armies. The line had been reformed in the following order:
The 14th Corps occupied the extreme left, then came our corps, the 21st,
with McCook on the right and the Reserve Corps not yet up. All felt that
this Sabbath day would decide the fate of the army, as well as determine
the result of the campaign, for good or ill, to the cause of the Union.
Early in the morning we were ordered to construct such works along our
line as the material at hand would admit of, for at that time in the war
we had not learned the value of the pick and shovel. It is wonderful
what men can do when in extremity, or when their own safety or that of
the cause for which they battle, requires the exercise of ingenuity or
industry. Soon old logs, fence rails and everything else that could stop
a bullet, were being brought to the line. And by eight o'clock a line of
works was constructed that, while not any defense against artillery,
furnished quite a sufficient protection against small arms. My company
was again ordered out as skirmishers into the woods in front of the
brigade. We had not been on the line more than an hour when the rebels
advanced their line of skirmishers, and the firing began.
My orders were to keep the line well out, and to retire only on the line
of battle when the enemy advanced in force. It was soon evident to all
that the rebels designed to force the fighting for we could see his
charging lines rapidly advancing. We then fell back to our line of log
and rail works, and in doing so had to run the gauntlet of the fire of
excitable men of our line that could not be controlled.
Once over the works, and in position in the line, we had not long to
wait for the onset. The eagerness of the enemy in following the
skirmishers soon brought them into rifle range. Our Colonel Payne had
been very severely wounded early the day before, and the command of the
regiment devolved upon Major James B. Hampson, who afterwards gave his
life to his country at Dallas, Ga. With the coolness and bearing of an
old veteran he ordered our regiment to hold its fire until the rebels
were within close range of our works, then, all at once, we arose and
poured a well-aimed volley into their ranks. The 41st O. V. I., directly
in our rear and forming a second line, then gave them a volley and their
charge was ended. Three times that morning the enemy charged our
position, only to be beaten back in disorder and confusion.
About this time occurred that terrible mistake in the battle that caused
the panic and rout of a portion of McCook's Corps, and which carried our
commanding general out of the fight and back to Chattanooga, leaving
General Thomas to fight the battle alone. It was here that General
Thomas received the title of the "Rock of Chickamauga;" and it was from
this field that General Rosecrans was retired—never to be heard from
again during the war.
About eleven o'clock a. m. the confederates commenced a most determined
onset on the 14th Corps at our left. It soon became evident that the
enemy was gaining ground, as the firing came nearer and nearer, and the
left kept falling back until the cannon shot from the enemy cut the
limbs from the trees above us, and we expected every moment to hear the
order "change front to rear." The corps to our left had fallen back to
nearly at right angles with our line, and we could plainly see the
wounded men being borne back or slowly straggling to the rear. There are
times in the life of almost anyone when the circumstances with which he
is surrounded are burned into his memory as though graven with a pen of
fire. So on this occasion, although the enemy had been badly beaten in
our front, we saw our line of battle momentarily crumbling away on our
left. Visions of Libby, Salisbury and Andersonville came before us, and
it did seem as though our fate was destruction or captivity. While
intensely watching the progress of the battle on our left, all at once
we saw the front of a column of men coming on the double-quick out of
the woods in our rear. They advance nearly up to our position, they
halt, and face to the left. We saw an officer on a white horse ride up
to a color bearer. He takes the standard out of his hand, and with the
grand old stars and stripes in one hand, his sword in the other, he
gallops to the front; the ranks of blue follow fast their intrepid
leader. Then was battle on in all the grandeur of its pomp and
circumstance. No one single musket could be heard, but as some vast
storm that comes sweeping on from the northwest with a roar that is
appallingly sublime, mingled the volleys of the contending hosts, while
the salvos of the artillery cause the earth to tremble as in the throes
of an earthquake. Our line swings back, like a gate on its hinges, to
its former position. But where is that glorious spirit that led that
gallant charge that has saved us from capture and our army from certain
defeat? An orderly is seen leading back the white horse "that carried
his master into the fray," but no rider is there. "Wounded, but not
mortally" is the word that is passed from lip to lip. And that brave
Polish officer, General Turchin, still lives to receive the thanks and
honors of his adopted countrymen. This was the same officer that
rebelled against the old world tyranny and, in 1848, with Sigel,
Willich, Schurz, Austerhause and many others, fought for liberty in the
fatherland until fighting was hopeless; and for the liberty they could
never win in their country came to ours; but, strange to say, not one of
them ever drew his sword in the cause of the slaveholder's rebellion.
