General Rosser ordered the “Comanches” to remain at the Po river
bridge during the 7th, and guard it from the attacks of the enemy,
who, still posted in the woods where the hard fighting was done on
the evening of the 5th, showed a disposition to take the bridge.
Here the Colonel had some breastworks thrown up, and leaving Capt.
Myers with Company A to hold the bridge, he attempted a flank
movement to the right with the remainder of his battalion, hoping to
capture some horses, but was unsuccessful; and during his absence
the Yankees made a demonstration with dismounted cavalry on the
little force at the bridge, which, however, held the position,
although vigorously shelled for some time. One man was wounded
slightly, and on the return of the Colonel, with a piece of
artillery, they gave it up, and allowed White’s men to rest quietly.
On Sunday morning, May 8th, the whole brigade moved early and
commenced skirmishing near Todd’s Tavern, but the enemy seemed to be
shifting, and not quite willing to make a stand anywhere until about
10 o’clock, when we came up with them in force and strongly posted
in a heavy body of timber.
Here all the men with long-range guns were dismounted and ordered
into the woods, Lieut. Thos. W. White, of Company C, commanding the
sharpshooters of the battalion, and pretty soon the firing showed
that a sharp fight was going on in the Wilderness.
In a few minutes the mounted men were ordered forward to charge, but
the enemy retired beyond the head waters and swamp of the Nye river.
As the battalion moved forward they met some of the sharpshooters
bearing to the rear all that was left of their accomplished
commander, Lieut. White, who had been shot dead by a rifleman hid in
the woods, as he was arranging that part of the line immediately
under his supervision. He was a native of Loudoun county, and as
Lieut. Colonel of the militia at the breaking out of the war, had
done all that lay in his power to aid Virginia in defending her
border against the Northman’s ire, but at the time of the evacuation
of Manassas and all the lines of defense held in connection with it
by the Southern Army, he and Mr. A. M. Vandevanter were engaged in
the work of trying to raise a company of volunteer cavalry, and not
being posted as to the sudden fall back, was unfortunately left in
the hostile lines of Geary before he knew it; but when Capt. Grubb
commenced to recruit for his company, Lieut. Col. White was the
first to join him, and at the organization was appointed Orderly
Sergeant, discharging his duties faithfully until the death of Capt.
Grubb and consequent promotion of the other officers caused his
election to the office of Second Lieutenant.
Lieut. White and the Colonel were not on entirely friendly terms,
for the reason that when the latter was raising his company, the
Lieutenant caused some opposition, by objecting to the men enlisted
by the Colonel being excused from duty as militia until the company
was organized and in actual service.
This caused a coolness which was not fully dissipated until, in the
tremendous battle of Brandy Station, Lieut. White displayed such
conspicuous gallantry that he completely gained the Colonel’s
confidence and good will, and was ever after considered by his
commander one of the best officers in the battalion, as he fully
deserved to be.
One little incident connected with this, his last day of life on
earth, would seem to indicate that he felt a presentiment of his
fate, for while riding down to his death, he and Capt. Myers were
discussing an order of the General’s to the effect that the
battalion should be armed with long-range guns, and both agreed that
they very much objected, for the reason that they disliked fighting
on foot, but the Lieutenant remarked that if he should ever be
dismounted and sent into that Wilderness country there to fight,
that he would certainly be killed, for it would so excite him that
he would not understand how to act; and when the order was given for
the men to dismount, and he was designated to lead them, he said to
the Captain as he passed to the front, in allusion to their
conversation, "Good-bye, Frank; I am going, and don’t expect to see
you any more;" and there we saw for the last time the gay,
high-spirited and popular Lieut. Tom White.
From this time until the 21st, the battalion was occupied, with the
brigade, in picketing and skirmishing, varied with occasional
scouts, in one of which the Colonel took a part of his command by
the left flank to the rear of Grant’s army, visiting three large
field hospitals, in which lay thousands of wounded men whose
discharges from the service had been issued from the muzzles of
Confederate rifles, and on this trip the boys broke up nearly 2,000
stand of arms. All this while the infantry were passing through that
tremendous ordeal of fire which has made the Spottsylvania
Wilderness famous for all time in the bloody history which marks the
progress of the world from the days of old down to the present, and
if ever hard, stubborn fighting deserved success, the army of Lee in
those May days of 1864 earned it, for every day the same awful roar
of battle rolled along the lines, and every night came the same
encouraging reports of the enemy repulsed with heavy slaughter,
until it was a given up point that soon Grant would stop his
“hammering,” for the good reason that the hammer was shivered to
atoms on the solid anvil of Southern endurance and grit, but the
national butcher kept throwing his doomed legions upon the
invincible veterans of Gen. Lee, and supplying, from the teeming
millions of Yankeeland and Germany, the places of the slaughtered
men in blue, and day after day the hateful gridiron of the Yankee
nation floated along the Rappahannock, telling that the war was not
over yet.
