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Personal Recollections
of the Civil War
BY ONE WHO TOOK PART IN IT AS A PRIVATE
SOLDIER IN THE 21ST VOLUNTEER REGIMENT
OF INFANTRY FROM MASSACHUSETTS
BY
JAMES MADISON STONE
BOSTON, MASS., MDCCCCXVIII
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
Copyright, 1918
By JAMES MADISON STONE
All rights reserved
To the memory of the soldiers of the 21st Regiment, and to their loyal
descendants, living or dead, this volume is affectionately dedicated by
THE AUTHOR.
Boston, 1918.
PREFACE
This volume does not claim to be a tactical, or strategic history of the
campaigns of which it treats; it aims rather to be a narrative of the
every-day life and experience of the private soldier in camp and
field--how he lived, how he marched, how he fought and how he suffered. No
sooner had some of the volunteers reached the front, and been subjected to
the hardships and exposures of army life, than they fell sick, were sent
to the hospital and were discharged without passing through any serious
campaigns. Others were wounded early, were disabled and were never able to
return to their regiments. The more fortunate passed sound and unscathed
through battle after battle and campaign after campaign through the whole
war. Three years of active campaigning and a year in the hospital was the
allotment of the writer, who thus was in the service from the beginning to
the end of the war.
Whatever the merits or demerits of this work may be, the impressions and
the composition are my own. They are an elaboration of notes made during
the war and directly after it, following which, it has taken the form of a
diary.
The part of the work which has been least interesting, consumed more time
and required some research, has been in fixing the dates when the
different incidents occurred, they having passed entirely from memory long
ago. With these few words, the work is submitted by the writer to his
comrades of those four eventful and trying years, when the life of the
Republic hung in the balance, in the hope that it may be an aid in calling
to mind fading recollections of pleasant incidents, as well as heroic
deeds performed by comrades.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
LEARNING TO BE A SOLDIER 9
Leaving Camp Lincoln for the front. At Baltimore, Maryland.
Cantaloupes and Peaches. Annapolis, Maryland. Chesapeake
Bay oysters. Assisting negroes to escape. Doing picket duty
on the railroad. A Negro husking. Chaplain Ball arrives from
Massachusetts. Assigned to the 2d Brigade, 2d Division, 9th
Army Corps.
CHAPTER II
THE NORTH CAROLINA CAMPAIGN 27
On shipbound. Burial at sea. At Hatteras Inlet. Battle of
Roanoke Island. Battle of Newbern. Reading Johnnies' love
letters. Athletics. Battle of Camden. Went to the relief
of the 2d Maryland.
CHAPTER III
IN VIRGINIA UNDER GENERAL POPE 53
A ride in the Confederate doctor's "One horse Chaise."
Living off the country. Learning the distance to Germania
Ford. The Second Battle of Bull Run. The Battle of Chantilly.
CHAPTER IV
WITH MCCLELLAN IN MARYLAND 83
The Barbara Fretchie Incident. The Battle of South Mountain.
Death of General Reno. The Battle of Antietam. Clara Barton.
President Lincoln visits the army. Visited a farmhouse very
near a Confederate Camp.
CHAPTER V
THE FREDERICKSBURG CAMPAIGN 101
A hard race for a pig. Chaplain Ball returns home. Picket
duty along the river. The Battle of Fredericksburg. Burying
the dead. Christmas revels with the Confederates. A band of
horn-blowers. A raid on the sutler. A costume ball at Hotel
de Ville.
CHAPTER VI
PLAYING SOLDIER IN KENTUCKY 127
Our breakfast at Baltimore. The trip west. The Reception at
Mt. Sterling. Moved into the town.
CHAPTER VII
THE CAMPAIGN IN TENNESSEE 137
We crossed the Cumberland Range. The patient mule. Seeing
a railroad engine with a train of cars make a dive. The
siege of Knoxville. Will you lend me my Nigger Colonel.
Re-enlistment. Recrossed the Mountains, returning to Kentucky
on the way home, on our re-enlistment furlough.
CHAPTER VIII
HOME ON A RE-ENLISTMENT FURLOUGH 155
The trip home. Reception at Worcester. The Social Whirl. We
returned to Annapolis.
CHAPTER IX
WITH GRANT IN VIRGINIA 159
The Battle of the Wilderness. The Battle of Spotsylvania
Courthouse. Johnnies caught un-dressed. The Battle of
Bethseda Church. The Johnnie who wanted to see the sun rise.
Life in the trenches during the siege of Petersburg. Wounded.