Very many of them, as some one has truly said, "wrote their
naturalization papers in their blood."
About two o'clock p. m. our brigade was relieved from the line where we
had fought in the morning, and held in reserve, ready to be taken to any
point on the line where our services might be most needed. The enemy, by
the mistake that I have referred to before, had driven a portion of
McCook's Corps from the field and entirely out of the battle, and had
extended its left so far to the rear as to cut us off from a large
spring that had furnished us with water the day before. From the time of
this calamity in the morning we had no water, and the air was thick with
the sulphurous smoke that created an intense thirst. The men were
clamoring and insisting that someone should go for water. There was one
member of our company, George Benton, that by his kindness of heart, and
implicit and cheerful obedience to orders, had won the respect and
confidence of his officers and the hearts of his fellow soldiers. In
speech, modest and kindly, yet in the battle he had shown himself as
brave as the bravest. George came to me loaded down with canteens, and
asked permission to go to the rear and try to find water. I, with some
emphasis, refused. The men at that set up a clamor, and insisted that
they were suffering for want of water. I explained the hazardous nature
of the enterprise. I assured them from the firing that our right was
well turned, and that anyone going back, alone and unattended, was
liable to be killed, wounded, or _captured_, which all dreaded more than
death or wounds by reason of the inhuman treatment our soldiers received
while in rebel prisons. I said to George, "I am afraid you will never
come back." With a smile of determination lighting up that noble young
face, he replied, "I will come back, captain, or I will be a dead
Benton." I was not quite strong enough for the emergency. I made a
mistake. That mistake cost George Benton his life. He never returned.
Whether he fell by a stray bullet, in those deep woods and thickets, or
whether he was captured and murdered in prison, I know not. The records
of Salisbury and Andersonville were searched, after the war, but on none
could the name of George Benton be found. After we had fallen back on
Chattanooga letters came from his father and sisters, inquiring
concerning the fate of son and brother. No one can know with what
bitterness I reproached myself for allowing myself to be persuaded
against my better judgment; and learning by that sad lesson—no member of
company B was ever again reported "missing in action." I saw the father
and sisters when we came back from the war, and told them what I had
already written them before of the way George was lost; but "hope, like
an anchor to the soul, sure and steadfast," would not suffer them to
give up their dear boy as lost. They hoped that some day, like a lost
mariner, he would come from perhaps captivity and sickness, to gladden
their hearts and relieve the suspense that was crushing their lives. But
twenty-seven autumns have returned since that brave boy was lost to
sight in the smoke that covered that dread field of Chickamauga, but no
tidings ever came of that one, who was gladly willing to risk his life
to alleviate the sufferings of his comrades, and was permitted to do so
by the weakness of his commanding officer.
At about four o'clock p. m. our attention was drawn to the heavy firing
on our extreme right, and we conjectured that our Reserve Corps was
being brought into action. It proved to be true. General Granger came up
and with his corps that had known but little, if anything, of the
disasters of the day, charged the enemy with the force and effect of
victors.
But it seemed it was not the purpose of General Thomas to contend for
the field of battle, and to General Granger's Corps was assigned the
duty of covering the retreat of the balance of the army.
