parade grounds of the several companies, where they were formed and
marched to the regimental parade ground. The stumps, when we camped in
the woods, were carefully dug out of these streets, and the same nicely
graded and ditched. Then at the left-hand side looking toward the
regimental parade ground the quarters of the messes were erected. This I
know will seem very commonplace to the old comrade, but you will bear
with me, as I am speaking to-day to many Sons of Veterans and others,
that were too young to be with us in this experience. The poles were
then cut long enough to cover with two pieces of shelter tent, then laid
up, notched at the corners to bring them down quite close, laid up high
enough so the soldier could stand upright comfortably. The ends or
gables were cobbed up to the peak, or fixed up with the extra tents,
poles were fastened on with bark or withes, and the tents make the roof.
Then the cracks were stopped with mud. A stick or stone chimney is built
in the back end. Two bunks are made, one on either side, with crotches
driven into the ground, and small poles laid lengthwise and covered with
pine boughs and the U. S. army blanket make the bed. Gun-racks are made
above each bunk for two muskets and two sets of accouterments. An extra
blanket is hung up for a door, and the house is furnished by the
inventive genius of the mess. The bunks during the daytime furnish
upholstered seats. This house answers for kitchen, dining room, and
dormitory, and a healthier home does not stand in the city of Cleveland.
One of the best features of the whole business is, they were not liable
to sale under execution, or foreclosure, neither for delinquent taxes.
This house I have described was one of a large city our division built
at Dandridge. Please note how long they were suffered to enjoy the
fruits of their ingenuity and industry.
If I were called upon to organize an army that should accomplish the
greatest warlike good (if the word _good_ can be used in connection with
the word _war_), I would start, in our experience as soldiers, where we
left off. The government should never build quarters for soldiers, they
should build their own. The government should never furnish any
transportation for well soldiers, and instead of staying in camp, I
would have them move from place to place, thereby avoiding the disease
that camps breed. The sooner the soldier becomes self-sustaining, within
a certain limit, the better for themselves and the service.
January 16th Colonel Pickands came to my quarters and said he had a soft
snap for me; said that I had never had a detail, that I had stayed right
with the regiment since we took the field, and he was only too glad to
confer this favor. I thanked the genial commander, though I had no
desire to leave the Mice in that way; and had but very little confidence
in what he said he heard from headquarters, "that we would probably stay
where we were for three months." About ten o'clock a. m. the detail was
ready, consisting of 149 men. The order was to march to New Market and
guard the division stores. We went through a fairly good country, and
along in the afternoon we met General Sheridan and staff. He was riding
that same black horse that afterward "carried him into the fray from
Winchester, twenty miles away." He asked a number of questions. The
first was, if I had heard any firing in the direction of Dandridge? This
question showed the true instinct of the great general; that he was
always looking out for a battle, and had he been in command of the union
forces in east Tennessee, the country would have been electrified by the
news of a signal victory won, instead of a disastrous retreat from
Dandridge, whereby so many of our poor boys were captured, and carried
to Andersonville and death. Soon after we bade good-bye to Sheridan and
staff one of the Mice, and he must have been one of the kind known as
_ground mice_, found an apple-hole, and before I was aware of what was
going on, the Mice were all busy digging out apples. The owner came out
and protested; said he was a union man, had been from the start, and his
property should be protected. I agreed in all he said, and by the time
his protest was fully entered his apples had been transferred to the
capacious haversacks of the Mice. Of course I was to blame. I should not
have suffered the Mice to gnaw and destroy this good man's apples; but
what, I ask you, could I do with 149 men that had not seen or tasted an
apple since the fall of 1862? I offered to give him a voucher for the
apples, and told him if he was as good a union man as he claimed to be
the commissary department at Knoxville would pay him. But he seemed to
know what the voucher was worth better than I and declined the same; we
marched on to New Market, arriving there after dark, having marched
twenty-three miles since ten o'clock.
