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THE COUNTY REGIMENT
[Illustration: Governor Buckingham]
THE
COUNTY REGIMENT
A SKETCH
OF THE SECOND REGIMENT OF
CONNECTICUT VOLUNTEER HEAVY ARTILLERY,
ORIGINALLY THE NINETEENTH VOLUNTEER
INFANTRY, IN THE CIVIL WAR
BY
DUDLEY LANDON VAILL
LITCHFIELD COUNTY
UNIVERSITY CLUB
MCMVIII
Copyright, 1908, by
DUDLEY L. VAILL
PAR AVANCE
This volume is one of a series published under the auspices of the
Litchfield County University Club, and in accordance with a
proposition made to the club by one of its members, Mr. Carl Stoeckel,
of Norfolk, Connecticut.
HOWARD WILLISTON CARTER,
Secretary.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Governor Buckingham _Frontispiece_
Rev. Hiram Eddy _facing page_ 7
Presentation of Colors, September 10th, 1862 " 10
The first encampment in Virginia " 14
Fort Ellsworth, near Alexandria, May, 1863 " 19
In the Defences. Guard mount " 23
General Sedgwick " 26
The first battle " 35
Colonel Wessells " 47
Colonel Kellogg " 61
Colonel Mackenzie " 76
Colonel Hubbard " 84
Monument at Arlington " 98
PREFATORY
For those who dwell within its borders, or whose ancestral roots are
bedded among its hills, the claims of Litchfield County to distinction
are many and of many kinds. In these latter days it has become notable
as the home of certain organizations of unique character and high
purpose, which flourish under circumstances highly exceptional, and
certainly no less highly appreciated.
It is as part of the work of one of these that there is commemorated
in this volume an organization of an earlier day, one distinctively of
the county, in no way unique in its time, but of the highest
purpose--the regiment gathered here for the national defence in the
Civil War.
The county's participation in that defence was by no means restricted
to the raising of a single regiment. Quite as many, perhaps more, of
its sons were enrolled in other commands as made up what was known
originally as the Nineteenth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry; but in
that body its organized effort as a county found expression, and it
was proud to let the splendid record of that body stand as typical of
its sacrifices for the preservation of the Union.
Though the history of that regiment's career has been written in full
detail, the purpose of this slight repetition of the story needs no
apology. There is sufficient justification in its intrinsic interest,
to say nothing of a personal interest in its members, men who gave
such proofs of their quality, and whose survivors are still our
neighbors in probably every town in the county.
There is also something more than mere interest to be gained, in
considering historical matters of such immensity as the Civil War, in
giving the attention to some minute section of the whole, such as the
account of individual experiences, or of the career of a particular
regiment such as this; it is of great value as bringing an adequate
realization of the actual bearing of the great events of that time
upon the people of the time. The story of a body of Litchfield County
men, such men as we see every day, drawn from such homes as we know
all about us, is a potent help to understanding in what way and with
what aspects these great historical movements bore upon the people of
the country, for the experience of this group of towns and their sons
furnished but one small instance of what was borne, infinitely
magnified, throughout the nation.
It will readily appear that the subject might furnish material for a
notable volume. In the present case nothing is possible save a brief
sketch of the matter, made up chiefly, as will be seen, of citations
from the published history of the regiment, and from such other
sources of information as were easily accessible. Among the latter
must be noted the records of the Regimental Association, to which
access was had through the courtesy of its secretary, D. C. Kilbourn,
Esq., of Litchfield, and his assistance, as well as that of H. W.
Wessells, Esq., of Litchfield, to both of whom the securing of most of
the illustrations used is due, is gratefully acknowledged.
THE COUNTY REGIMENT
In spite of the labors of unnumbered chroniclers, it is not easy, if
indeed it is possible, for us of this later generation to realize
adequately the great patriotic uprising of the war times.
It began in the early days of 1861 with the assault on Fort Sumter,
which, following a long and trying season of uncertainty, furnished
the sudden shock that resolved the doubts of the wavering and changed
the opinions of the incredulous. Immediately there swept over all the
northern states a wave of intense national feeling, attended by scenes
of patriotic and confident enthusiasm more noisy than far-sighted,
and there was a resulting host of volunteers, who went forth for the
service of ninety days with the largest hopes, and proportionate
ignorance of the crisis which had come to the nation. Of these
Connecticut furnished more than her allotted share, and Litchfield
County a due proportion.