On the 15th of May, Gen. Rosser marched to Enan Church, near the
plank road, where he fought hard for an hour, to find if the enemy
had infantry in that neighborhood, which proved to be the case.
Some of the boys said he only took the brigade down to hold the
usual Sunday morning service, as the General had recently joined the
Episcopal Church, but others remarked that he made a mistake in the
prayer book, as Colt’s was not generally used in that Church. The
night before had been spent by Company A on picket in the
Wilderness, and as the author witnessed the performance, it will not
be amiss to describe it, showing as it does one part of the
soldier’s duty, and the manner in which it was performed in that
God-forsaken country which is fit for nothing but a battle-field,
and the worst one imaginable for that. The Company reached the
picket line on the Cataupin road about dark, and the night set in
rainy, and black as Erebus by the time the posts were established.
There it was necessary to picket all around, and having at length
got everything arranged, the reserve lay down on pieces of cracker
boxes, an immense number of which were scattered around, for
headquarters was established at what had been a field hospital for
the 5th and 6th of May.
Nobody was permitted to unsaddle, of course, and without blankets
the night was unpleasant enough, but pretty soon firing was heard
towards the river, and by the time the pickets came in the company
was mounted and ready for action, but no enemy appeared, and soon
the line was re-established, only to be broken again in a few
minutes, and the same ceremony of preparation for fight gone through
with, which ended as before, without it.
This was done several times, and finally two men who never yet
experienced the sensation of fear, were placed at the same post,
which appeared to be the very centre of the Wilderness. These two
men were John W. White and John Chadwell, and pretty soon firing was
heard at their post, when all the pickets came in except the two who
were supposed to have done the shooting, and after waiting in line
of battle for some time, Capt. Myers ordered the Corporal, to whose
relief they belonged, to ride out and see what was the matter, but
that gentleman flatly refused to go, declaring his belief that the
Yankees had killed the pickets and were waiting now to shoot whoever
went to look for the missing men. After a little hesitation, the
Captain concluded to go himself, and riding cautiously along the
crooked woods-path soon came up to the two men, who halted him
promptly and showed that they were up to their duty, and here the
Captain found that these two men had captured a squad of the enemy’s
sharp-shooters, armed with the long-barreled Sharpe’s rifle, and who
had been causing all the disturbance during the night by creeping
through the thick undergrowth, in the dark and rain, trying to get
away from the rebel lines they said, but continually coming in
contact with skirmishers, and having to lay quiet, until they were
heard by White and Chadwell, who fired on them and then charged,
when they surrendered.
The Captain asked his men why they didn’t come in and report the
cause of it, to which White replied, that "there were some more
Yankees out there in the woods, and as soon as they caught them,
“Chad” was going to take the whole squad in together."
The Captain went back and told the company to “go to sleep, for
White and Chadwell were on picket,” and taking his gum-cloth he
spread it down, by feeling, at what he considered a good place for a
nap, having a little mound for a pillow; and notwithstanding the
offensive smell, went to sleep until day-break, when, rousing up, he
was rather non-plussed at the discovery that his pillow was a pile
of amputated legs and arms, and in arms-reach of him lay the
swollen, blackened corpse of a Yankee Sergeant, whose thigh had been
shivered by a shell.
When White and Chadwell came in, they reported total captures, in
their two hours on duty, to be fourteen, and were going back to
capture a squad quartered for the night in a log-cabin about a mile
away, of which some of their prisoners had informed them, and taking
with them two or three of the men at the reserve, they did go and
capture several more.
On the 19th of May, Gen. Ewell, with part of his corps and Rosser’s
brigade, made a flank movement, about 4 o’clock in the evening of
that rainy day, around the left wing of Grant’s line, and had a very
severe fight of about half an hour, in which the battalion only
engaged as supports to Chew’s artillery, and after Ewell had
withdrawn, having learned the important fact that Grant was
flanking, which was the object of his expedition, the brigade
followed slowly and by dark was at its old camp near Shady Grove.
