In the afternoon of the 20th of June, the Regiments of our brigade
broke camp and marched to the James River, crossing it by ponton boats
after dark, landing at Deep Bottom, on the north bank of Bailey's
Creek, emptying into the James. The position so quietly taken was three
miles east of the Howlett House Battery, and though four miles north of
it by terra firma measurement, it was fifteen miles below it in the
flow of the river, so crooked is the James at this point of its course.
Deep Bottom was a well wooded bluff when we seized it, but 'twas bare
enough before many days, so vigorously were axes plied by the men of
our regiment, and while they were renewing their youth as axemen,
fatigue parties from regiments more used to the spade were throwing up
a strong line of works, batteries connected by infantry parapets and
with outlying rifle pits, forming when completed and with gunboats
anchored on the flanks, a practically impregnable "bridge head" for the
ponton bridge now laid across from the south bank of the James to Deep
Bottom.
We remained at Deep Bottom for several weeks, within easy reach of
strong outlying works of the rebels, partly thrown up and strengthened
after our arrival. Their main outer line on this side of the river, the
Chapin's Bluff one, was about four miles northeast of Deep Bottom. The
opposing lines at Deep Bottom were some distance apart, from half a
mile to a mile, but portions of the picket lines were very near
together, particularly in the extensive fields to the north of Deep
Bottom. In the immediate front, looking east, there was a wide stretch
of woods, a tongue of the woods that ran along both sides of Bailey's
Creek from its wide mouth, a mouth of such uncommon depth as to give
the position we held on its north shore the name of Deep Bottom. But
without the animus of a momentarily expected attack, the picket of both
sides were amicably disposed, meeting in a big corn patch in the open
field to gather green corn and to barter. There used to be a story that
some of them occasionally visited a secluded spot to indulge in
friendly games of cards together, with coffee and tobacco for stakes.
An occurrence that will interest fatalists took place at Deep Bottom. A
member of the 24th Massachusetts had deserted from that regiment to the
enemy while the regiment was in North Carolina. It was undoubtedly his
plan to take an early opportunity to desert from his new service to our
lines again and get sent North out of the way of any possible casualty,
for he took an early opportunity to get taken prisoner at Deep Bottom
during one of our reconnoissances there, the Confederate regiment he
had joined having been sent to Virginia and located before Deep Bottom.
But, strange to say, the double deserter passed directly back into the
arms of his old company of the 24th Massachusetts. A dramatic situation
it must have been both to him and his old comrades. Recognized in a
moment, he was imprisoned, tried and sentenced to be shot, and the
sentence was carried out in the fields between our works and those of
the Confederates.
Little of memorable moment took place for a time. Captain Maxfield's
diary has these entries for the month following our arrival at Deep
Bottom. For June 22d, that men of the 10th Connecticut had found a pot
of gold. He does not record whether they did so at the end of a rainbow
or not. For July 1st, that Brigadier General R. S. Foster took command
of our brigade, and that Colonel Plaisted, who had been Brigade
commander so far on the campaign, returned to the command of the
Eleventh. For the 3d, that Captains Hill and Baldwin were mustered as
Lieutenant-Colonel and Major respectively, and that Company A was sent
across Bailey's Creek "to hold it." This entry argues a large liquid
capacity for that company.