The climax of this excited period was supplied by the battle of Bull
Run. There was surprise, and almost consternation, at the first news
of this salutary event, but quickly following, a renewed rally of
patriotic feeling, less excited but more determined, and with a
clearer apprehension of the actual situation. The enlistment of
volunteers for a longer term had been begun, and now went forward
briskly for many months; regiment after regiment was enrolled,
equipped, and sent southward, until, in the spring of 1862, the force
of this movement began to spend itself. The national arms had met with
some important successes during the winter, and a feeling of
confidence had arisen in the invincibility of the Grand Army of the
Potomac, which had been gathering and organizing under General
McClellan for what the impatient country was disposed to think an
interminable time. A War Department order in April, 1862, putting a
stop to recruiting for the armies, added to the confidence, since an
easy inference could be drawn from it, and the North settled down to
await with high hopes the results of McClellan's long expected
advance.
Then came the campaign on the Peninsula. At first there was but meagre
news and a multitude of conflicting rumors about its fierce battles
and famous retreat, but in the end the realization of the failure of
this mighty effort. To the country it was a disappointment literally
stunning in its proportions; but now at length there was revealed the
magnitude of the task confronting the nation, and again there sprang
up the determination, grim and intense, to strain every nerve for the
restoration of the Union.
The President's call for three hundred thousand men to serve "for
three years or the war" was proclaimed to this state by Governor
Buckingham on July 3rd (1862), and evidence was at once forthcoming
that it was sternly heeded by the people. To fill Connecticut's quota
under this call, it was proposed that regiments should be raised by
counties. A convention was promptly called, which met in Litchfield on
July 22nd; delegates from every town in the county were in attendance,
representatives of all shades of political opinion and individual
bias, but the conclusions of the meeting were unanimously reached. It
was resolved that Litchfield County should furnish an entire regiment
of volunteers, and that Leverett W. Wessells, at that time Sheriff,
should be recommended as its commander.
Immediate steps were taken to render this determination effective; the
Governor promptly accepted the recommendation as to the colonelcy,
recruiting officers were designated to secure enlistments, bounties
voted by the different towns as proposed by the county meeting, and
the movement thoroughly organized. Although there was a clear
appreciation of the present need, the dozen or more Connecticut
regiments already in the field had drawn a large number of men from
Litchfield County, and effort was necessary to gain the required
enrollment. There had been many opportunities already for all to
volunteer who had any wish to do so, but the call now came to men who
a few weeks before had hardly dreamed of the need of their serving;
men not to be attracted by the excitement of a novel adventure, but
who recognized soberly the duty that was presenting itself in this
emergency, and men of a very different stamp from those drawn into the
ranks in the later years of the war by enormous bounties. It is
reasonable to think that pride in the success of the county's effort
was a factor in stimulating enlistments; announcement that a draft
would be resorted to later was doubtless another. Just at this time,
also, the return from a year's captivity in the South of the Rev.
Hiram Eddy of Winsted, who had been made prisoner at Bull Run,
furnished a powerful advocate to the cause; night after night he spoke
in different towns, urging the call to service fervently and with
effect.
[Illustration: Rev. Hiram Eddy]
It is to be noted that at the same time that this endeavor was being
made to fill the ranks of a regiment for three years' service,
recruiting was going on with almost equal vigor under the call for men
to serve for nine months, and three full companies were contributed by
Litchfield County to the Twenty-eighth Infantry, which bore a valiant
part in the campaign against Port Hudson in the following summer. It
is possible to gain some idea of how the great tides of war were felt
throughout the whole land by imagining the stir and turmoil thus
brought, in the summer of 1862, into this remote and peaceful quarter
by the engrossing struggle.
* * * * *
In the last week in August, the necessary number of recruits having
been secured, the different companies were brought together in
Litchfield and marched to the hill overlooking the town which had been
selected as the location of Camp Dutton, named in honor of Lieutenant
Henry M. Dutton, who had fallen in battle at Cedar Mountain shortly
before. Lieutenant Dutton, the son of Governor Henry Dutton, was a
graduate of Yale in the class of 1857, and was practising law in
Litchfield when he volunteered for service on the organization of the
Fifth Connecticut Infantry.