It was Wellington (whom his comrades loved to call the "Iron Duke") that
said at the battle of Waterloo, "would that sundown or Blücher had
come." And never did sundown hang his somber curtain over a more
grateful body of men than those that remained of the Army of the
Cumberland. Just as the sun began to cast the long shadows to the
eastward our brigade was retired to the west for about half a mile,
still in order of battle; but any one could discern that a general
retreat was to be commenced as soon as the friendly darkness should
cover us from the view of the enemy. While in this position we heard
cheers from what seemed to be a great body of men, and the rumor was at
once out that General Burnside had reinforced us from Knoxville. We
answered the cheers as heartily as our tired bodies and depressed
spirits would permit, and the sky was ablaze with the rockets that shot
up from the direction from which we had heard the cheering. Mendenhall's
battery of Rodman guns was at that time just in our front. He ordered
his men to load with canister, and then I heard him remark "that is the
last round of ammunition this battery has."
Some one out toward the skirmish line heard the order "Ninth Louisiana,
forward, double-quick, march," and pretty effectually dispelled the
delusion that the cheering and rocket party were our friends under
General Burnside. It was now quite dark, and tired, depressed and
supperless, we commenced the march that meant that the battlefield, with
all its treasures of our dead heroes, was to be abandoned to the tender
mercies of an enemy that looked upon us as invaders and destroyers of
their rights and liberties. It was, indeed, a sad hour. Two days before
we had gone into this conflict with full ranks and high hopes of
victory. Now we were "silently stealing away" under cover of the
darkness, like dastardly assassins, when, in fact, we were there in the
holy cause of liberty for all men, and for the union of the states as
against rebellion and treason. We were leaving our beloved dead,
uncomposed, unburied, with nothing to mark the spot where they fell,
with no place of sepulture, with no requiem, save the soughing of the
south wind through the banners of the majestic pines, or the nightly
songs of the sweet voiced southern mocking bird.
"We carved not a line, we raised not a stone,
But we left them alone in their glory."
We drew away into the defiles of the hills, and the glad sound of the
splashing of the horses' hoofs in the little streams that trickled from
the hillsides, then the scraping of the tin cups could be heard (the
efforts of the boys to get a drink of the muddy hoof-trodden water); but
straining it through the teeth, no nectar quaffed by the fabled gods of
old ever tasted so refreshing as did that grand beverage of nature to
those battle-stained soldiers that night.
Of the route we marched that night I never had the least information;
but when the sun arose over the mountains of North Carolina, the twenty-
first day of September, it looked down upon the old army in order of
battle on the summit of Missionary Ridge. All day we kept this position,
but the confederates wanted no more fighting on this occasion, and, you
can believe me, _they had my entire sympathies_.
Some have said that both armies retreated from the field of battle, and
had our army stayed on the field the night of the twentieth, no
confederate army would have confronted it on the morning of the twenty-
first. But this story, though I am told it has gone into history, I
never believed to be true. In the first place, the confederate general,
Bragg, had, when the campaign commenced, an army nearly equal in numbers
to our own, with no rear to take care of and guard. Secondly, after he
crossed the mountains he was reinforced by General Longstreet's Corps
from the army of northern Virginia. And, thirdly, he had at his command
(but not called into the battle to any extent) a large force of Georgia
state militia.
Then again, the second day of the battle McCook's Corps was largely cut
to pieces and destroyed for fighting business. The 14th and 21st Corps
were badly cut up in the two days fighting, and at the close of the
second day almost destitute of ammunition. And finally, there was the
movement of men before sundown to inform that _we_ were abandoning the
field. So it never seemed credible that the confederates were retreating
the night of the twentieth as well as ourselves.
The night of the twenty-first we fell back and entrenched a position
just outside of the then small village of Chattanooga. The victorious
confederates occupied the whole extent of Missionary Ridge, and soon
appeared in force on the summit of Lookout.
