IN THE TRENCHES.
On the morning of June 19th the regiment was relieved from duty in
the front line, and withdrew to the pine woods from which we advanced
the day before. We were soon joined by most of the men who had fallen
out on the march, or had failed to find the regiment in the constant
changes of position, and the effective strength reported at brigade
head-quarters was one hundred and fifty-one; commissioned officers
four, enlisted men one hundred and forty-seven. A strong line of
intrenchments was erected on the high ground near the railroad. One
hundred men were detailed for fatigue duty on the line, and worked
through that hot June day with pickaxe and shovel. The enemy's firing
was very close, and during the night was quite severe. Our batteries
kept up a steady fire on the rebel lines.
The operations of the last two days had been conducted in the hope
of capturing Petersburg before the whole army of Northern Virginia
could be brought to the rescue. The enemy had taken up a new line
on commanding ground nearer the city. The attack and repulse of the
18th had developed the great strength of that line, and convinced
the commanding-general that further assault would be hopeless. The
heroic courage and desperate valor of the troops had availed only to
secure a strong position near the enemy's line. "No better fighting
has been done during the war," said General Burnside in his report;
but either the attacks had not been properly directed or adequately
supported. Orders were now issued for the troops on the right to hold
and strengthen the lines.
The 20th was but a repetition of the 19th. It was a noisy day in the
front; but being one of comparative quiet to us in the woods, the time
was improved in making up regimental reports for the campaign from
Spottsylvania, and a list of casualties. Several vacancies existed
among the commissioned officers, in consequence of the deaths and
resignations since April 23d, and seven of the companies were commanded
by non-commissioned officers. On the 5th of June, at Hanover Town,
Captain Smith forwarded to Governor Andrew a list of recommendations
for promotion; but as no commissions had been received, and the
exigencies of the service required additional officers, the duties
devolving upon the few commissioned officers present being onerous and
severe, another list was made up this day, and transmitted through the
regular channels to the Governor of the State. This list included the
following non-commissioned officers:--
Sergeant Major Davidson to be First Lieutenant, _vice_ Ranlett,
resigned.
First Sergeant Woodward to be First Lieutenant, _vice_ Cross,
resigned.
First Sergeant Stearns to be First Lieutenant, _vice_ Goodspeed,
resigned.
First Sergeant Haskell to be First Lieutenant, _vice_ Hodgkins,
promoted.
First Sergeant Hancock to be First Lieutenant, _vice_ Fairbank,
promoted.
Sergeant Olcutt to be First Lieutenant, _vice_ Daniels, killed.
Sergeant Cross to be First Lieutenant, _vice_ Burrage, promoted.
Sergeants White, Hancock, Wright, Woodward, and Stearns had previously
been recommended for commissions as second lieutenants, but no officers
in that grade could be mustered, on account of the reduced numbers of
enlisted men. Major Draper, who at this time was in Massachusetts,
submitted to the Governor another list of recommendations about this
date; but before either list could receive attention other changes
became necessary, and all of the sergeants recommended in the foregoing
list, with the addition of First Sergeant Harwood, were commissioned
as first lieutenants. Some of these brave and deserving men, who
had nobly earned their rank, were at this time absent on account of
serious wounds received during campaign, and before they could recover
and rejoin the regiment circumstances had arisen which prevented
their being mustered into the service in the rank to which they were
commissioned.
June 20th Captain Smith was detailed for court-martial duty at division
head-quarters, and the regiment was in command of Captain Ames. At
dusk a colored regiment from the Fourth Division came up in our rear,
and we anticipated a night attack in force; but the men quietly laid
aside their equipments, and being furnished with pickaxes and shovels
went on fatigue duty in the front line. During the night the firing
was very severe. Our position, though not subjected to the exposure of
the front line, was under fire continually. The bullets of the enemy
rattled among the trees, singing their death-song by day and night. On
the night of June 20th private John McGrath, Company I, was wounded and
sent to the rear. It was the third wound he had received during the
campaign. During these days the front, or main line, was strengthened
with abatis, and traverses, and a covered way built to the rear.
On the 21st the regiment remained in the woods preparing for a review,
which had been ordered for the afternoon. At four o'clock we were in
line, and moved to the wide open plain in rear of the woods, the scene
of the action on the 17th. The First Brigade was reviewed by General
Potter. The Seventh Rhode Island was on the right of the line, and the
Second New York Mounted Rifles, acting as infantry (recently assigned
to this brigade), on the left. The review was well conducted, and,
considering the circumstances of the occasion, the troops presented a
fine appearance. To all of us it was a novel parade,--marching to the
music of the bands, the discordant barking of the dogs of war, and the
distant screeching of the death-laden shells.