CHAPTER X
LIFE IN THE HOSPITAL 182
That ride in the ambulance. Emory Hospital. The woman with
my Mother's name. The dreadful death rate. President Lincoln's
Second Inauguration. Booth's Ride. Doing clerical work in
Philadelphia. Discharged.
CHAPTER I
LEARNING TO BE A SOLDIER
Leaving Camp Lincoln for the front. At Baltimore, Maryland. Cantaloupes
and Peaches. Annapolis, Maryland. Chesapeake Bay oysters. Assisting
negroes to escape. Doing picket duty on the railroad. A Negro husking.
Chaplain Ball arrives from Massachusetts. Assigned to the 2d Brigade, 2d
Division, 9th Army Corps.
During the winter of 1860 and 1861 there was great uneasiness felt in the
North. The South, through the democratic party, had been the ruling
section of the country most of the time since the establishment of the
Republic, but at the time of the election in the autumn of 1860 a northern
political party had won. That party was not only a northern party, but it
was an abolition party. The election of an abolition president, Mr.
Lincoln, by the North, was at once regarded as a menace to the slave
holding interests of the South, which section at once began to make
preparations to withdraw from the Union. As the spring months passed and
Mr. Lincoln, the new president, took his seat, secession was more and more
talked about. Soon the 6th Massachusetts Regiment was attacked in
Baltimore. Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor was fired upon. Battalion
after battalion of the state militia were being hurried away south for the
protection of the Capitol. It thus became more and more apparent that
there was to be war, and the all-important question from the northern
viewpoint was, the preservation of the Union. One Sunday in the month of
June I went home to visit my family, I being at the time at work away from
home, and while there, quietly asked my mother what she would say if I
should enlist. Well, that question produced a shock, and was not answered
as quietly as it was asked. I was told I could not enlist without her
consent, which she should not give, and I was heartily laughed at by my
brothers and sisters. However, when it became known that a company was
being recruited at Barre, I went quietly over there and enlisted, then I
went home and told the family what I had done. There was a rumpus, of
course, but it passed off, and after a few days, hearing nothing from the
company, I decided to go back to work again and await developments. On the
22d I learned that the company was going into camp at Worcester the next
day. I was on hand and went along.
A number of stage-coaches were provided to take us to Worcester. It was an
interesting and picturesque ride of a little more than twenty miles.
Arriving in Worcester early in the afternoon, we went to the Agricultural
Fair Grounds, which had been converted into a campground and named Camp
Lincoln from Levi Lincoln, the first mayor of Worcester and a Governor of
Massachusetts, and set to work putting up tents and forming a company
street. Sleeping in tents, drilling and doing guard duty seemed strange at
first, and was a good deal of a change from the duties of a farmer's boy,
but it was interesting to be among a lot of live young men who were
brimful of enthusiasm, patriotism and fun.
When I joined the company at Barre, I was surprised to discover a number
of Dana boys there: Henry Billings, Henry Haskins, German Lagara, Gil
Warner and Harding Witt. Harding Witt and I had been schoolmates and good
friends for a number of years, so I was especially glad to find Harding
there. Reveille was sounded at five o'clock. Most of the boys did not find
it difficult to get up at that time but a few of those boys made the
greatest ado about getting up on the minute. They were very likely boys
who had always been called by loving mothers and had been called two or
three times every morning. A quarter of an hour after reveille every man
had to turn out to roll call. The men thus had fifteen minutes to dress
and put their tents in order. At six o'clock the breakfast signal was
sounded and all fell in line to go to the cook-house and get their
breakfasts. The cup and plate furnished by the government were of tin,
much like those I remember having seen children use in early boyhood. They
were expected to stand the rough usage of army life. Knives, forks and
spoons were of the same rude character. Pedlers, however, early appeared
in camp with a combination, the three hooking together and making a very
light, portable and convenient thing to carry, and many of the boys bought
and carried them in preference to those furnished by the government. Some
of the rations were served out to the men, as soon as received from the
Commissary Department, such as sugar, salt, bread and salt pork. Other
things like corned beef, beans and coffee were cooked by the company cook
and served at meal times hot. Soft bread, a very good kind of wheat bread,
was furnished at convenient times when we were in camp, at other times we
received the regular army crackers. These were sometimes, during the first
year, very poor; they had doubtless been in the government storehouses a
long time, but later on when we received fresh crackers they were very
palatable.