I soon found nice quarters for my men in the abandoned houses of the
village, and my mess arrangements having been broken up, I engaged
boarding with an old lady that had two sons in the union army. This was
one of the worst battered towns I had seen in the south. The sentiment
was about equally divided between union and rebel, and the town had been
badly plundered by both sides. The stores were at the station on the
railroad, and after relieving the men on duty with a detail of my men,
had supper, and being very tired, the old lady showed me a room, and I
went to bed between nice white sheets, the first time in more than
twelve months. Visions of feather beds, soft bread, pies and cakes, no
marching, no picket guard, haunted me until 3 o'clock the next morning,
when I was awakened by a loud rapping at my door; on getting out I saw
the yellow stripes of a cavalry orderly. He very politely handed me an
order directing me to march my detail back to Strawberry Plains, as the
army was falling back from Dandridge. I got out to the quarters of the
men as soon as I could, aroused the orderly sergeant and the men, called
in the guards at the station, and started back on the railway track for
the point to which we had been ordered. And that ended the "_soft
snap_."
The winter quarters the Mice had built, the city one day old, was
abandoned, and the brigade, wearied out by marching in the deepest mud I
ever saw, slept that night under the stars at Strawberry Plains. What
became of the stores at New Market I never knew, and why we were ordered
back I never knew. All I know about the matter is that Uncle Billy had
gone north to meet Grant at Cincinnati, and General Sheridan was not in
command.
We lost more men on the retreat from Dandridge than would have been lost
in a battle with Longstreet, and we had men enough to have whipped him
and driven him out of the state. But "the grand army of occupation" was
permitted to do no fighting, and so we wallowed around in the mud of
east Tennessee.
In a few days we marched down to Knoxville and below to a place named in
honor of one of America's greatest poets, I guess; in any event, it had
the poetical name of Lenore, and if not _loved_, it certainly seemed
_lost_. It may have been found since the war, but it was certainly _lost
Lenore_ when we were there.
I suppose no part of the south suffered so much in the way of partisan
warfare as east Tennessee. This part of the state owned very few slaves,
and the inhabitants were largely true to the union cause. Of course, the
wealthy portion of the people were slaveholders, and they were rebels to
a man, and middle Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, and some portions of
North Carolina were intensely rebel, and thus you will understand that
east Tennessee was surrounded by a disloyal population. Then, again, the
Tennessee valley was the principal gateway from Richmond to the
southwest and, until the occupation of Knoxville by General Burnside,
this valley was continually being overrun by rebel troops of all sorts,
from infantry to mounted bushwhackers. The disloyal, when the rebel army
was present, informed on their loyal neighbors, and the old men, the
women, and the children had to seek safety in the woods, ravines, and
caves of the mountains, only to see their dear old homes in flames
behind them. Even the learned and respected Judge Baxter, afterwards
appointed judge of the United States circuit court, who, before the war,
had a fine residence and lucrative practice in the city of Knoxville,
was compelled to "lie out in the bush," as they call it, for three
months at one time, to save his life; and yet with most remarkable
magnanimity, through Judge Baxter's influence, not an acre of rebel land
or a rebel home was confiscated in the whole of east Tennessee. While we
were in one of the many camps about Knoxville, the two regiments
commanded by the Brownlow brothers, James and John, veteranized, and
under the order of the government were granted thirty days' leave of
absence. I happened to be present at the time they disbanded. One of
these brothers made a speech to the two regiments. I don't remember
which one, but I never can forget one thing he said: "Take your arms
with you; you will not be wanted here for thirty days. Go home and
avenge the death of your fathers and brothers." This speech was received
by these hardy mountaineers as a license, as it was intended to be, for
murder and the desolating torch. Not a night from that time on for
thirty days but the heavens were aglare with the flames of rebel homes,
and the number of murders committed will never be known "until the sea
gives up its dead." But never did the horrors of Indian massacre compare
with east Tennessee for deeds of murder and fiendish, remorseless
cruelty from 1861 to 1865.
Then on the 17th moved back in the rain and mud, and went into camp; and
then on the 23d moved forward again, found no enemy and then back to
camp, having marched that day in the rain and mud twenty-eight miles.
Then on the 24th we struck tents and marched twelve miles beyond
Knoxville to Strawberry Plains again. Then we were up and off to New
Market. Then the next day marched to Morristown, eighteen miles from New
Market, and occupied the abandoned quarters built by Longstreet's men.