The interest and pride of the county in its own regiment was naturally
of the strongest; the family that had no son or brother or cousin in
its ranks seemed almost the exception, and Camp Dutton became at once
the goal of a ceaseless stream of visitors from far and near, somewhat
to the prejudice of those principles of military order and discipline
which had now to be acquired. The preparation and drill which employed
the scant two weeks spent here were supervised by Lieutenant-Colonel
Kellogg, fresh from McClellan's army in Virginia, and he was
afterwards reported as delivering the opinion that if there were nine
hundred men in the camp, there were certainly nine thousand women most
of the time.
With all possible haste, preparations were made for an early
departure, but there was opportunity for a formal mustering of the
regiment in Litchfield, when a fine set of colors was presented by
William Curtis Noyes, Esq., in behalf of his wife. A horse for the
Colonel was given also, by the Hon. Robbins Battell, saddle and
equipments by Judge Origen S. Seymour, and a sword by the deputies who
had served under Sheriff Wessells.
[Illustration: Presentation of colors, September 10th, 1862]
On September 15th (1862), the eight hundred and eighty-nine officers
and men now mustered as the Nineteenth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry
broke camp, made their first march to East Litchfield station, and
started for the South, with the entire population for miles around
gathered to witness, not as a holiday spectacle, but as a farewell,
grave with significance, the departure of the county regiment.
"In order to raise it," says the regimental history, "Litchfield
County had given up the flower of her youth, the hope and pride of
hundreds of families, and they had by no means enlisted to fight for a
superior class of men at home. There was no superior class at home. In
moral qualities, in social worth, in every civil relation, they were
the best that Connecticut had to give. More than fifty of the rank and
file of the regiment subsequently found their way to commissions, and
at least a hundred more proved themselves not a whit less competent or
worthy to wear sash and saber if it had been their fortune."
* * * * *
The regimental officers were: Colonel, Leverett W. Wessells,
Litchfield; lieutenant-colonel, Elisha S. Kellogg, Derby; major,
Nathaniel Smith, Woodbury; adjutant, Charles J. Deming, Litchfield;
quartermaster, Bradley D. Lee, Barkhamsted; chaplain, Jonathan A.
Wainwright, Torrington; surgeon, Henry Plumb, New Milford.
Colonel Wessells, a native of Litchfield, and a brother of General
Henry W. Wessells of the regular army, had been prominent in public
affairs before the war, and served for twelve years as Sheriff. Ill
health interfered with his service with the regiment from the first,
and finally compelled his resignation in September, 1863. Later he was
appointed Provost Marshal for the Fourth District of Connecticut, and
for many years after the war was active in civil affairs, being the
candidate for State Treasurer on the Republican ticket in 1868,
Quartermaster-General on Governor Andrews' staff, and member of the
General Assembly. He died at Dover, Delaware, April 4, 1895.
Washington in September, 1862, while relatively secure from the easy
capture which would have been possible in the summer of the previous
year, was not in a situation of such safety as to preclude anxiety,
for Pope had just been beaten at Bull Run and Lee's army was north of
the Potomac in the first of its memorable invasions of the loyal
states. On the very day of his check at Antietam, September 17th, the
Nineteenth Connecticut Volunteers reached the capital, and the next
day moved into the hostile state of Virginia, bivouacking near
Alexandria.
[Illustration: The first encampment in Virginia]
In this vicinity the regiment was destined to remain for many months,
and to learn, as far as was possible without the grim teachings of
actual experience, the business for which it was gathered. At first
there was a constant expectation of orders to join the army in active
operations; the county newspapers for many weeks noted regularly that
the regiment was still near Alexandria, "but orders to march are
hourly expected." It was good fortune, however, that none came, for
not a little of the credit of its later service was due to the
proficiency in discipline and soldierly qualities gained in the long
months now spent in preparation.
The task of giving the necessary military education to the thousand
odd men fresh from the ordinary routine of rural Connecticut life,
fell upon the shoulders of Lieutenant-Colonel Kellogg, and by all the
testimony available, most of all by the splendid proof they later
gave, it is clear that it was entrusted to a master hand. Matters of
organization and administration at first engrossed Colonel Wessells'
attention; ill health soon supervened, and later he was given the
command of a brigade. The regiment from its beginning was Kellogg's,
and he received in due course the commission vacated by its first
commander in September, 1863.