At eight o'clock every morning the surgeons' call was sounded and any man
who did not feel well could go and see the doctor, perhaps get excused
from duty, get some pills or some quinine to take, or, if sick, be given
a bed in the hospital. Although I spent nearly the entire year in the
hospital (the last year of my service, after being wounded in July, 1864),
previous to that time I only once answered the surgeons' call and that was
when every man in the regiment was ordered up to the surgeon's tent and
given a dose of quinine and whiskey. This was while we were at Newbern,
North Carolina, when chills and fever were prevalent in the regiment. At
nine o'clock in the evening tattoo was sounded, the signal for all
soldiers to repair to their quarters, and fifteen minutes later taps gave
the signal for all lights to be extinguished. This living in accordance
with military regulation, seemed a little strange and reminded the writer
of the time when he lived in a factory village where a bell sounded the
time to get up, where one is rung into the factory and rung out again,
suggesting a kind of life where a man becomes simply a cog in a wheel.
We had been in camp about two weeks when we learned the Barre company was
to be known as Company K, and that the regiment was to be the 21st
Regiment of volunteer infantry from Massachusetts. We had wall tents with
floors, and very good bunks to sleep on. If nothing else could be got a
chip or a quart bottle made a candlestick, but a bayonet which could be
stuck in the ground was more reliable. A large potato flattened on one
side and a hole dug out for the candle, or a cake of soap were also pretty
serviceable. When I enlisted at Barre I received a military cap, it was
one of the caps of the Barre Militia Company. It was the only garment of a
military character I had until I received my United States uniform just
before leaving Worcester for the front. The color was navy blue and it was
trimmed with a red cord. It was a French type of cap, but it was
afterwards known as the McClellan cap throughout the army.
Drilling was, of course, the principal work of the day, at first in
marching, company drill, platoon drill, squad drill, all to familiarize us
with the movements of soldiers in two ranks. After a time we received
muskets and then began the exercises in the manual of arms. Those muskets
were of the most horrible kind imaginable, but they answered to drill
with. That, however, was all they were good for excepting old junk. The
name of our first captain was Parker. He was about six feet, six inches
long. I think he was elected captain on account of his great length. He
had been in the militia, I believe, but he knew as much about drilling or
military matters generally as a South Sea Islander. As time went on, it
was probably realized at headquarters that Captain Parker was not a
suitable man to command a company in actual service, and he was never
sworn into the United States service, and when we left Worcester for the
front, the company was commanded by Thomas Washburn, a Worcester man. The
first lieutenant was a Methodist minister, a schemer and a shark. He
expected to be made chaplain of the regiment and failing in that, soon
left us, taking with him about $90.00 of the company's funds. The second
lieutenant was a man by the name of Williams, a Barre man. I remember him
as a man with a very large beard. A tall, slim man who was something of a
drill master used to come over to camp, from the city and drill us
occasionally. He wore a military uniform, stood very erect and had rather
a military bearing. I think he would have accepted a commission in the
company if one had been offered him, but he was not thus honored by
Company K.
While in camp my sister Lizzie came down to Worcester and visited me,
staying with some friends in the city, and the day we broke camp and
started for the front, my brother John came down to see me off. August
16th, an officer of the United States regular army visited the regiment
and mustered us into the volunteer service of the United States. The next
day we received our uniforms, a woolen and an India rubber blanket. This
last had a slit in the middle through which the head could be thrust, one
end dropping down in front, the other end covering the back, thus taking
the place of a waterproof overcoat. Our uniforms were of two colors, light
or sky blue and dark navy blue. The trousers and overcoats were of sky
blue, the latter having a cape. The blouse and cap were of a dark or navy
blue. The cap was somewhat like the McClellan cap in form, but the
circular stiff part on top tipped forward farther than on the McClellan
cap.
The uniform of the non-commissioned officers, the corporal and sergeant,
were the same as the private, they wearing chevrons on the sleeves of
their coats to indicate their ranks. The commissioned officers were not
expected to associate with the privates at all; they belonged to another
class of men entirely. They dressed in a very smart way. Their uniforms
were all tailor-made, all dark blue in color; the dress coat quite a
little like the Prince Albert coat; the cap they wore was usually the
McClellan cap. Our accoutrements consisted of a belt, a cartridge box, cap
box, bayonet-scabbard, haversack, canteen and knapsack. We were also
furnished with new guns, Springfield smoothbores. These were a little
better than those we had been using to drill with, but they were none too
good. Thus, in a few days, these hundreds of boys were converted into a
regiment of infantry soldiers, and on August 23d we marched forth from
Camp Lincoln, our belts bristling with large bowie knives and revolvers,
and started for the front. We took a train for Norwich, Conn. There we
boarded a boat for Jersey City. As we passed along through the state,
people in large numbers were gathered at the railroad stations to greet
us, and from nearly every farmhouse a little flag or handkerchief signaled
us a sympathetic goodbye. While we lay on the wharf at Jersey City, who
should appear but George and Fred Lincoln of Brooklyn, N. Y. Their father
was a Hardwick man and the family used to spend their summer vacations at
the old family home in Hardwick at the time I worked for Mr. Walker. We
had thus come to know each other quite well. They were two fine boys and I
was glad to see them. About noon a train of freight cars were ready and we
clambered aboard and started for Philadelphia. All the way through New
Jersey the people were out in the streets waving their handkerchiefs and
bidding us goodbye. So much goodbye-saying annoyed me after a time, and I
withdrew inside the car out of sight and engaged my mind with other
thoughts. About eight o'clock in the evening we reached Philadelphia. Here
we were marched to the Cooper Shop saloon and were given a fine supper. We
were very hungry and that supper was so good. We were made so welcome and
everything connected with it was so kindly and so genuine that through all
our lives this was one of the incidents we looked back to with a feeling
of grateful appreciation. If that was an example of Quaker kindness and
Quaker charity I raise my hat to the descendants of William Penn and his
colony.