It was about this time that General Hill, then our Lieutenant-Colonel,
had an adventure that would have been a misadventure but for his
characteristic readiness. General Foster requested him to go out
through the big corn field already told of, and learn what he could of
the force of the rebels in our front, and to do it in his own way,
having learned that as a daring, long-headed scout, General Hill was
without a peer in our brigade. Taking a couple of orderlies with him,
General Hill rode into the interior until he judged he was a mile from
the river, not seeing any rebels yet, then he bore to the left to
strike the river away above us, intending to ride down along the river
bank to Deep Bottom. After riding for about a half mile towards the
river, he suddenly rode into the rear of an undeployed rebel picket
force of about twenty-five men. Clustering around him, their officer
laughingly asked the General "where he was going." Personally the
General felt very sure that he was going to Richmond, however much
against his will, but putting on a bold face, he answered, "that he had
rode out to get the news by exchanging papers with them." "This is
pretty cool," said the rebel officer, "let me see your papers." Luckily
the General had a copy of the _New York Tribune_, and one of the
_Philadelphia Inquirer_ in his pocket, and luckily too, a rebel
sergeant here said "this is the same officer that sent us a paper the
other day." This was so, the General, a week before, when officer of
the day, having effected an exchange of papers with this sergeant
through the medium of one of our men, when the sergeant must have taken
a sharp look at the officer who moved so cooly along a dangerous picket
line. "Well," said the good-natured rebel lieutenant, "I guess I will
let you go, you look as though you were telling the truth. But I must
say you took a good deal of pains to come so far, and to come in our
rear, too." Our General with the guileless face answered "that he got
lost in riding out, and was trying to find his way into camp when he
rode up to them." Drifting into a general conversation with the
officers and his men, each party covertly tried to learn a little
something concerning the other's force on that side of the river, until
the General, having learned all he wished to, embraced a good
opportunity to make his adieus. As he rode away with his eager
orderlies riding on his heels, the Confederate officer, on whom the
real purpose of the General's mission had dawned, but who was too
honorable to take back his given word, called out, "Remember this, you
can't play at exchanging papers with me again." With this friendly
warning from the "good fellow," as the General rightly calls him,
ringing in their ears, the little Union party spurred its horses into a
magnificent burst of speed that quickly took it out of all possible
danger of having to obey a recall.
For July the 10th Captain Maxfield's diary states, that (among others)
First Sergeant Bassett, of D, reported for duty from recruiting service
in Maine, where he had been for some months. For the 12th, that an
expedition from the 10th Connecticut went up the river and captured a
lieutenant and fourteen men, besides burning a mill. For the 13th, that
two prisoners were taken by a scouting party under Major Baldwin and
Captain Nickels, and that some of D were in this party. Possibly it was
this expedition that Private William Sherman, of D, shot the rebel
"stone dead," as he declared, but while he was reloading his gun the
supposed to be dead man jumped up and ran away regardless of Sherman's
hilarious expostulations.
For the 14th, the diary states, that the rebels opened fire with a
battery they had stationed in a ravine and that their shells killed "a
horse and six men" on the gunboat Mendota. It would appear from this
that there were veritable "horse marines" in our navy.
For the 21st, the diary states that our regiment moved across to
Strawberry Plains, on the south bank of Bailey's Creek, and that we
captured eleven prisoners, but that the enemy appeared in force and
caused us to fall back into our intrenchments. For the 22d, that the
regiment went to the Plains again, "we taking all we wished to," as the
Captain modestly phrases it. For the 23d, that the regiment went to
Strawberry Plains again, and met a strong force of the enemy, we losing
two killed and four wounded, and that we remained that night on the
ground we had taken during the day. For the 24th, that we were relieved
by two regiments of the Nineteenth Corps, that Corps having just
arrived from the Red River, and, by the way, its commander was our old
brigade commander, General Emory. For the 25th, the diary tells us that
the pickets of the Nineteenth Corps on the Plains were driven in, and
that we were ordered out to retake the position they had lost. For the
26th, that we were still skirmishing on Strawberry Plains in an effort
to retake the lost position, and that by night, when we had recovered
it, we had lost one man killed and twenty-one wounded, and that we were
relieved by the Tenth Connecticut that night. For the 27th, that the
Second Corps crossed to the Plains early in the morning.
These operations of our regiment on Strawberry Plains in the last days
of July were in connection with a movement planned against the enemy's
left flank, resting on our side of the James, and directly in our
front.
After the assaults of the 18th of June, the immediate attempts of Grant
to overcome Lee were confined to flanking movements from the right and
left, north and south of the James. The plan of the movement we were
initiating was that Hancock should move to Deep Bottom with the Second
Corps and two divisions of cavalry under Sheridan, and that the Second
Corps should try and break through the rebel line near Chapin's Bluff,
at about the spot we operated in the following October; then if the
infantry succeeded in breaking the rebel line, the cavalry was to make
a dash on Richmond, while Hancock should operate to prevent rebel
reenforcements crossing from the south bank of the James by the ponton
bridge they had laid down between Chapin's and Drury's Bluffs. And
that if the dash on Richmond could not be made, then the railroad
communications of the rebels on the north side should be destroyed as
far as practicable. It was thought, too, that this movement, if
unsuccessful in itself, might force the rebels to reinforce the north
side so heavily as to cause such a reduction of their force holding the
Petersburgh lines as to give a fair promise of success in the assault
to be made when the mine in front of Burnside's Ninth Corps was sprung.
