even in death, he named a member of
the drum-corps, who had overstayed his leave of absence and wanted him
attended to when he returned. He requested also that a letter he had
just written to his wife should be mailed and that the circumstances
of his death should be added. Dr. Hixon, proclaiming himself also
wounded, said he was unable to attend to the dying officer and it is
possible that the surgeon of the First Massachusetts Heavy Artillery
was called in to help dress the wound. After this he was placed on a
stretcher and William S. Sumner of "H" was one of the men who carried
him to the rear. As the enemy was shelling the road, they felt obliged
to carry him through the woods and the way being very rough, the
officer suffering terribly said to the bearers, 'Men, I wish you would
take the road, I hate to ask you to do so, but this is terrible.'
He died about the time the hospital was reached. A veteran of the
Thirteenth Regiment claims to have a piece of the shell which killed
Colonel Davis."
At this very time Colonel Davis was president of a court martial at the
headquarters of the Third Division and had been there earlier in the
day but, as the business in hand was not in proper shape, the court did
not convene and its president returned to his Regiment. Had it been
in progress, the chances are that our colonel would not have passed
out of life as he did. John S. Beck, "C," detailed as a clerk at the
court martial, writes thus: "I did not think it was the last time I
should ever see him.... I felt very badly about it, for he seemed like
a father to me. The boys felt blue enough. I think it will be hard to
fill his place. I turned in feeling very sad and downcast."[N]
[Sidenote: JULY 11, '64]
As with Tennyson's Brook, "Men may come and men may go," but the war
"goes on." The gallant officer, into whose care the dying colonel
committed the Regiment, was fully equal to the task. A member of
the famous Fourth Battalion, which served its period of volunteer
duty in Fort Warren at the breaking out of the war entirely without
compensation, he had been one of the first to volunteer in the
Twentieth Massachusetts where he was first lieutenant and adjutant and,
captured at Ball's Bluff, had experienced Richmond inhospitality. Then
as a staff officer, he had seen the fierce Peninsula campaign along
with Generals Dana and Sedgwick. An early selection of Governor Andrew,
he was made second to Colonel Davis in the raising of the Thirty-ninth
and we have grown pretty well acquainted with him during the preceding
months. As close to the enemy at Laurel Hill as he well could be, he
was severely wounded and he now takes his promotion with the good will
and thorough loyalty of every officer and man under his command. Major
Henry M. Tremlett who was still absent on detached service in Boston
becomes lieutenant colonel, and Captain F. R. Kinsley of the Somerville
Company, "E," succeeds Tremlett as major.
Were this history that of the entire war or even that of the Army of
the Potomac, the story of the remaining days of July would occupy very
little space, for the siege of Petersburg, actually beginning on the
15th of June, is to continue until the 2nd of April, '65, and may be
characterized as an unbroken engagement of almost ten months' duration
with occasional extra emphasis laid on this or that point along the
battle line, many miles in extent. Away at the right is the Eighteenth
Corps, holding the space from the Appomattox to the Ninth Corps which
stretches out till its left joins the right of the Fifth, which in
turn touches the right of the Second; this corps since the withdrawal
of the Sixth for service in Maryland, in Washington and later in the
valley of the Shenandoah, has become the extreme Union left, with its
line refused towards the south, and west of the Jerusalem plank-road,
only a fraction of the distance to be covered before the winter's stay
is ended. Even now the enemy is making vigorous effort to defend the
several railroads which connect Petersburg with the south, feeling
certain that Grant and Meade will not long delay trying to cut off the
city from its Weldon Railroad connections and, until that time arrives,
there will be more digging than charging along the rival lines, though
the exchange of sulphurous compliments will be so constant that
cessation rather than continuance will arouse remark.
[Sidenote: JULY 13, '64]
General Warren, who has his command well in hand, has no conspicuous
statement for this period, and even some regimental historians pass
over the interval with only a few and scattering remarks. It will
be understood that the most diligent picket and camp duties are
maintained all of the time, and very few if any idle days come to
either commissioned officer or enlisted man from one week's end to
another. Never was there a better illustration of eternal vigilance
than that displayed by both sides in this long game of opposites;
hence in our progress it will be unnecessary to mention more than the
passing events, in the least out of the ordinary. Colonel Thomas F.
McCoy of the One hundred and Seventh Pennsylvania succeeds Colonel
Davis as president of the court martial, while the body of the deceased
officer, with his faithful steed and Chaplain French, starts July 12th
on its long journey homeward. Many a member of the Regiment felt, if
he did not so express himself, as did the writer who put these words
in his diary, "I can't realize that he has really gone and will not
be with us at the front again." Early in the morning of this day, the
Regiment is aroused and at 2.30 a. m. moves into the large fort or
redoubt, for some time in process of erection. Of this, General Warren
makes mention, saying that he spent the day here, planning and cutting
timber, etc. At daylight of the 13th, everyone goes to work with pick
or shovel in making defensible the new fort. Here we are to remain till
the middle of August. Named at first for the commander of the Fifth
Corps, it will soon take the name of our late colonel. Covering about
three acres of ground, it is capable of holding a brigade. Situated a
mile or more below Petersburg, it is on the Jerusalem plank-road and
the next fortification south of Sedgwick, the Fort "Hell" of rebel
parlance. Lieutenant Dusseault says, "In building our fort, we dug a
trench twenty feet wide and ten feet deep, and threw up the rampart
on the inside. Thus there were eighteen or twenty feet of banking. The
fort was made square with a diagonal through it. We had a magazine in
it, and two wells were dug for a water supply. Besides our Brigade
there was with us also the Ninth (Bigelow's) Battery, which had
suffered so severely at Gettysburg."