The boys used to say that no matter what direction Gen. Rosser
moved, during those fighting days in the Wilderness, White’s
battalion would surely bring up at Shady Grove, and it was true,
too, for more than two weeks.
Part of the time, during this warm campaign, “the people” suffered
for rations, but were generally better fed than they anticipated,
and as a general thing, men under constant and high excitement
require less food than at other times; in fact I have frequently
seen the soldiers, while listening to details of a battle,
apparently forget to eat, although they had fasted for a day; but
rations was the first thought which flashed through the minds of
White’s battalion when the news reached them, about the 10th of May,
that Sheridan’s cavalry had cut the Virginia Central Rail Road, at
Beaverdam Station, and destroyed fifty thousand pounds of bacon.
They had no idea of being whipped in the field, for all thought that
no army commanded by “Uncle Bobby” _could_ he whipped by fighting,
but if starvation came upon them they knew the war must end, and
when Gen. Stuart hastily gathered what force he had convenient, to
go after the raiders, he had the prayers of every praying man in the
Army of Northern Virginia, and the earnest wishes of all the rest,
for his success.
About this time the enemy made a heavy movement on the left flank,
and General Hampton, with the few cavalry left him by Stuart, had to
do his best, and on the evening of the 18th ordered the battalion to
support Thompson’s battery which, as usual, got into a very hot
place. The Cobb Legion was in front along the edge of the pines,
dismounted, and the artillery on a hill something like a hundred
yards in their rear, while fifty yards to the rear of the guns stood
White’s people, and when the swarm of Yankee infantry made their
appearance the legion retired to their horses without firing a shot,
but Thompson opened with grape and canister and for a short time
checked the advance, but by this time the musket balls were cutting
the wheels of his gun-carriages, and Rosser ordered him to retire,
at the same time calling to Colonel White to move everything but one
squadron and to leave that with instructions to follow the battery
and save it.
The Colonel called out to Captain Myers, “hold your squadron there
and when the Yankees come on the hill, charge them,” and moved the
rest of the command to the woods on the left. The enemy’s artillery,
from the other side of Po river, was now firing rapidly at Thompson,
and nearly every shell passed over or through the squadron, while
the infantry fire was making the situation very hot, and when at
length the battery did move it was found that the tongue of one of
the caissons was broken, but Mec Souder, a Loudoun county man and
Sergeant of the battery, cut a sapling and as rapidly as possible
improvised a pole which enabled him to save the caisson.
The 1st squadron then moved off, but none too soon, for as they
passed the woods about a hundred yards to the left, the Yankees
swarmed upon the hill, cutting General Hampton off from his command,
and capturing one man of the battalion. This was looked upon by the
men as decidedly the narrowest escape they had ever made, for
certainly if they had remained three minutes longer not a man could
have escaped, as fully ten thousand infantry would have been within
less than fifty yards and the squadron would have stood exactly in
the centre of their line.
These were the men who captured General Edward Johnson, of Ewell’s
Corps, with most of his division that same day, and they were then
moving up to make their attack on the Confederate works. The cavalry
halted a short distance to the left and waited for the Yankee
troopers to appear, but they were all with Sheridan near Richmond.
The battalion had become so much reduced in numbers by the
casualties of war that it was now formed in two squadrons, the first
composed of Companies A and C, under Captains Myers and Dowdell and
Lieut. Sam. Grubb, and the second, of Companies B, E and F, with
Capt. French and Lieutenants Strickler, Chiswell and James for
officers.
The second squadron was sent on picket to the left of the army,
where it remained for some days, and on its return to the command
about the 20th, the first was ordered out for a tour of duty of the
same kind between Todd’s Tavern and the Court House; but about 2
o’clock on the morning of the 21st received an order to join the
battalion, then bringing up the rear of the army, which was moving
by Spottsylvania Court-house towards the North Anna river. The march
was rather an exciting one, leading as it did over the broad
battle-fields of the Wilderness, where many hundreds of dead men
still lay unburied, and the squadron was obliged to pass directly
over them, when, as the hoofs of the horses would strike the
corpses, the flesh would strip from the bones, leaving them
glistening in the phosphorescent light that played around them, and
the weird, ghostly influence of the scene affected the men, in the
silence and gloom of that early morning, more than the presence of
any number of live Yankees could have done; but the night wore
away—very slowly indeed, it seemed—and by an hour after sunrise the
battalion united a few miles below the Court-house, when it slowly
marched along the Richmond road, still acting as rear guard for the
army. A small party of the men under Lieutenant Samuel Grubb came
directly by the Court-house, barely escaping capture by the force of
the enemy which occupied the village, as rear guard for Grant’s
army, and after passing that point they captured about a hundred
stragglers, whom the Lieutenant and his squad formed in line, and
after breaking their guns and “going through them” for watches and
greenbacks, paroled the whole party and sent them on their way
rejoicing; with a net result of about a dozen brass watches that
wouldn’t keep time; a hundred pocket-books containing in all,
probably five hundred photographs, and two dollars in five cent
notes, besides a few sutler tickets.