As a necessary preliminary to these movements, and to give the idea
perhaps that the contemplated attack, which they could not help
learning of the preparations for, through spies, prisoners and
deserters, was a flanking one, by the way of Bailey's Creek, as, in
fact, it finally became, the Eleventh crossed to Strawberry Plains,
just on the other side of Bailey's Creek, having to cross the James
twice to get there, once to the south side by the ponton bridge we held
the head of, and then to the north side again by another ponton bridge
laid down with its north side head debouching on the great cleared flat
known as Strawberry Plains. Across the head of these Plains runs the
River road, a connecting link of the system of roads leading into
Richmond. Working our way up through the woods bordering Bailey's
Creek, by night we had driven the enemy into his works guarding the
road and outer lines, his main one lying on the Deep Bottom side of
Bailey's Creek and running along that side of the Creek to Fussell's
Mill at the head of the Creek, from which point his line was refused,
as the military phrase is, that is it turned sharply back.
It was the position we had gained before this outer line that we turned
over to the Nineteenth Corps and that they lost the 25th of July. The
next day we pressed the enemy steadily back until we were lying close
to their outer line, the gunboats firing sharply this day, throwing
their heavy shells over our heads at the enemy's lines, the enemy
replying as best they could with a battery of artillery they had
brought down and stationed in the road. During the day a shell from a
gunboat fell so unfortunately short as to fall just behind our right
rifle pit, lightly scooped out pits, unconnected, each sheltering a
half dozen men. It fell at just the most dangerous distance from our
men, burst, and threw its fragments right among them, killing and
wounding several.
During this night Hancock and Sheridan arrived with their troops.
Halting their men on the other side of the river, they rode over to
Deep Bottom and had a consultation with General Foster, who described
to them what he had learned of the enemy's works in our front. Hancock
then telegraphed to General Meade, his immediate superior, stating what
had been told him, and doubting the advisability of assaulting so
strong an intrenched line with the force at his command, and suggesting
a flank movement by way of Strawberry Plains instead. General Meade
coinciding with him in his opinion, Hancock moved his troops over the
river to Strawberry Plains, and attacked soon after daylight on the
27th of July, the cavalry on his right.
General Miles moved to the front across the open field with a brigade
in open order, charged and captured the enemy's battery, four 20-pound
parrot guns, in a handsome manner. Then swinging to the right on its
pivot, the position held by the Eleventh on the creek, the whole line
moved out across the enemy's roads until it had invested his whole
line, extending from our position on the creek to Fussell's Mill. The
part of the infantry in the plan was now completed. The cavalry then
proceeded to carry out the flanking operation it was charged with, but
the rebels had been reinforced, four divisions of infantry and two of
cavalry having come across the James and taken position in the works we
were threatening, so that when Sheridan's cavalry moved out beyond
Fussell's Mill they found the road barred by a heavy force of cavalry
supported by infantry.
General Grant came across the river to the Plains that afternoon and
made a personal observation of the rebel position, and deciding that
not much could be done there, returned to his headquarters, from which
he telegraphed General Meade that he did not wish Hancock to assault,
but for him to hold his position for another day. For, though foiled in
his attempt to make a dash on Richmond, Grant had learned that the
reinforcements the rebels had hurried across the James had left their
Petersburgh lines guarded by three infantry divisions only, while but
one cavalry division remained on that side of the river, and now hoped
by threatening demonstrations to keep the rebel force on the north
side, out of the way of the column he was already forming to assault
the Petersburgh lines. In obedience to Grant's wishes, Hancock and
Sheridan spent another day in holding the heavy rebel force far from
the scene of Grant's new hopes, hurrying back to Petersburgh with their
troops the night of the 29th, to take part in the assault that was to
follow the mine explosion set for the morning of July 30th. The
explosion took place as planned, but for various reasons the results
were as disastrous to the Union as to the Confederate army. Returning
to our camp at Deep Bottom, we spent a few days in comparative
quietude, while a new movement in which we were to take part was in
process of evolution.
