Opening of Hostilities--Brave Charge of the Hiram
Students--Giving the Rebels "Hail Columbia"--Sheldon's
Reinforcement--The Rebel Commander Falls--His Army Retreats
in Confusion.
With the first glimmer of light in the east, Garfield's men begin their
march down into the valley. As the advance guard turns a jutting ridge,
it is fired upon by a company of rebel horsemen. Instantly Garfield
forms his soldiers into a hollow square, and a heavy volley from their
rifles drives the enemy back.
Marshall and his whole army must be close by, but to find out their
exact position, Garfield sends forward a reconnoitring party. Suddenly a
twelve-pound shell whirs above the tree-tops, and tears up the ground at
their feet. But the mounted company of twelve go bravely forward; and as
they sweep around a curve in the road, another shell whistles past them,
and they can hear in the distance a threatening rumble.
The enemy's position is at once clearly defined. The main body of their
army is posted upon the top of two ridges at the left of Middle Creek,
but there is also a strong detachment upon the right, with a battery of
heavy artillery to hold the forks of the stream. Marshall's plan is to
draw the Union forces down into the narrow rocky road along the Creek,
where between two fires, he knows it will be an easy matter to hem them
in and utterly destroy the whole number.
But Garfield, with his quick intuition, takes in the situation at a
glance. He immediately orders a hundred of his Hiram students to cross
the stream, climb the ridge where the firing has been most frequent, and
open the battle.
Bravely the little company plunge into the icy stream, and clinging to
the low underbrush, begin the perilous ascent. A shower of bullets from
two thousand rifles is falling all around them, but nothing daunted,
they press onward till the summit is reached. Then, from every side the
deadly shots are hurled, and, for a moment, the little band begin to
waver.
"Every man to a tree!" shouts the leader, Captain Williams. "Give them
as good as they send, boys!"
The word passes from lip to lip, and instantly from behind the great
oaks and maples, they take their stand, and open a volley of fire upon
the rebels. This is followed by a hand-to-hand fight with the bayonets,
and little by little, the brave boys are driven back.
"To the trees again!" cries the leader, "we may as well die here as in
Ohio!"
One of the Hiram students, a lad of eighteen, is shot through the thigh,
and a confederate soldier passing by says to him,--
"Here, boy, give me your musket." "Not the gun, but its contents," he
replies, and in another instant the rebel lies dead at his feet. His
companion takes up a weapon to kill the brave young student, but the
latter seizes the dead man's rifle and, with unerring aim, fells him to
the ground.
When his comrades bear him away to the camp, and a surgeon tells him
that the wounded limb must be amputated, his only words are: "Oh, what
will mother do?"
The story of the noble lad--Charles Carlton of Franklin, Ohio,--is told
in the Ohio Senate, two weeks later, and a statute is immediately framed
to make provision for the widows and mothers of our soldiers.
A hundred men like young Carlton present a steady resistance to the
enemy's fire, but Garfield watching them from a rocky height, realizes
their perilous situation and exclaims,--
"They will surely be driven back, they will lose the hill unless
supported."
Instantly, five hundred of the Ohio Fortieth and Forty-second, under
Major Pardee and General Cranor, are ordered forward.
"Hurrah for Captain Williams and his Hiram boys!" they shout, as they
ford the stream, holding their cartridge-boxes high above their heads.
But the fire of four thousand muskets fall upon them and though,--
"Bravely they fight and well,
Stormed at with shot and shell,"
the unequal contest is quickly noted by the Union commander.
"This will never do," he exclaims. "Who will volunteer to carry the
crest of the mountain?"
"Let _us_ go forward," cries Colonel Monroe, of the Twenty-second
Kentucky, "we know every inch of the ground."
"Go in, then," says Garfield, "and give them 'Hail Columbia!'"
Crossing the stream a little lower down, they mount the ridge to the
left, and in ten minutes are face to face with the rebel army.
"Don't shoot till you see the eyes of your enemy," shouts the colonel,
and although the men have never been in battle before, they are as cool
and calm as their commander.
Five hundred against five thousand! It was a fearful contest, equalled
only by the famous charge of the "Light Brigade."
"Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them,
Volleyed and thundered!"
And Garfield, standing upon a rock scarred with bullets, watched and
waited for Sheldon's reinforcements, until, fearing the little band
would be forced to retreat, he turned to the company held back as
reserves, threw his military cloak into a tree, and exclaimed,--
"Come on, boys! It is _our_ turn now to give them 'Hail Columbia'!" And
then, as the ballad tells the story,--
"He led, they followed, spreading wide
Among the rebels routed;
From rank to rank, in liberal gift,
The self-same thing he shouted."
The short winter's day was almost over. Hotter and hotter raged the
battle, but the Union forces, in spite of their inferior number, were
constantly gaining ground. They seemed infused with the indomitable
spirit of their commander. Their coolness and intrepidity gave added
power to every shot, while the enemy, not understanding the difficulty
of firing "down hill," frequently missed aim and let their bullets fall
harmlessly upon the tree-tops, or far beyond the mark.
At this juncture, Dr. Pomerene, the surgeon of the Ohio Forty-second,
saw a gleam of muskets in the distance. Hatless and excited, he mounted
a fleet horse, crossed the stream, and hurried on to ascertain, what
colors were borne by the coming troops. The glorious star-spangled
banner met his eyes, and, drawing nearer, he saluted Colonel Sheldon
with the longed-for reinforcements.
"For God's sake, hurry!" he cried, "or the boys on the other side will
be captured!"
From his elevated position on the opposite hill, Marshall had already
descried the starry banner, and Sheldon's fresh troops hurrying to the
rescue.
"_Retreat!_" he shouted to his men, and then, pierced by six bullets, he
fell to the ground. Night closed about the contending armies, the rebels
were seized with a sudden panic and fled wildly in all directions.
"God bless you, boys! You have saved Kentucky!" exclaimed Garfield, as
he led the victorious troops back to camp. It was, indeed, a wonderful
contest. The entire loss on the federal side was but one killed and
eleven wounded.
"In all the battles of the late war," writes Edmund Kirke, in the _New
York Tribune_, "there was not another like it. Measured by the forces
engaged, the valor displayed, and the results that followed, it throws
into shade the achievements of even that mighty host that saved the
nation."
It was the first decided victory upon the Union side, but, years after,
Garfield himself said of the skirmish,
"I see now, that favorably as it terminated, the engagement was a very
rash and imprudent affair on my part. A West Point officer would
probably have had more caution, and would not have attempted so unequal
a contest. I didn't know any better, then."