So I have given you, in great weakness and imperfection, some of my
recollections of the memorable campaign of Chattanooga and the battle of
Chickamauga. I have read no book or history giving an account of the
campaign and battle. Being simply an officer in the line my chances for
observation were very limited, and very many of my conclusions are,
_without doubt, inaccurate_. The plans of a battle, always an
interesting feature of history, I have, as a matter of course, been
compelled to omit.
[Illustration:
_PRIVATE GEORGE BENTON._
"_I will come back or I will be a dead Benton._" _Page 69._
]
But if this unworthy effort has revived patriotic memories in the minds
of those of you who can remember the war, or revived the recollections
of my old comrades in arms, or given some faint idea to those that have
come after us of what was attempted and suffered by those that strove
"to keep our flag in the sky" in all those dark years, I have been amply
rewarded for the attempt.
Chickamauga was in one sense a battle lost; but by it we won the
campaign, and from the ground beyond the mountains and beyond the river
that we had crossed, the invincible Sherman led his victorious legions
into and through the very vitals of the confederacy.
It was one of those grand struggles between brave men that has marked
the progress of liberty and right in all ages; that has cemented us
firmly in the bonds of UNITY and FRATERNITY and made us in arms
invincible as against the world.[2]
Footnote 2:
First delivered before the River Styx Literary Society, March 12th,
1887.
THE SIEGE OF CHATTANOOGA, THE BATTLE OF LOOKOUT
MOUNTAIN, AND THE STORMING OF
MISSIONARY RIDGE.
The battle of the nineteenth and twentieth of September, 1863, had
resulted in disaster instead of victory. The Army of the Cumberland had
been forced to retire, to abandon Missionary Ridge, and to fortify a
line running through the outskirts of the village of Chattanooga from
Cameron Hill, near the river below to the river above.
The victorious rebels came on and took possession of the entire length
of Missionary Ridge, fortifying the same with strong parapets of earth,
while one hundred pieces of artillery soon found position on the Ridge
from right to left.
General Bragg also took possession of Lookout mountain, and planted some
very heavy guns near the summit, just above the palisades. I never knew
why those guns did not render our position around Chattanooga entirely
untenable, unless it was the poor quality of the guns or lack of
ammunition. All the execution that I ever heard of those guns doing was
to kill a mule that would have died of starvation later on. Those
hundred-pounders that were planted on the summit of Lookout were, for
some reason, only fired a few times, and not for weeks prior to the time
the siege was raised.
Never in the history of the Army of the Cumberland had the spirit of its
officers and men been more depressed. The battle of Chickamauga had not
only been fought and lost, but we also lost what was more than losing a
battle. We had lost confidence in our commander.
And I think when the order came relieving General Rosecrans and placing
General Grant in command of the Army of the Cumberland, there were few
regrets expressed, even among those that had theretofore given General
Rosecrans the title of "Hero of Stone River." But, in my humble
judgment, one thing, and one thing only, saved the Army of the
Cumberland. If General Rosecrans had shown himself incompetent to
command the army at the battle of Chickamauga, the rebel general, Bragg,
was possessed of a stupidity that more than overbalanced the
incompetency of Rosecrans.
Just for one moment view our situation. Almost surrounded. No railroad
communications over which to supply rations or ammunition. No
transportation whatever, save one wagon road over Raccoon mountain, and
that so exposed in places to the rebel sharpshooters that the teamsters
(though in a sense noncombatants) were constantly exposed to the fire of
an enemy they could neither see nor reply to. Then the road itself was
simply horrible. When not bounding over ledges of rocks that nothing but
an army wagon could withstand, they mired in the quicksand holes with
which the way abounded, so that at times an empty wagon was more than a
load for a six mule team. Then, this only road was constantly exposed to
the raids of troops of the rebel mounted infantry. It was of this road a
story is told of a teamster that was stuck with a load of ammunition in
one of those miry places, and while he was waking the mountain echoes
with his black whip and profanity, was overtaken by an "army chaplain,"
just fresh from some theological seminary of the north, and had not made
the acquaintance of the army mule driver. Hearing the terrible profanity
of this Jehu stuck fast in the mud, thought this a fitting opportunity
to "sow the good seed," and riding up to the disgusted M. D. said, "My
friend, do you know that Christ died for sinners?" The M. D., with a
glance at the new and dazzling uniform of the chaplain, sang out, "Look
a yer stranger, do you think it's any time for conundrums when I'm stuck
fast in the mud and the rebels not a quarter of a mile in the rear?"