Stayed in this camp until March 2d, 1864, and then marched back to New
Market. This marching and counter marching is of no particular interest
of itself, but I give it to you to show how we put in the time. Of all
the campaigning we ever did this of east Tennessee was the most
purposeless, seemingly profitless, and dismal. The most of the time we
were hard up for rations, and were compelled to forage on a people as
friendly as any in Ohio, and that had been robbed by both armies. I
never can forget the time we lay at Clinch Mountain Gap, when it was so
cold that we had to build log-heaps in front of our tents to keep from
freezing, that Colonel Pickands sent Lieutenant Stedman with a file of
men and a wagon to try and find something to eat. I was at headquarters
when he returned at night. The colonel, with that usual smile, said:
"Lieutenant, what success to-day?" Stedman answered: "Nothing." "Why?"
remarked the colonel. Stedman replied, with an oath so terrific that I
am sure it was heard in Heaven (and which I hope the recording angel has
blotted out, and I know he has if he has attended strictly to business),
"that he would be —— —— before he would rob women and children." When
the recording angel became acquainted with the noble Stedman, fresh from
the bloody field of New Hope Church, I am sure the accounts were
properly adjusted.
Well, this must end my recollections of the very celebrated march from
Chattanooga to Knoxville and the winter campaign of east Tennessee.
General Longstreet finally went back to the army of northern Virginia,
not that he was in any danger from us, but simply because he became
tired of the scenery and wanted a change, I suppose.
Nothing in history is grander than the relief of Knoxville; nothing
tamer and more devoid of sense than the balance of the campaign. Yet we
can draw from it all this useful lesson, that those brave spirits, the
noble men that endured the march and campaign, had a patriotism and
endurance that nothing of storm, of cold, of hunger, of sickness, of bad
management could dampen. And though many of that band sleep in southern
graves, yet many lived to bring back the stars and stripes in triumph
from the greatest conflict of modern times and to see the rebellious
states restored to a peaceful and happy union.
[Illustration:
_LIEUTENANT CHARLES M. STEADMAN._
_Killed at Pickett's Mills, Georgia. May 27th, 1864._
]
THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN.
The spring of 1864 opened with millions of anxious patriots looking in
the direction of our armies.
General Grant had virtually been made commander in chief of all the
union forces, with personal direction of the Army of the Potomac.
Every lover of his country had come to understand that the policy of
conquering rebel territory and guarding rebel property would never crush
out rebellion.
The military policy of General Grant, of making the objective point of
campaigns _the rebel armies_, met the good sense and received the hearty
approval of the patriotic people of the United States.
Some raised the cry of "butcher," but every thoughtful man that knew the
desperate intentions, the bravery, the skill, and the strong defensive
positions occupied by the rebel armies, knew that their destruction
meant severe marches, terribly destructive battles, thousands of brave
men killed, and vastly more wounded and maimed for life; but in the face
of all these mighty sacrifices, that the poverty of language will not
enable us to describe, the patriotic people of the north said, "We will
sustain the army at all hazards," and the armies responded, "Let us set
forward."
It is a well-known fact that in the winter of 1864, at the Burnett House
in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, the two greatest generals developed by
the war, Grant and Sherman, met in counsel. Sherman, while a line
officer in the regular army, had become most thoroughly acquainted with
the topography of the state of Georgia, and it was at this consultation
that the campaign from Chattanooga to Atlanta and the grand march "from
Atlanta to the sea" were developed and determined upon. It was at this
consultation that Sherman said, "The confederacy is a shell and I can
march an army through it." It was at this consultation that Grant said,
"If you undertake it, I will hold Lee and his armies, that they give you
no trouble." At the end of this meeting each of the great commanders
repaired to his respective scene of action to carry forward the purposes
determined on thereat.