General Grant had received information that General Lee was strongly
reenforcing Early, now operating in the Valley, and believed the
reenforcements were so largely taken from the troops on the north side
of the James as to give a chance for a more successful operation on
that side of the river than our late one had been. The troops to be
engaged in this second attempt were largely those engaged in the first,
the Second Corps, part of the Tenth, and a cavalry force under General
Gregg, all to be under Hancock's command. But instead of marching
directly across the river as before, Hancock's corps was to embark on
transports at City Point and move down the river in the afternoon, to
give the Confederate spies the idea that it was going to the Valley,
but under the cover of the night the transports were to run back to
Deep Bottom, the troops were to disembark at Strawberry Plains, move
rapidly in the morning, turn the enemy's line on Bailey's Creek, and
push for Richmond. But through lack of proper landing places the second
corps was not disembarked until eight o'clock instead of at daybreak.
The part of the Tenth Corps men in the programme was that we were to
assault in our front, which we did promptly at daybreak, the Second
Corps' historian stating that we opened fire at five o'clock.
The Eleventh held the part of the picket lines running through the
woods in front of Deep Bottom the night before the 14th of August.
Though so far from the river we pickets had a suspicion that something
was on foot. The ponton bridge crossing to Strawberry Plains was
muffled, yet we could distinctly hear the rumble of the artillery and
the tramping of the horses of Gregg's cavalry division as they crossed
it, and the screeching of steamboat whistles was too continuous for
secrecy too, though necessary from the darkness of the night and the
crowding of so many boats in the narrow channel. If we heard it, and
our suspicions were aroused by it, then our contiguous friends, the
enemy, whose pickets could hear it all as well as we could, must have
been forewarned of what was coming in the morning.
But we of the Eleventh had no idea that we were to take the sharp
initiative that we did. In the early morning of the 14th Colonel
Plaisted rode up to the reserve of D and directed Lieutenant Norris to
deploy the reserve, move out to the picket line and advance with it
until he met the enemy, then to press forward and capture his exterior
lines. (Lieutenant Grafton Norris, of Company F, was in detailed
command of D, Lieutenant Maxfield having gone North on an overdue leave
of absence). The movement directed by the Colonel was immediately
proceeded with, and in less time than it takes to tell it we had moved
out, and our skirmish line was moving rapidly through the woods and was
on the enemy's pickets. We forced them back on their reserve, stationed
behind a strong line of rifle pits, with partly open ground before them
immediately in front of D's skirmishers. This line ran along the top of
the reverse side of a dip of the ground, covering a wood road that ran
directly down this dip before crossing their line. As the men of D
reached this road in hot pursuit of the enemy, its inviting smoothness
led them to converge on it, and, frantic now with anticipation, to
charge the enemy's works without orders. Lieutenant Norris and Sergeant
Young saw the danger and tried hard to prevent this movement, rushing
among the men to drive them out of the road, but before they had an
appreciable time to enforce their commands in a withering rifle fire of
the enemy swept the road, killing and wounding several of our men. In
spite of this severe check the officers held their men close up to the
enemy's works, on which we opened an eager fire. For a time our line
was kept back by the enemy, but suddenly the exertions of our men were
rewarded, the rebel line beyond our company's left giving way just as
the enemy in our front had ceased firing; and D took so quick an
advantage of the opening that before the startled and momentarily
confused enemy fairly knew what was happening we had mounted their
works and were in possession of them.
We found that their slackened fire meant that they had not had their
breakfasts any more than had we, and that they had relinquished firing
in fancied security until they should have strengthened the inner man.
Their untouched rations of freshly cooked bread, cooked in Dutch ovens
after the peculiar Southern style, with the side of fat bacon left
behind them, satisfied the sharp monitions of several Yankee appetites.
The enemy had retreated to the main line, from which they opened a
sharp artillery fire on us. This line across a wide field was so very
formidable in appearance that an assault was not ordered.
Of D, Privates Hall, Shepard and Stanley had been killed, Corporals
Keene, Weymouth and Privates Samuel A. Bragdon, Collins, Wm. Sherman,
Adelbert Stratton and Alfred C. Butler had been wounded; Weymouth
mortally so. It is notable that Butler, an impetuous youth, fell close
to the enemy's works, wounded in three places, and that his friend
Bragdon received his mortal wound in a brave attempt to rescue him from
his perilous position.
During the rest of the 14th we lay on the ground we had won, General
Birney, our new Corps commander, having been ordered to suspend his
operations on account of the delay attending the movements of the
second corps. It was a terribly hot day in open ground, General Mott
reporting that of two small regiments of his Second Corps division
exposed to it 105 men were prostrated by the heat.