At midnight we were ordered to the main line to relieve the Second
Brigade, and the regiment was sent out on picket. The night was very
clear, and the moon being at the full revealed everything about us
as clear as daylight. The duty of relieving the picket line was
extremely hazardous, and it was half-past two o'clock A.M. before the
work was completed. The men were obliged to crawl out singly from
the railroad-cut, and the men relieved were exposed to a close and
merciless fire in leaving the line. It was daylight before our line was
fairly in position, and we settled down to the first day of the long
siege-life before us. About sunrise the cooks came out with coffee, and
John L. Finney, cook of Company K, received a shocking wound in the
face, in consequence of raising his head a little too high. His escape
from instant death was miraculous. After daylight it was impossible for
a man to look over the top of the pits. The rebels fired twenty shots
where we fired one, and their sharp practice enabled them to skim the
tops of the pits; their shots were well aimed, and the bullets flew all
about us.
The picket line itself was found to be very peculiar. It was separated
from the main line by the deep cut of the Norfolk Railroad, which
crossed our rear diagonally. The ground on the right at the railroad
was quite high, falling off rapidly toward the swampy ravine on the
left; the slope being toward the enemy's line, which enabled them to
command all the ground between the railroad-cut and their own line.
The troops of the Second Brigade had worked industriously to establish
good cover for the picket-line; but the position on the left was so
dangerous, and so near the enemy, that but little progress had been
made in erecting a line of pits at that point. There was a space of
five or six rods between Companies H and C, which could not be crossed
by daylight on account of its nearness to the rebel lines. During the
day the men on the right took up railroad sleepers from the track,
and laid them on the tops of the pits; small loop-holes were then made
under the logs, and in this way the men secured some protection for
their heads while watching a chance to fire upon the enemy. They were
soon able to inflict some damage on the sharp-shooters opposite.
By degrees some improvement was made on the left, but the progress
was very slow and tedious, as only one man from each company, C and
H, could work toward each other, on account of the close fire. The
left was in a bad and dangerous condition. In the event of an attack
which we should fail to repulse, the whole line would be exposed to
capture, as it would be madness to attempt to escape to the railroad
and over the rising ground in our rear. The enemy seemed to know that
new troops were in the pits, and were unusually hostile. They evidently
anticipated an attack, as a heavy movement was in progress on the left
by the Second and Fifth Corps, and a fierce fight raged about three
miles beyond the Jerusalem Plank road for the possession of the Weldon
Railroad.
It was thought in our lines that the enemy would make a counter-attack,
and the batteries in our rear lines kept up a steady fire, while the
men were constantly on the alert, crouched in the narrow pits, ready to
resist an attack. It was a day long to be remembered,--our first day in
the front line of trenches. It was one of the longest and most tedious
days of our service; but how many such days were we to experience!
There we lay in the dust, under the blazing, broiling midsummer sun,
which beat full upon us, without a leaf of intervening shade. The water
in the canteens was hot and sickening, and, to add to our discomforts
the offensive odors from unburied corpses around us were borne to us on
every breath of that sultry summer air. But the longest day must end,
and at last the sun declined, and the welcome shades of evening settled
on us. Quiet reigned for a little while, but about ten o'clock the
rebels were discovered crawling up toward our left. A severe musketry
fire was opened upon them, and they were forced to retire. After
midnight the firing ceased, and our pioneers buried some of the dead
bodies near us, and made some progress in perfecting the picket line on
the left. Jno. H. Barton, of Company E, badly wounded in the abdomen,
and Abiel Fisher, of G, wounded in the arm, were the casualties in the
trenches that day.
At two o'clock on the morning of the 23d the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania
commenced to relieve our regiment in the picket pits. Owing to the
sharp firing the process was slow and dangerous, but we reached the
main line about half-past two, and were allowed an hour's rest. At
half-past three we were aroused by orders to be ready to attack at any
moment. We were under arms throughout the day, and were exposed to the
fire of the enemy, by which Orin Taylor, of F, was severely wounded,
and the Adjutant of the Fifty-eighth Massachusetts, standing near our
right, was killed. At nine o'clock in the evening the brigade was
relieved by the Second Brigade, and returned to the line in the pine
woods, after forty-eight hours' duty in the front.
During these few days, to quote from Captain McCabe's "Defence of
Petersburg," "the enemy [the Union army] plied pick, and spade, and
axe with such silent vigor that there arose, as if by the touch of
the magician's wand, a vast cordon of redoubts of powerful profile,
connected by heavy infantry parapets, stretching from the Appomattox
to the extreme Federal left,--a line of prodigious strength, and
constructed with amazing skill, destined long to remain, to the
military student at least, an enduring monument of the ability of the
engineers of the Army of the Potomac."
Siege operations had now fairly commenced on the right, extending
along the line from the Appomattox to the Jerusalem Plank road, and
we had entered upon the daily round of life which was to continue for
the next fifty days,--the regular routine of duty in the picket line
and the main line,--a routine which, in the history of the campaign,
can be expressed in the simple, yet significant, phrase, "The Siege
of Petersburg." But in that daily routine there transpired much that
is interesting and painful to the survivors of our regiment, and the
account of our operations during those eventful days will be embodied
in a diary of the siege.