Whether the chaplain thought his "ground was stony," or that the rebels
were too near, he abandoned his theological lesson and left the M. D. to
his fate.
In this situation of transportation, with no country on which to forage
or draw any supplies whatever, with the Tennessee river behind us, with
the Cumberland mountains beyond the river, with more than two hundred
miles from the nearest reinforcements, what but the stupidity of Bragg
saved us from destruction while in that position.
But, instead of striking us while depressed by defeat, he suffered us to
select our position, and before ten days had elapsed our line was
bristling with forts of no mean dimensions and strength, putting our
capture beyond the possibility of being accomplished by assault.
The siege of Chattanooga proper began about the twenty-fifth of
September. It was not long after this before a flag of truce was sent to
General Bragg's headquarters on Missionary Ridge, asking the privilege
of going out to the Chickamauga battlefield to bury our dead. It had
been so slightly done that in some instances not enough dirt had been
thrown over the sleeping braves to cover their uniforms. This last sad
office was tenderly and carefully performed; and in all instances where
there was anything to identify the dead soldier, his name, company, and
regiment were marked on rude headboards that could be improvised on the
spot. But alas! the fact that we, as an army, could not collect our dead
after the battle, caused thousands to sleep in nameless graves.
After the war this army of known and unknown dead was carefully removed
to the National Cemetery at Orchard Knob, near the base of the ridge,
and buried; all the _known_ neatly marked; but how frequently the word
_unknown_ occurs in that beautiful home of the dead soldier.
One good result, besides the decent interment of our dead, was the fact
that all of our wounded that were not able to be removed to southern
prisons were paroled and sent into Chattanooga. One of our men, Arthur
Budlong, had lain upon the battlefield until our boys found him and
brought him in under the flag of truce. Thus were the severities of war
somewhat modified by the humanity of man that not even the unseemly war-
cloud could altogether overshadow.
The monotony and dreariness of a siege can be appreciated only by those
that have taken part therein. Language fails me to give you anything
like an adequate idea of its listless torments. While on the march the
scenery is constantly changing. The exercise of marching keeps one
healthy, and keeps one's mind employed and the banishment from home and
loved ones does not occupy so much of one's thoughts. The skirmishing
and fighting, while dreadful in consequences and results, has on the
soldier, to a certain extent, an exhilarating effect; and the hours
spent thereafter, in the tales of personal adventure and experience,
while causing one sometimes to think that the tribe of "Ananias" was not
extinct, yet these tales of personal valor and daring helped to cheer
and while away many an idle hour; and, as a rule, no one was deceived
"by the tales they told us there." But in the siege every day was like
all the others; and from the time we fell back on Chattanooga until
operations began about the twentieth of November, the sky was cloudless.
And while the long Indian summer period of southern Tennessee, so
delightful to the citizen in time of peace, to us soldiers (to a certain
extent in captivity) it seemed to breed melancholy and homesickness. We
did all we could to avert this trouble. We played seven-up until we
almost wore the spots off the cards. We smoked and "jawed." We
criticised the plans of campaigns and battles. We decided the merits of
brigadier and major generals until, could you have heard us, you would
have thought we were writers formulating articles for the Century
Magazine instead of besieged soldiers trying to drive away enui. Oh, if
baseball had been invented then what regimental, brigade and division
clubs we could have organized, with hospitals handy to care for the
wounded. If we had only known the silly but fascinating game of lawn
tennis our sick list would have been shortened.