This intense heat may have had something to do with the slowness and
weakness of the Second Corps assault, for it was not delivered until
four o'clock, and then with but one brigade, others intended for the
attacking column having become too demoralized to make it wise to push
them forward. The only effect of this movement was to draw enough of
the enemy from our front to enable part of our corps to capture a
battery of four eight-inch howitzers.
The record states the night of the 14th the greater part of our Corps
was marched to the vicinity of Fussell's Mills at the head of Bailey's
Creek, and that the order for the 15th was that our Corps should find
the enemy's left and attack Gregg's Cavalry covering our flank, but
that General Birney took so wide a circuit that it was night before he
found the enemy's left and took position.
As for the Eleventh, we seem to have been placed on the left for the
15th, near the pivot, for we moved but little. The recollection is that
we lay along a road most of the day, sheltering ourselves from falling
rain in the bordering woods as best we could. At night we went into
bivouac in a handsome grove of trees, and our wagons coming up to deal
out company rations, D had a company supper, First Sergeant Bassett
having arrived with the cooks and the men who, for one reason or
another other than sickness, had been left in camp when we went on
picket.
The morning of the 16th broke clear and cloudless, too cloudless, for
it was soon evident that the 16th was to be a day like the 14th, when
the men of the Second Corps suffered so terribly in men and morale. The
regiment was on the move very early in the day. In moving for position
we were soon under an aggravating fire, marching and counter-marching
with men dropping out wounded or killed, until we took position in a
dense wood where we were somewhat sheltered by a bend of ground. Here a
column for attack was formed, the 1st Maryland Cavalry dismounted,
serving as infantry and temporarily attached to our brigade, on our
right.
Anticipating the coming assault, the enemy had thrown a heavy skirmish
line into a line of rifle pits running along enfilading points, to
sweep the woods with a galling fire. It is very unpleasant to lie in
action under such a fire and see comrades to your right and left struck
by unseen foes. If a man has nerves they are soon in a quiver, and if
he has not known he had any before, he learns that he is not made quite
of iron after all. We found it so in the half hour we lay in this
position and it was really a relief when scudding aids dismounted and
darting through the woods from tree to tree brought the order to
charge. Quickly we arose to our feet, and rushed forward with the wild
cry which seems as necessary to a charging force as the breath with
which they give it. Almost immediately we were subjected to the most
severe fire we were ever under. No mere skirmish line this, but an
outlying line of battle. The woods fairly rang with the screeching of
the bullets; still we pushed on, when suddenly the 1st Maryland fell
back, not directly back, but obliquing into our own now swaying line,
and in another second in spite of the shouts of their maddened
officers, the men of the two regiments were falling back in confused
mass.
But the men of the Eleventh were not at all panic stricken. Getting
themselves out of the line of fire they turned voluntarily, and shaking
themselves clear of the dismounted cavalry, closed up their shattered
line. In a minute they were ready to go in again, and as General Foster
rode on the scene, galloping along the line of his brigade to make sure
that his regiments were making ready for another rush, and rode up to
the Eleventh calling out "Forward, Boys," we dashed ahead, and before
the enemy could repeat the withering tactics of a few minutes before,
had driven them headlong from their rifle pits and were pursuing them
to their main intrenchments under a heavy fire poured on us from their
main line, which ran along a ridge of ground covered by a wide slashing
of heavy bodied trees, felled in all directions. In charging through it
the men were somewhat protected by the heavy logs, and fortunately,
too, the enemy must fire down hill, giving a tendency to over shooting,
else not so many of us as did would have reached the crest of the hill.
Before we did, many had tumbled headlong among the fallen logs, and how
any of us reached it, few can tell, but we did, the rebels retiring
with more rapidity than grace as we poured into their works.
Beyond the captured line we found a smooth field of perhaps a hundred
and fifty yards in width, dipping into a wood bordered run. It was to
this run that the enemy had withdrawn, and from it they kept up a rapid
fire on us, our men returning it with the more spirit that we had found
boxes of cartridges strewed along the enemy's side of the works,
cartridges that fitted our guns perfectly, so furnishing us with a much
needed supply of ammunition.