The first of May, 1864, found assembled in the vicinity of Chattanooga,
and as far south as Ringgold, Ga., the forces with which General Sherman
proposed to crush the shell of the rebellion. It consisted of the Army
of the Cumberland, General George H. Thomas in command; the Army of the
Tennessee, under the especial command of General McPherson; the 23d
Corps, commanded by General Schofield; the 20th Army Corps, still in
command of the hero of Lookout mountain, "Fighting Joe Hooker," as he
was often called in army circles, and also a brigade of regulars. Then
as able lieutenants in command of corps and divisions, Sherman had
Logan, Blair, Sickels, Stanley, Wood, Slocum, Osterhaus, and many
others, _all fighting officers_. Sheridan, at that time, had been
transferred to the Army of the Potomac by the especial order of General
Grant, who witnessed General Sheridan's heroic conduct at Missionary
Ridge.
I suppose very few of the people of the north ever had anything like a
correct idea of the magnitude of the work undertaken by General Sherman
in the campaign of Atlanta. The distance from Louisville to Nashville is
stated to be one hundred and eighty-five miles, and from Nashville to
Chattanooga it is said to be one hundred and fifty-one miles, and from
Nashville to Bridgeport on the Tennessee river, two hundred and eleven
miles. This long line of railway from Louisville to Chattanooga, and
from Nashville to Bridgeport, Ala., five hundred and forty-seven miles,
had to be guarded by military force every mile. For it must be
remembered that while the state of Kentucky never went out of the Union
and was ostensibly a loyal state, nevertheless, it required more
soldiers to look after its disloyal citizens than she furnished to the
cause of the Union, not for one moment forgetting that the state of
Kentucky furnished some as brave and loyal soldiers as ever sprung a
rammer and some as valiant officers as ever drew a saber.
Notwithstanding, she had a large population in the aggregate that
engaged in that disreputable kind of warfare known as _bushwhacking_,
and very many that did not were ever ready to furnish aid and comfort to
our enemy. Again, no portion of Tennessee, save east Tennessee, laid any
claim to anything but intense love of the southern confederacy.
Blockhouses had to be constructed every few miles of this route and a
vast number of soldiers employed in keeping open this line of
communications. Nashville was the grand base of supplies, where had been
accumulated for many months all kinds of army stores, and from this base
General Sherman had to draw supplies of rations, ammunition, and
clothing for his campaign in Georgia; while the route from Nashville to
Louisville must be kept open to renew the supplies at the base, as well
as to send the sick and wounded to the northern hospitals.
It is almost needless for me to state before this intelligent audience
that the genius of General Sherman was entirely equal to the emergency.
And while the oddities and comical features of great men will usually be
better remembered than any others, those of us that participated in that
memorable campaign will remember well that no precautionary matter was
overlooked by the ever watchful general. If what he really meant by
"light marching order" was so difficult to understand that a cavalryman
construed it to mean "necktie and a pair of spurs," he was no less
exacting of himself and staff and many a night on this campaign he
bivouacked as would a picket on an outpost. The thoroughness of his
preparation was the sequel of his success. Knowing very well that
overrunning rebel territory did not make loyal citizens of its
inhabitants, he took the precaution to have his engineers make drawings
of every wooden bridge between Louisville and Chattanooga, and between
Nashville and Bridgeport. Nor was this all. He had his corps of
mechanics construct duplicate bridges for the entire line south of
Nashville. He was not satisfied only with his precautions to guard and
care for his line of communications to his base of supplies, but he in
some manner procured plans of the bridges from Chattanooga to Atlanta,
and had bridges constructed and loaded on flat cars ready for use at any
time when wanted. It was perfectly astounding the perfect order and
dispatch with which he reconstructed the railroads as his campaign
progressed, and with such celerity did his engineer corps perform its
duty that after the bridge was burned by the rebel rear guards the same
would be rebuilt, and the screams of the locomotive would mingle with
the rattle of the musketry of the skirmishers just across the river,
always reminding us that Uncle Billy's railroad was in good working
order and that our "cracker line" was secure. But the vigilance of his
preparation was not satisfied with being able to keep up his railroad
lines—he had the finest pontoon corps that was ever organized.