Havre-de-Grace, where we arrived the next morning, August 25th, will
always be remembered as the place where we received our first ammunition
and where for the first time, we loaded our muskets with real ball
cartridges. We were nearing Baltimore and would soon be on the edge of
Rebeldom, but when we arrived in Baltimore, nothing occurred out of the
ordinary. We marched unmolested and unnoticed through the city to
Patterson Park, where we went into camp. I confess to not having slept
much the first night we were there. It seemed as if it must be a city of
dogs and the whole population was on the street barking all night. Such a
barking, such a never-ending uproar--I never heard anything approaching it
until I visited Cairo and Constantinople in recent years. Those cities are
filled with tramp dogs, and as a result there is a constant breaking out
of the barking of the dogs through the whole night. The second night we
were at Patterson Park, the long roll was beaten at about one o'clock at
night. We turned out, fell into line ready for business in short order but
that was all there was to it; it was part of the exercise we were to
become accustomed to, I imagine. We stayed at Baltimore three days and
nothing out of the ordinary occurred. To be sure, we were not treated very
cordially, but we were not insulted, we were just left severely alone.
Personally, after I got a taste of the peaches and cantaloupes, I
thoroughly enjoyed myself there. Those peaches and cantaloupes were of the
finest kind and so cheap, I ate to my heart's content--rather to my
stomach's content. August 29th we went to Annapolis, where we were
quartered in the Naval School buildings. The cadets and everything that
was movable had been taken to Newport, R. I. The grounds of the academy
supplied us with a fine drill field and we utilized it constantly and
became, as we thought, quite proficient. But one fine day as the troops
assembled there to go on the Sherman expedition to Bufort and Port Royal,
S. C., there came two German regiments from New York City. Every man was
by birth a German and they had evidently been through the military
training incident to all native German boys. Well, the evolutions of those
regiments as they drilled were a revelation to us. None of us had at the
time seen anything comparable with it and it made us feel as provincial as
you please.
At Baltimore we had a glimpse of negro life,--but it was only a glimpse.
We were there so short a time, and not being allowed to leave camp, all we
saw was the glances we got as we marched through the city on our way to
the camp and as we went away. But at Annapolis and on the railroad out in
the country we had a chance to see something of the negro and negro life.
Those we saw on the street and about the town at Annapolis were fairly
well dressed and looked a little poorer only than those one would see in a
northern city. One day, however, while out rowing with a crowd of the boys
we landed at the wharf of a man in the oyster business; boat loads of
oysters were arriving at the wharf, brought in by negroes who raked them,
and in a small building were a number of negro men and women opening
oysters. These last were a sight to be remembered. The negroes were
hardly dressed at all, and the few clothes they had on were of the very
coarsest material, and they looked about like the kind one would expect to
see in Africa. Our cattle and horses in the North have the appearance of
being better cared for, and as those negroes worked, there was no
intimation of intelligence; they worked like horses in a treadmill. Later
on, while doing picket duty out on the railroad, I saw a lot of cornfield
negroes at a negro husking. There was a long pile of corn heaped up just
as it was cut in the field and all around it sat the negroes husking. They
sang most of the time a monotonous sing-song tune. There were present
negroes from different parts of the plantation and there was a feud to be
avenged. All at once each man whipped out an axe-handle and at each other
they went with a fury thoroughly brutal, pounding each other on the body,
head or anywhere. The overseers were soon after them and had them
separated and at their husking again. The axe-handles, all that could be
got hold of, were taken away from them. These field negroes, or cornfield
negroes, are about the lowest and worst in the South. Great care has to be
exercised to prevent them from getting hold of knives. Had half a dozen of
these negroes had knives at that time there would have been a lot of
blood spilled. There was quite a little spilled as it was.