The battalion crossed the North Anna about sun-set and having no
horse-feed, rode until 11 o’clock hunting for a grass field, which
they at last found near Hanover Junction. For several days the old
Fork Church took the place of Shady Grove, to the “Comanches,” and
although they might be operating along the river—on the Rail Road;
or skirmishing on the Telegraph road—yet every day found them in
bivouac during some part of it at the church which had stood for
more than a century; its bricks having been brought from England
during colonial days, and all its surroundings associated with the
memory of the boyhood of Henry Clay; indeed the home of the great
statesman’s mother was scarce half a mile from the church, in the
slashes of Hanover, where, as a boy, he cultivated corn and tobacco.
During all these days the rations were scanty, and hard in both
senses of the word, but what the commissary department furnished was
all that the troops could get, for the country was so impoverished,
and the people so naturally shiftless, that they did not live better
than the soldiers, and plentiful as were the negroes, none of them
made enough to live on without stealing the corn and potatoes of the
few white people who did try their best to make a sufficient
quantity of provisions to subsist their families.
On the 28th of May the battalion marched with the division in the
direction of Mechanicsville, and on arriving near Hawes’ Shop, came
in contact with a division of the enemy’s cavalry. Here Chew’s
artillery took position on an open field about two hundred yards in
front of a heavy pine forest, while the battalion, as usual, formed
squadrons in the rear, to support the battery.
Just as this arrangement was completed, Gen. Hampton passed along,
and saluting Col. White, exclaimed, "Good morning, Colonel, we’ve
got the Yankees where we want them now;" but in about fifteen
minutes the battalion concluded that the boot was on the other foot,
for the Yankees certainly had them where they didn’t want to be. The
storm of shot and shell that howled madly over and around them was
terrific, and very soon two splendid men, Lieut. Strickler, Co. E,
and Jack Howard, Co. A, were wounded, the Lieutenant in the knee,
and Howard in the face with the big end of an exploded shell, which
came bounding along the field. Several horses were also struck,
among them that ridden by Capt. Dowdell, and which had been the
property of Lieut. Tom White, was killed. Here the “new issue,” a
brigade of new recruits from South Carolina and Georgia, which was
commanded by the veteran Gen. Butler, of South Carolina, was put,
for the first time, under fire, and although their horses were
stampeded and their queer bundles of clothes scattered through the
pines in every direction, yet the men, fighting on foot with their
long guns, stood bravely up to their work and whipped the enemy’s
cavalry fairly, but when the 6th Corps of Yankee infantry came
against them Gen. Hampton was compelled to withdraw them from the
position they had held.
The battle had lasted two hours, and when the Confederates withdrew
before the heavy lines of infantry the enemy did not follow, clearly
showing that they had no taste for Hampton’s mode of handling
cavalry.
Up to this time the Cavalry Corps had not learned the style of their
new commander, but now they discovered a vast difference between the
old and the new, for while General Stuart would attempt his work
with whatever force he had at hand, and often seemed to try to
accomplish a given result with the smallest possible number of men,
Gen. Hampton always endeavored to carry every available man to his
point of operation, and the larger his force the better he liked it.
The advantage of this style of generalship was soon apparent, for
while under Stuart stampedes were frequent, with Hampton they were
unknown, and the men of his corps soon had the same unwavering
confidence in him that the “Stonewall Brigade” entertained for
_their_ General.
This was the last battle for the month, and the battalion now went
on picket until the 1st of June, engaged in frequent skirmishes with
the enemy’s line of vedettes, but no casualties occurred except the
occasional wounding of a horse, which always caused the loss of one
man for duty, for no sooner was a horse disabled than his rider
applied for and received a detail to go and supply himself with
another, and besides the wounded men, the number on horse-detail, as
it was called, so reduced the fighting men that the whole battalion
now scarcely numbered more than Co. A did at the beginning of the
campaign, and officers were scarce in proportion, but on the 1st of
June Lieut. Marlow, Co. A, who had been absent since February,
reported for duty.