CAMP NEAR FALMOUTH.
The failure at Fredericksburg, considered in itself, and especially
in connection with its causes, was well calculated to produce
much discouragement throughout the entire army. On the eleventh
of December the troops streamed forth from their camps, confident
in their ability to drive the foe from Marye’s Heights, and hurl
him back to Richmond. On the sixteenth they returned, baffled and
dispirited, having lost twelve thousand men in fruitless efforts
to overcome the natural and artificial advantages of the rebel
position. The fearful scenes of a battle may well impress the
veteran of many conflicts; but when, for the first time, a regiment
meets the enemy with every advantage in favor of the latter, and
when the list of killed and wounded swells to unusual proportions,
and nothing is accomplished by this expense of life and energy,
it is no sign of weakness that despondency and gloom for a time
prevail. Such a feeling, resulting from failure in the campaign,
and from the loss of a large number of our most esteemed officers
and men, pervaded the Twenty-seventh in common with the rest of
the army. The loss of such men as Captains Schweizer and Taylor,
Sergeants Barrett and Fowler, Corporals Mimmac and Alling, and
many others, men of high character, who went to the field purely
from a sense of duty--such men in their death could not fail to
leave behind, among their fellow soldiers, a universal sorrow,
reaching to the very depths of the heart. The memory of those who
fell on the thirteenth of December, and many of whom lie in unknown
graves back of Fredericksburg, will never lose its freshness,
but rather grow in strength as the history of future years adds
significance to the conflicts of the present.
Fortunately for the success of Burnside’s plan of evacuation,
his operations were concealed in the darkness of a severe storm,
which had not terminated when we arrived in our former camp on
the morning of the sixteenth. In the afternoon the two hundred
and fifty men of the Twenty-seventh who had been picketing along
the Rappahannock for the previous six days, rejoined us, many of
them much exhausted by their unusually prolonged duties. Expecting
to be absent from the regiment only a day, the ordinary limit of
picket duty at one time, the party took with them only one day’s
rations, and in the confusion attending the movement of troops and
the battle, rations for the additional time could be procured but
irregularly and in insufficient quantities.
According to orders, the camp was now moved to a strip of pine
woods skirting the west side of the division parade-ground. But
this was not to be our permanent location; and after manœuvring
for several days from one place to another, we at length encamped
in the edge of a forest, only a few rods from where we first
pitched our tents, on the line of the Rappahannock. An elevated
plain stretched away between us and the river, and above a slight
depression the clustered spires of Fredericksburg rose to view,
from whose belfreys, on a Sabbath morning, we could sometimes hear
the summons to the house of God. A walk of a few rods brought us in
full view of the city, sitting in calm quiet among the hills, while
long red lines told where the rebel earthworks lay, and little
specks of white in the background disclosed the enemy’s camps.
Just under the edge of the bluff to our right, and concealed from
view, was the village of Falmouth, a mongrel collection of houses
arranged along dirty, unpaved streets.
Although intimations were thrown out that the army would now go
into winter quarters, yet it was nearly two weeks before our men
could dispossess themselves of the idea that some fine morning the
old stereotyped order, “Strike tents and pack knapsacks!” would
scatter to the winds their plans of personal comfort.