October 22. There has been quite a bit of excitement the last two days in
camp caused by the secreting in the grounds of a negro slave who was also
assisted in his escape by some of the boys. The negro belonged to Governor
Hicks and he was seen making his escape into the grounds. Colonel Morse
did his best to find the negro but no one else gave himself any trouble
about the matter. The negro was carefully hidden in an old chimney until
night, when one of the boys stole a rowboat in the town, took it around to
a little dark place behind some old sheds, loaded Mr. Negro into the boat,
gave him a bag of hardtack and started him off down the sound in the
direction of Baltimore.
It was no uncommon thing for negroes to be assisted in making their escape
by the boys, but this negro, having been seen entering the grounds by the
main gate, and the owner being no less a person than the Governor of the
State, the affair was given exceptional importance.
Those of us boys who were fond of shell fish, had a treat at Annapolis.
The famous Chesapeake Bay oysters were in abundance, cheap and delicious.
Besides these, there was a kind of crab the fishermen brought to the
wharf and sold to us, that was as sweet and as delicious as they could be.
October 29. Company K and three other companies were sent out on to the
railroad between Annapolis and Annapolis Junction to do picket duty along
the railroad, relieving the companies that had been out there while we
were at Annapolis. When we boarded the train to go out, it was discovered
that the orderly sergeant was drunk. It was his duty to have the camp
equipment for each of the posts along the road all together, and kept
together, that it could be unloaded from the train without delay at each
of the different stations. When we reached the first station it was found
that the camp equipage was in the same muddled state as the sergeant's
brains. It was the usual thing when a non-commissioned officer sinned to
reduce him to the ranks. The orderly sergeant of Company K fared the
regular fate in this instance. The new orderly sergeant was a man by the
name of Charles Plummer, a stranger to all of us. He had joined the
company just before we left Worcester. From what we had seen of him at
that time, he gave us the impression of being a man of exceptional
ability. The last vestige of life in the barracks ended at that time,
after that we slept in tents, and each did his own cooking, such as it
was. To break the monotony of our meals, different methods of treating
hardtack were devised--like toasting, moistening and frying, etc. The
canteen wash, when one was willing to carry the water from the stream to
camp, rather than wash at the stream which was usual, consisted in one
soldier holding the canteen and pouring the water on to the hands of No.
2, until No. 2 had got a good wash, then turning about and No. 2 holding
the canteen and pouring the water for No. 1 to have a wash. Our washing of
clothes was most of it done at the stream, but as we had no means of
heating water they were not boiled and were not as clean as they might
have been. It was a common thing for negro women to come around and get
soiled clothes to wash.
Doing picket duty on the railroad we found very uninteresting and
monotonous work, and we were greatly pleased when we heard Governor Andrew
had been at Annapolis, had promised us new guns, and that we had been
assigned to the Ninth Army Corps and were to go on the Burnside
Expedition. Our stay on the railroad was thus cut short, and on December
18 we were relieved from further duty there, and returned to Annapolis. We
then discovered that in our absence out on the railroad, a chaplain had
arrived from Massachusetts, Rev. George S. Ball of Upton, a man whom, as
time went on, we came to have the highest regard for.
December 19. Together with the rest of the troops assembled there, some
ten or twelve thousand men, we were reviewed by General Burnside and on
the 20th there was a grand inspection, after which we were told that the
21st had been assigned to the 2d, General Reno's Brigade, and that we were
the first regiment selected by the General and were to occupy the right
flank of the brigade.
December 21. We received our new rifles and were greatly delighted with
them. They were Enfield rifles, made in England. The 22d and a number of
days following, we were marched out into the country, into a very large
field, and put through regimental drill for four or five hours every day.
It was the first time the regiment had all been together since we were at
Baltimore. The 26th we received a supply of ball-cartridges and went out
into the same great field again, put up a lot of targets at different
distances and practiced firing at them for a number of days, accustoming
ourselves to estimating distances, and adjusting the sights on our guns to
the different distances. We had our final drill and practice in firing at
target the 2d of January. After we went in town off the railroad we did a
lot of drilling and firing at target and I think the boys were then in
fine shape for a campaign. The stay at Annapolis was an excellent
experience for us. We became accustomed to army life and if we were ever
to be in shape for active service we were then. The last days at Annapolis
were very lively; new regiments were arriving daily. There were
inspections; ships were gathering in the bay; Colonel Morse resigned
command of the regiment to become Commander of the Post;
Lieutenant-Colonel Maggi took command of the regiment, and on January 6th
we went on board the ship Northerner, bound for we knew not where.