But the fire that annoyed us most was an enfilading one from across a
run beyond the left flank of our regiment. Beyond this run, on higher
ground than we occupied, the enemy had built works to sweep the front
of the works we had just taken. From here, snugly ensconced behind a
difficult run, and hid from us by a stout growth of trees, left
standing to mask their position, they swept our flank with a terrible
fire. Efforts were made to dislodge them by sending brigades down our
front to charge the run, but the cross-fire the charging brigades were
subjected to forced them to retreat to cover. Suddenly fierce yells
from the rebel lines announced that they were receiving reenforcements.
The position was becoming serious.
As Colonel Hill and Major Baldwin had been badly wounded the command of
the Regiment devolved on Captain Merrill of Company I. Our men were
falling rapidly and those left were exhausted by the efforts they had
made under a blazing sun, yet when a thin line of the Second Corps
moved out of the woods behind us and advanced as if to support us in a
charge we were to make by way of our left on the aggravating work on
that flank, our men raised a glad hurrah and gathered their energies
for a mighty rush. But, alas, the Second Corps men could not endure the
murderous sweep of the fire the alert enemy poured upon them from their
flanking position, and quickly melted back into the timber.
Movements in our front indicated a gathering of Confederates for an
assault. Anticipating it somewhat, and its result, of which there could
be but one, the colors of the regiments were sent to the rear, and the
word was passed along the line that when broken the regiments were to
rally at the line of rifle pits we had taken in the morning, where the
men would find their colors planted. Then came the roar and rush of the
assault, a minute of fierce firing and yelling, and we were flying back
to the sheltering woods, a storm of bullets whistling around us.
A citizen seeing how badly we were broken, our men fleeing into the
woods without apparent formation or visible control, would have sworn
that none of us would have stopped short of the James River, but I
don't believe that a man of ours anyway went back a foot further than
the captured rifle pits. There we gathered on our colors, every man in
his place, and as the enemy came dashing through the woods after a
supposed-to-be flying foe they quickly learned what it was that Paddy
gave the drum. Of D, Private Hanscom was killed this day, and Privates
Day, Googing, Leighton, McGraw, Bubier and White were wounded.
While these operations were going on, Gregg's cavalry, supported by
General Miles with a brigade from the Second Corps, had moved up the
Charles City road, driving the enemy's cavalry before them, until our
cavalry had reached White Tavern, only seven miles from Richmond.
Reenforcements reaching the Confederate cavalry, Gregg was in turn
forced back upon Miles, both finally falling back to Deep Creek, a
tributary of Deep Run, fighting as they retreated, holding one position
until a portion of their men had taken a second one a half mile or so
back of their advance one, then the advance line would fall back behind
the new line and take up a position about half a mile or so further in
the rear in their turn, all this time carrying their dead and wounded
with them, the dead strapped across the led cavalry horses or in front
of the troopers. Finally the hard pressed men reached the creek, behind
which Gregg reestablished his line, Miles returning to Fussell's Mill
to take position on the right flank of our corps. And Mott had been
threatening the enemy along Bailey's Creek with a strong skirmish line
to learn their force, finding their works strongly held everywhere.
General Birney, "Old Mass and Charge," proposed that we assault at five
o'clock that afternoon, but the force the advance of his skirmish line
developed made him abandon this idea. Besides, about then Gregg's line
before Deep Creek was so strongly attacked as to compel him to cross
the creek to the bank nearest us to sustain himself, it seeming clear
enough that an advance would only bring us disaster. General Grant gave
up the idea of pressing the movement further, determining though, as in
July, that we must hold a threatening position for a few days longer to
keep the heavy force of the enemy in our front while he launched a
force from the other flank at the Weldon Road.
The night of the 16th we took position close to the enemy's works and
began to throw up intrenchments. By morning, working in relays, we had
a strong line of works thrown up right under the enemy's nose. Our
position, that of the Eleventh, lay along the side of a steep hill, so
that the battery crowning it could fire directly over our heads. Here
we lay the 17th, so near the enemy that we could see into his works
from the crest of the hill. The picket lines, really heavy skirmish
ones, kept up a steady fire all along the line until in the afternoon
of the 17th, when General Grant allowed a flag of truce to be sent out
and a truce arranged to continue from four to six o'clock. Perhaps,
springing from this truce, there was an almost voluntary cessation of
firing between the pickets until a little after five o'clock in the
afternoon of the next day, the 18th, when it broke out with a fury that
indicated a pending assault on us.