As soon as it was evident that no further movements would be made,
the men vigorously applied themselves to the work of building
huts, devoting the mornings to this labor, while brigade drill
occupied the afternoon. In the hundred and thirty log houses of
our little regimental village was embraced an amount of comfort
wholly inconceivable by those who know nothing of the numerous
contrivances a soldier’s ingenuity can suggest to supply the place
of ordinary conveniences. Generally, four congenial minds would
unite their mechanical resources. A pine forest within reasonable
distance, an axe and a shovel, one of Uncle Sam’s mule teams,
and a moderate degree of ingenuity, constitute the only capital
of these camp carpenters. Having secured a favorable site, ten
by seven, these comrades in bunk sally forth to the neighboring
grove, and before their sturdy blows the old pines come crashing
down, are split into slabs of the required length, and in due time
reach their destination in camp. After smoothing the ground, and
carefully removing stumps, the logs are hewn out and placed one
above another, with the ends dove-tailed together, or set upright
side by side in trenches, and soon the huts assume their full
proportions--seven feet by ten. Every man now becomes a mason. The
surrounding region is ransacked for stone and brick, with which to
construct a fire-place at the front end. While this important work
is going on, another is vigorously plying his wooden trowel, in
plastering up the fissures with clay, on the principle that nothing
is without its use, even Virginia mud. The roof is made of thin
shelter-tents, buttoned together. As regards internal arrangements,
at the further end are two bunks, one above the other; and as the
upholsterer has not performed his part, and very likely never
will, the occupants must content themselves with the soft side of
pine slabs. On one side of the hut is a rack for the reception of
guns and equipments, while at the other a cracker-box cover on
stilts does duty as a table. In respect to seats, the ingenuity
of different individuals showed itself in rudely constructed
benches, or square boards, elevated on three-pronged crotchets,
obtained in the woods, or was satisfied with the trunk of a tree
cut into suitable lengths. Over the fire-place a mantle was
generally located, containing a confused collection of tin plates
and cups, knives and forks, and an endless variety of rubbish. In
winter quarters it is very desirable to have a liberal supply of
culinary furniture. The man whose fire-place is adorned with an
iron frying-pan, is an object of envy to all his comrades, and is
universally agreed to have reached the acme of comfort. However,
the halves of old canteens, fitted with handles, answer very well
in its place. In many of the huts, telegraph wire might be found
doing service in the shape of a gridiron, upon which an occasional
steak is broiled. Very likely, in its appropriate place is a
coffee-pot, perhaps of the plantation style, two feet high, and
large in proportion, which some argus-eyed soldier has observed and
quietly confiscated.
Our huts were now nearly completed, and with no little satisfaction
we surveyed their rough architecture, pork-barrel chimneys, and
cracker-box doors, feeling that though the winds might blow, and
the rainy season pour down its floods, we were prepared to endure
it patiently. When the army has just completed its preparations
for a comfortable time, it is safe to prophesy marching orders
within three days thereafter. So it proved in the present instance.
At dress parade, on the sixteenth of January, an order was read
for the regiment to be ready to march on the next day with three
days’ rations. Details were dispatched at midnight to the Brigade
Commissary’s, after rations, and in good season on the seventeenth
we were ready to start; but no final orders came, and it was
bruited about that General J. E. B. Stuart, while roving around
Dumfries and Alexandria with his rebel cavalry, in the absence of
General Burnside in Washington, had telegraphed an order, as if
from him, for the army to be ready to move. This is of a piece with
a joke Stuart perpetrated on another occasion, when in the name of
a Union General he telegraphed to Washington for certain stores,
and is reported to have received them in good order.
On the eighteenth, Generals Burnside and Sumner reviewed our
Army Corps. In the afternoon of the twentieth, an order was read,
announcing that the army was “about to meet the enemy once more.
The auspicious moment had arrived to strike a great and mortal blow
at the rebellion, and to gain that decisive victory due to the
country.” The plan was for Hooker and Franklin to cross at Banks’s
Ford, six miles above Falmouth, and capture Taylor’s Hill, the
key of the position, from which they could advance in the rear of
Fredericksburg, and turn the enemy’s flank. This being done, Sumner
with his grand division, to which the Twenty-seventh belonged,
was to cross directly in front of the city at the old place, and
take the batteries which had baffled our efforts in the battle of
December thirteenth. The plan was substantially the same as the
previous one, except that the flank movement was to be made upon
the rebel left wing instead of his right. The failure of December
resulted from the inefficiency of Franklin’s flank demonstration,
which allowed the enemy to mass his forces in front of Sumner. But
now it was proposed to use two corps in the preliminary movement,
and, provided they were successful in taking Taylor’s Hill,
Sumner’s success would be assured, notwithstanding the rebels had
been engaged for a month previous in strengthening and extending
their works. Hooker and Franklin were in motion on the twentieth,
while impetuous Sumner waited in his camps to hear the signal which
should summon his veteran legions to the conflict. For several
days, artillery and pontoons had been passing camp _en route_ for
Banks’s Ford. If the weather continues favorable, the morrow will
bring to our ears the boom of a hundred and fifty cannon.
But one of those strange events beyond man’s power to avert
disconcerts the whole plan. Instead of the roar of artillery, the
unwelcome sound of rain salutes our ears the next morning, and
continues for several days. Impassable roads, guns and pontoons
fast in the mud, men toiling slowly along, or pulling at the boats,
add a new page to the chapter of misfortune which had followed
the noble Army of the Potomac. The rebels briefly summed up this
last advance in these laconic words, “Burnside stuck in the mud!”
which they impudently displayed from their picket-line, derisively
inquiring when the “auspicious moment” would arrive. The rainy
season had now set in in good earnest, and the wearied troops
returned to their camps to await the advent of spring.