A thorough and well-tried soldier himself, he quickly gained the
respect of his command by his complete competency, and its strong and
admiring affection was not slow in following. There are men among us
to this day for whom no superlatives are adequate to give expression
to their feelings in regard to him. As the regimental history records
of their career "there is not a scene, a day, nor a memory from Camp
Dutton to Grapevine Point that can be wholly divested of Kellogg. Like
the ancient Eastern king who suddenly died on the eve of an
engagement, and whose remains were bolstered up in warlike attitude in
his chariot, and followed by his enthusiastic soldiers to battle and
to victory, so this mighty leader, although falling in the very first
onset, yet went on through every succeeding march and fight, and won
posthumous victories for the regiment which may be said to have been
born of his loins. Battalion and company, officer and private, arms
and quarters, camp and drill, command and obedience, honor and duty,
esprit and excellence, every moral and material belonging of the
regiment, bore the impress of his genius. In the eyes of civilians,
Colonel Kellogg was nothing but a horrid, strutting, shaggy monster.
But request any one of the survivors of the Nineteenth Infantry or the
Second Artillery to name the most perfect soldier he ever saw, and
this will surely be the man. Or ask him to conjure up the ideal
soldier of his imagination, still the same figure, complete in
feature, gesture, gauntlet, saber, boot, spur, observant eye and
commanding voice, will stalk with majestic port upon the mental
vision. He seemed the superior of all superiors, and major-generals
shrunk into pigmy corporals in comparison with him. In every faculty
of body, mind, heart, and soul he was built after a large pattern. His
virtues were large and his vices were not small. As Lincoln said of
Seward, he could swear magnificently. His nature was versatile, and
full of contradictions; sometimes exhibiting the tenderest
sensibilities and sometimes none at all. Now he would be in the
hospital tent bending with streaming eyes over the victims of fever,
and kissing the dying Corporal Webster, and an hour later would find
him down at the guard house, prying open the jaws of a refractory
soldier with a bayonet in order to insert a gag; or in anger drilling
a battalion, for the fault of a single man, to the last point of
endurance; or shamefully abusing the most honorable and faithful
officers in the regiment. 'In rage, deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.'
But notwithstanding his frequent ill treatment of officers and
soldiers, he had a hold on their affections such as no other commander
ever had, or could have. The men who were cursing him one day for the
almost intolerable rigors of his discipline, would in twenty-four
hours be throwing up their caps for him, or subscribing to buy him a
new horse, or petitioning the Governor not to let him be jumped. The
man who sat on a sharp-backed wooden horse in front of the guard
house, would sometimes watch the motions of the Colonel on drill or
parade, until he forgot the pain and disgrace of his punishment in
admiration of the man who inflicted it."
It is not hard to understand the hold he gained, through a personality
so striking and forceful, upon the men of his command; they were but
boys for the most part, in point of fact, and open to the influence of
just such strength, and perhaps also just such weaknesses, as they saw
in this splendidly virile and genuine, and very human character.
Colonel Kellogg was a Litchfield County man, a native of New Hartford,
and at this time about thirty-eight years of age. His education was
not of the schools, but gained from years of adventurous life as
sailor, gold-hunter, and wanderer. Shortly before the war he had
settled in his native state, but he responded to the call for the
national defence among the very first, and before the organization of
the Nineteenth had served as Major of the First Connecticut
Artillery. He lies buried in Winsted.
[Illustration: Fort Ellsworth, near Alexandria, May, 1863]
* * * * *
For more than a year and a half the regiment was numbered among the
defenders of the capital, removing after a few months from the
immediate neighborhood of Alexandria, and being stationed among the
different forts and redoubts which formed the line of defence south of
the Potomac.
Important as its service there was, and novel as it must have been to
Litchfield County boys, it was not marked by incidents of any note,
and furnished nothing to attract attention among the general and
absorbing operations of the war. It was, still, of vast interest to
the people of the home towns. The county newspapers had many letters
to print in those days from the soldiers themselves, and from visitors
from home, who in no inconsiderable numbers were journeying down to
look in upon them constantly. There were of course matters of various
nature which gave rise to complaints of different degrees of
seriousness; there was not unnaturally much sickness among the men in
the early part of their service; there were political campaigns at
home, in which the volunteers had and showed a strong interest;
there was a regrettable quarrel among the officers in which
Lieutenant-Colonel Kellogg was placed in an unfortunate light, and the
termination of which gave the men an opportunity of showing their
feeling for him. All these matters were well aired in type; meanwhile
the regiment, doing well such duty as was laid upon it, grew in
efficiency for hard and active service when it should be called for.