The skylarking and frolic of the men ceased as the fire of the
skirmishers increased in rapidity and volume, and every man went to his
post sober and alert. Suddenly the battery behind us opened with a
roar, our skirmishers came flying out of the woods and over our works,
while behind them sounded the wild yell of a rebel charging column. As
soon as our skirmishers were over our works, the herculean form of our
Sergeant Young bringing up the rear, to be struck by a bullet as he
leaped the parapet. As soon as they were out of the line of fire we
opened a terrible fire, every man loading and firing for his life, but
steadily, swiftly the heavy columns of the enemy poured from the woods,
yelling and firing wildly, those behind pushing those in front, until
it seemed as if the pandemonium of shrieking, rushing demons would
roll over our works, by sheer weight of numbers, in spite of the fire
mowing their front lines down. And just then, as if to complete our
destruction, for to lose our line and be driven back into the tangled
woods just at night, chased by a superior foe, far from a supporting
column, meant the loss of our batteries and Andersonville for hundreds
of us. Just then the 100th New York, on our right, broke and left their
part of the works in spite of shrieking officers, General Foster
himself dashing among them, yelling like a madman and brandishing his
sword in a vain attempt to hold them. But the old 10th Connecticut had
been held on reserve and was just rushing to the support of the
Eleventh, and the men of the two regiments confident of each others
support, strung along the gap like lightning until they had filled it
after a manner, every man redoubling his efforts to hold the enemy, now
surging at the rough abatis planted in the front of our hastily built
line.
They had stood our terrible fire well until now, but they could not
stand the cold steel we were ready to meet them with should they
persist in crossing the works; they wavered, broke and fell back into
the heavy woods between us.
That this was one of the most stubborn assaults of the war is shown by
its lasting for twenty minutes, during which time General Walker of the
Second Corps notes in his history of that corps, that the fire of
musketry was tremendous.
Scarcely had we breathed ourselves, when word was passed that we were
to retire at dark, and that we must do so very quietly, without noise
or gun rattling, even the tin cups and plates of the men must be so
placed in their haversacks as not to give out the monotonous clinking
that usually tells that a line of troops is on the march. Then a little
latter we stole through the dark woods, leaving Colonel Plaisted with a
thousand men of various commands to cover our retreat to a new
position. This change of position, or "contraction of the line" as the
military historians call it, was rendered necessary to let Mott's
division march away to Petersburgh to take the place of the Ninth Corps
in the intrenchments there, so that Corps could support Warren's
movement on the Weldon road. Nothing of interest took place in the
remainder of the movement, and finally, after a few days spent in
skirmishing and reconnoitering in the unrealized hope that a weak spot
might be discovered in the enemy's line, we fell back to the river; the
Second Corps and Gregg's cavalry went to Petersburgh, and we returned
to our camp at Deep Bottom.
We had been away from it a week, a week of disaster to the regiment,
and especially to D, for nineteen of the best men of the company had
been killed or wounded during it--one half of its available duty
members--and as its thin line filed into the familiar company street
those that remained behind gave it a sober greeting, looking sadly for
the many familiar faces they would never see again, it is no wonder the
eyes of all were dimmed, or that emotional tenderhearted Sergeant
Francis should break into tears of manly mourning. We slept the deep
sleep of exhaustion in our rude canvas homes that night, but the next
night, in the early darkness, the regiment was suddenly ordered to fall
in and the men soon found themselves across the ponton bridge and on
the road to Bermuda Hundred. Then it was whispered that we were on our
way to take part in an assault to be made on the Howlett House Battery
at daybreak. It is not strange that we were more surprised than
gratified at this proof of confidence in our assaulting abilities, nor
is it to be wondered at that the men murmured wrathfully at the idea of
assaulting so strong an intrenched position as they knew the Howlett
House one to be, armed with heavy guns, and always strongly supported.
But for all their hopelessness they would have dashed forward none the
less gallantly at the word of command, for they had seen too many dead
men lately to fear death greatly, or to hope that if Richmond was to be
taken they could long escape him; in short, had about adopted the
philosophy of the old Confederate Colonel, who, in Magruder's desperate
charge at Malvern Hill, was heard to shout to his shrinking men,
"Forward men, Forward! Do you expect to live forever?" But we were not
put to the test, for while we were yet _en route_ a galloping aid
brought us word that the idea of the assault had been abandoned, and we
returned to our camp.