The progress of events had already foreshadowed a change of
commanders, and on the twenty-ninth of January general orders
were read announcing that General Burnside had been relieved, and
the accession of Joe Hooker. The brief two months of Burnside’s
command had secured for him the sincere respect of the whole
army. His honesty of purpose could not be impeached, and none
felt more keenly than himself the ill success which had attended
him. History, in summing up his campaign, will assign no small
significance to the fact that Burnside did not receive the hearty
coöperation of his subordinate commanders. He possessed an
excessive self-distrust, and it was creditable to his candor to
confess it; yet it is a question whether this distrust did not
reäct unfavorably upon the officers and men of his command. Condemn
it as we may, the boastful self-confidence of Hooker had no little
influence in reïnspiring the army with that self-reliance which
forms an important item in the calculations of success.
The advent of General Hooker was signalized by the abolition of
the grand divisions, and a return to the simpler organization of
_Corps d’Armée_. And what was of more consequence to the soldiers,
an order was published directing the issue of four rations of fresh
bread and fresh beef, and two rations of potatoes per week, with an
occasional supply of other vegetables. This measure went right to
the hearts of the army, for it must be confessed, and it is nothing
to their disgrace, that the hearts of soldiers are very near, if
not actually in, their stomachs. For an army is a great physical
machine, expending a vast amount of animal power, and requiring
careful attention to its animal wants to secure the highest moral
efficiency.
From the battle of Fredericksburg to Hooker’s move in the spring
of 1863, the Twenty-seventh was engaged in picket duty along the
Rappahannock, whose banks are as familiar to the men almost as
the walks of childhood. Every other day, at seven in the morning,
our quota of the division picket, equipped with blankets and one
day’s rations, formed in front of the Colonel’s tent, and, after
inspection, marched a mile to General Hancock’s headquarters to
undergo another inspection, after which a march of two or three
miles brought them to the line of the river. The fact that three
fourths of the time it was either rainy, or snowing, or cold
and blustering, will give some idea of the arduous character of
picket duty. By mutual agreement, the custom of picket firing, so
annoying and useless, was discontinued, and friendly intercourse
was no uncommon event; which latter practice, though harmless in
itself, was yet so liable to make trouble that it was prohibited
by special order. Frequently the rebels launched out on the river
their diminutive craft, laden with tobacco and the latest Richmond
papers, and bearing a note to “Gentlemen of the United States,”
requesting an interchange of commodities.
February twenty-second, we experienced the severest snow-storm of
the season. At noon, through the thick mist of snow-flakes, came
the deep boom of cannon, swelling into a loud chorus, from the
adjacent batteries, answered by the low, muffled murmur of the
distant discharge. In every direction salutes were being fired in
honor of Washington’s birthday. The time and place gave additional
interest to this demonstration of respect for the Father of his
Country, for this region is intimately connected with his history.
Here he lived, and here are his descendants to this day, while on
the other side of the Rappahannock a simple tomb marks his mother’s
resting-place.
March fifth, General Hooker reviewed the Second Army Corps, on a
large plain, near Hancock’s headquarters. The corps was drawn up in
nine lines by brigade, in all nearly fifteen thousand men. General
Hooker and General Couch, the then corps commander, with their
brilliant and numerous staffs, rode rapidly up and down the several
lines, while the men presented arms. Then taking position in front,
the brigades marched by in column by company. Nothing was more
impressive than the sight of the many regiments reduced to a mere
fragment of their former strength--a silently eloquent commentary
upon the inscriptions on their banners.
The rapid advance of spring, and Hooker’s known determination to
move on the enemy at the earliest possible moment, led to much
speculation as to the plan of the new campaign. Before the close of
March, intimations were thrown out that the army must expect soon
to take the field. Daily balloon ascensions were made at several
points on the river, in order to ascertain the position of the
rebels. As an illustration of “Fighting Joe’s” cool assurance, it
was currently reported that one day he sent his balloon directly
over the city of Fredericksburg, having previously notified the
commandant that any molestation would meet with condign punishment
from his batteries. The comparative nearness of our camp to the
river afforded good opportunities for observing any change on the
rebel side, and the probability that we should have to cross in
front of the city in any future movement, whetted our curiosity.
The rebels had been actively engaged all winter in strengthening
their position, and now dark lines of rifle-pits and earthworks
frowned from the bluffs for miles up and down the banks, commanding
every available crossing. As may well be imagined, the prospect was
by no means inviting.