Each man was drilled in the movements necessary to put down a pontoon
bridge or remove one from the water and replace the same on the wagons
as efficiently as an infantryman in the manual of arms or a cannoneer in
the handling of a fieldpiece. It was a sight that seemed the perfection
of celerity to witness his pontoon corps put down a bridge, and every
line of march was thoroughly equipped in this particular.
But what I have heretofore described were not all the obstacles in the
way of the making of the Atlanta campaign a success. While we were
beyond the Tennessee mountains, while we had crossed the Tennessee
river, the country from Ringgold to the south bank of the Chattahoochee
river was naturally most admirable defensive ground. Every few miles
were high ridges and small mountain ranges remarkably well adapted for
defensive military positions; added to this the enemy had no rear that
required guarding, had no hostile population to watch and distrust, had
the most accurate information as to streams and roads, had swarms of
volunteer spies to inform him of our every movement, and finally, had an
army of slaves to do his intrenching ready to his hand and use when he
was ready to fall back to a new position. This, all this, and more than
I have time to describe, must be considered if we would thoroughly
comprehend the military magnitude of the Atlanta campaign.
When General Sherman was ready to commence the forward movement, there
must have been assembled from Chattanooga to Ringgold between eighty and
one hundred thousand men, and on the third day of May, 1864, just as the
magnolias were beginning to open their fragrant blossoms to the south
wind, and the mocking birds were beginning to make the woods vocal with
their songs, our division struck tents and commenced the march
southward, and the evening of the fourth found us two and one-half miles
from Ringgold confronting the enemy's pickets. From this time until the
ninth we made short marches southward, skirmishing with the rebels each
day. On the ninth our brigade was composed of the 124th O. V. I., the
41st O. V. I. the 93d O. V. I., the 9th I. V. I., and the 6th Ky. V. I.
The brigade was commanded by General William B. Hazen and we had moved
as far toward Dalton as a position known locally as Buzzard's Roost, a
pass in the White Oak mountains. Here we found the rebels in position,
the pass strongly fortified and commanded by a number of heavy guns.
At this position our brigade had an order to charge the mountain at the
left of the pass, which order was executed, and we came within two
hundred yards of the top of the mountain, where we found it broken off
into palisades thirty feet in height. These palisades we had no means of
ascending and so the charge ended. Our regiment lost three men killed
and ten wounded. This movement was afterwards explained as a
demonstration to deceive the enemy, but some of us will always think
that we were the ones that were deceived. There was heavy firing on the
right of the pass and in the direction of Snake Creek Gap, where a
portion of Hooker's Corps fought a severe battle, the 29th O. V. I.
losing very heavily. While in this position (Buzzard's Roost) we were
terribly annoyed by sharpshooters posted above the palisades, the bugler
of the 93d being killed.
All things considered, this position was properly named, and had Dore
been there he could, without doubt, within the wilds of that mountain,
have found some new illustrations for Dante's Inferno.
Early in the morning of the 13th we found the rebels had abandoned their
position, and a party of us, while waiting for orders to move, managed
to climb to the top of the mountain. Here we had a splendid view of the
scenery of northern Georgia. Away to the north we could see old Lookout
towering up, while beyond we could distinctly trace Waldron's and other
ridges of the Cumberlands. To the south and west one range of hills
after another, with an occasional mountain, as far as the eye could
reach, showing us that our way was one of difficulty as well as danger.
About two p. m. we fell into line, marched into and through the pass,
and had time to examine the strength of the abandoned rebel works. These
works were evidently constructed with the hope that our commander would
undertake to force the pass. That afternoon we marched through Dalton, a
small village situated near an unbroken forest of pine, a kind from
which the inhabitants make turpentine. The country seemed very poor, and
from what we could see of the inhabitants we were forced to come to the
same conclusion as to them.
The next day, May 14th, we struck the enemy in position at Resaca, and
we immediately charged and drove him inside of his works, while our
brigade occupied the line of a ridge running from near an angle of the
rebel works and within a stone's throw of them. In this charge our young
Colonel Payne, then in command of the regiment, just having returned
recovered from a very dangerous wound received at Chickamauga that
nearly cost him his life, showed consummate bravery, riding his horse in
the charge across an open field in a perfect storm of bullets.