THE CHARGE OF MAY 19.
ON the 18th of May, 1863, Vicksburg was completely invested. A year
before the first attempt was made against this fortified city, and in
reply to a demand of surrender at that time the rebels said:
"Mississippians did not know and refused to learn how to surrender to an
enemy." Now we'uns had arrived and proposed to teach them how to
surrender to an enemy.
Some time before daylight on the morning of the 19th we were quietly
aroused and instructed to prepare our breakfasts without noise or
unnecessary fire or light. Every man of my company proceeded, by the aid
of twigs and dry leaves, to make just fire enough on the protected slope
of the hill, to boil his tin cup of coffee and broil a slice of
diaphragm um et swinum for the morning meal. We did not at first know
what the program for the day was, but before we had dispatched our
breakfast it was whispered to us by those who claimed to have access to
headquarters that we were scheduled to charge the enemy's works in the
early morning. I hadn't had a good view of the Vicksburg fortifications
the day before, and now in the first faint light of the morning, while
the men were eating and making preparations for the charge, I crept
cautiously out on the crest of the hill, and so far as I could without
exposing myself, contemplated the defenses against which we had to
charge. Three strong bastioned forts on the right, center and left on
high grounds within a line of entrenchments and stockades confronted us.
It required but a brief inspection to satisfy me that more than likely
we wouldn't go into town that day. I confess that my observations did
not in any great measure increase my confidence in our ability to take
the place by assault. When I returned to my company I saw many of the
boys entrusting their valuables with hasty instructions to the few lame
and sick ones, who must needs stay behind and care for the company
effects while we were gone. I felt like turning over my stuff also, but
happened to recollect I had no valuables. From the outlook I was
satisfied very many of us would not answer to roll call that night, and
I felt that I might be one of the silent ones. A more beautiful May
morning than that of the 19th I had never seen. The pickets had ceased
firing, the birds sang sweetly in the trees, and the cool morning breeze
was fragrant with the perfume of flowers and shrubs. It was hard to
believe that such a beautiful morning as that would bring such an eve as
followed it. When the sun was well up then the various bodies of our
troops were quickly marched to their respective positions in what was to
be the charging line. My regiment was marched forward and to the right
of our night's position, to the base of the last range of the Walnut
hills, and we were instructed then that when all of our batteries fired
three volleys in rapid succession our whole assaulting column was to
move forward and charge the enemy's works. The space intervening between
our line and the enemy's fortification over which we must pass was badly
cut up by ravines and hills and covered by brush and fallen trees. When
the signal for the general assault came my regiment, the 113th Illinois,
belonging to Giles A. Smith's brigade of Blair's division and Sherman's
army corps, was among the first to make a determined attack. While
awaiting the signal to go in we had been practicing, over a big sycamore
log behind which we were crouching, a few long range shots at the rebel
stockade, but when the three rapid artillery discharges came we first
stood up, then we scaled the log and pushed forward. On our immediate
right was the 6th Missouri, and I being on the right of our regiment
went in side by side with the men of their left. A lieutenant on the
left of that regiment was in his shirt sleeves and wore a white shirt;
he and I went side by side for several steps, when he lunged forward
upon the ground, and in the quick glance I gave him I saw a circle of
red forming on his shirt back. The leaden hail from the enemy was
absolutely blinding. The very sticks and chips scattered over the ground
were jumping under the hot shower of rebel bullets. As I now recall that
experience I can but wonder that any of us survived that charge. The
rough and brush strewn ground over which we had to charge broke up our
alignment badly, and every soldier of our command had to pick his own
way forward as best he could without regard to touching elbows either to
the right or left.
When about two-thirds the way across the field I found myself with one
corporal of my company considerably in advance of the rest of our men,
and we two knelt down behind a fallen tree trunk to watch and wait their
coming. When thus on our knees a canister shot entered the bottom of the
corporal's shoe and lodged in his ankle joint, and while I was assisting
my comrade in cutting off his shoe and prying out the bullet, most of
our company passed by us. When I again stood up, I could see a fragment
of our line only, to my left, with which I recognized our colonel and
regimental colors. I started towards our flag, but had gone only a few
steps when one of the enemy's shells exploded in front of me, and when
the smoke had lifted a little I saw that our regimental flag and the
colonel had gone down. From under the end of a log beneath where the
shell had exploded rose up a comrade, Darrow by name, his red shock of
hair powdered and plastered with the dust and dirt of the explosion and
his eyes flashing with indignation. "Ain't it awful?" said I to Darrow,
and the profane wretch replied indifferently, "They're shootin' damn
careless."
I went on towards the enemy's works looking for the men of my company
and when within half gunshot of the rebel stockade, in a shallow gulley
where the freshets had some time worn a little ditch, I found a squad of
seventeen of my regiment hugging the ground and keeping up a steady fire
on the rebel works. I lay down with them at the upper end of the line
where the cover was the least, because it was the only place left for
me, and I thought of the words of old French General Blucher, who was a
veritable giant and always stuck up half his height above the
entrenchments, Napoleon said to him one day when under fire, "Now,
Blucher, you can afford to stoop a little?" "Damn your bit of a ditch,"
said Blucher, "it ain't knee deep!"
And there lying flat on our backs and loading our pieces in that
position, with the merciless sun blistering our faces, we passed that
day of dreadful fighting. Once during the day, when some of our forces
made an advance demonstration off to our right, we saw the slender blue
line advance for a distance and then, repulsed, retire, leaving the
field thickly strewn with the blue sheaves Old Death had gathered so
quickly. Then a rebel battery was run up behind the enemy's work in our
front and enfiladed our lines. Then how gloriously our little squad did
pepper that battery when they would run it up in sight. We silenced the
battery, but by our carelessness we lost one of our number killed, shot
in the center of the forehead, and five others wounded. Often that day
the bullets from front and rear passed so closely above our prostrate
bodies that the short cane stalks forming a part of our cover, were cut
off by them and lopped gently over upon us.
But we fared better than other regiments of our brigade. On our left
Sherman's regiment, the 13th regulars, lost 77 out of a total of 250
men; their commander, Captain Washington, was mortally wounded and
every other officer of the regiment more or less severely wounded. Also,
the 83rd Indiana and the 127th Illinois on our right suffered more than
we, but such a long dreadful day it was without food or water, under the
excessive heat of the sun, lying flat in that old gully, but hardly
daring to move a limb or change our position for fear of attracting a
rebel volley. As the sun sank in the west and we saw night approaching,
our fears were excited for our safety. We well knew if we remained where
we were until nightfall the enemy would sally out of their works and
capture us, so we held a parley and agreed that at a given signal all of
us who could would scatter and run for some near cover in the rear,
where resting briefly we would run on to other covers still further to
the rear, until the dusk of approaching night would finally shield us,
and we carried out that program so faithfully that all who made the run
escaped unscathed. My first sprint took me to an old dry sycamore stump
a few rods away, behind which I threw myself just in time to escape
being numerously punctured. When I got good and ready I ran again, and
again, until I could no longer discern through the gathering shadows the
long long line of rebel stockade behind me, and then I stopped and took
one long breath--bigger than a pound of wool. Not one of my comrades
could I then see. They had scampered away like a bevy of partridges and
were swallowed up in the gloom of night. When I was making my way
rearward through a patch of cockleburs up the slope of the hill, I heard
a wounded man groaning nearby, and I went to his assistance. He was shot
through the leg above the knee, and I had to stop some of the incoming
stragglers to assist me in taking him back to the field hospital. When
we got him down into the first ravine, he begged so piteously for water
we laid him down and with my canteen I groped along in the darkness
until I heard the trickling of a spring and managed to catch enough
water to stay the poor fellow's thirst until we got him back to a
surgeon. Then it was night, in the shadow of those great forest trees,
of the blackest description. None dare make a light or fire. In every
direction could be heard soldiers calling for their comrades without
responses. I didn't know where the headquarters of my regiment was, and
I could find no one who could tell me. I was both thirsty and hungry. I
was heartsick and tired. It was getting awfully cold. I sat down at the
roots of an old forest tree and tried to sleep. All night long I heard
the stretcher bearers bringing in the wounded, and I thought I would
freeze before morning.
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