The possibility of a call to action at almost any minute was seen in
April, 1863, when orders came that the regiment be held ready to
march. Reinforcements were going forward to the Army of the Potomac,
now under Hooker, in large numbers; but the Nineteenth was finally
left in the Defences. Thus months were passed in the routine of drill
and parade, guard mounting and target practice, varied by brief and
rare furloughs, while the lightnings of the mighty conflict raging so
near left them untouched. "Yet," it is related, "a good many seemed to
be in all sorts of affliction, and were constantly complaining because
they could not go to the front. A year later, when the soldiers of the
Nineteenth were staggering along the Pamunkey, with heavy loads and
blistered feet, or throwing up breastworks with their coffee-pots all
night under fire in front of Petersburg, they looked back to the
Defences of Washington as to a lost Elysium."
* * * * *
It was in November, 1863, that the War Department orders were issued
changing the Nineteenth Infantry to a regiment of heavy artillery,
which Governor Buckingham denominated the Second Connecticut.
Artillery drill had for some time been part of its work, and the
general efficiency and good record of the regiment in all particulars
was responsible for the change, which was a welcome one, as the
artillery was considered a very desirable branch of the service, and
the increase in size gave prospects of speedier promotions.
Recruiting had been necessary almost all the time to keep the regiment
up to the numerical standard; death and the discharge for disability
had been operating from the first. It was now needful to fill it up to
the artillery standard of eighteen hundred men, and this was
successfully accomplished. Officers and men were despatched to
Connecticut to gather recruits, and their advertisements set forth
enticingly the advantage of joining a command so comfortably situated
as "this famous regiment" in the Defences of Washington, where, it was
permissible to infer, it was permanently stationed, a belief which had
come to be generally held. The effort, however, was not confined by
geographical limits, and a large part of the men secured were
strangers to Litchfield County. Before the 1st of March, 1864, over
eleven hundred recruits were received, and with the nucleus of the old
regiment quickly formed into an efficient command.
[Illustration: In the Defences. Guard mount]
"This vast body of recruits was made up of all sorts of men," the
history of the regiment states. "A goodly portion of them were no less
intelligent, patriotic, and honorable than the 'old' Nineteenth--and
that is praise enough. Another portion of them were not exactly the
worst kind of men, but those adventurous and uneasy varlets who always
want to get out of jail when they are in, and in when they are out;
furloughed sailors, for example, who had enlisted just for fun, while
ashore, with no definite purpose of remaining in the land service for
any tedious length of time. And, lastly, there were about three
hundred of the most thorough paced villains that the stews and slums
of New York and Baltimore could furnish--bounty-jumpers, thieves, and
cut-throats, who had deserted from regiment after regiment in which
they had enlisted under fictitious names and who now proposed to
repeat the operation. And they did repeat it. No less than two hundred
and fifty deserted before the middle of May, very few of whom were
ever retaken and returned to the regiment. There were rebels in
Alexandria who furnished deserters with citizens' clothes and thus
their capture became almost impossible."
At first, and perhaps to some extent always, there was a mental
distinction made by the men between those who had originally enlisted
in the "old Nineteenth," and the large body which was now joined to
that organization, many of whom had never seen the Litchfield hills.
But there was enough character in the original body to give its
distinct tone to the enlarged regiment; its officers were all of the
first enlistment, and the common sufferings and successes which soon
fell to their lot quickly deprived this distinction of any
invidiousness. The Second Artillery was always known, and proudly
known, as the Litchfield County Regiment.
There came to the Second Connecticut Heavy Artillery, on May 17, 1864,
the summons which, after such long immunity, it had almost ceased to
expect.
The preceding two weeks had been among the most eventful of the war.
They had seen the crossing of the Rapidan by Grant on the 4th, and the
terrible battles for days following in the Wilderness and at
Spottsylvania, depleting the army by such enormous losses as even this
war had hardly seen before. Heavy reinforcements were demanded and
sent forward from all branches of the service; in the emergency this
artillery regiment was summoned to fight as infantry, and so served
until the end of the conflict, though for a long time with a hope,
which survived many disappointments, of being assigned to its proper
work with the heavy guns.
It started for the front on May 18th (1864), and on the 20th reached
the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac, and was assigned to the
Second Brigade, First Division, of the Sixth Corps, now under
Major-General Horatio G. Wright, another leader of Connecticut origin,
who had succeeded to the command of the Corps on the death a few days
before of Litchfield County's most noted soldier, John Sedgwick.
[Illustration: General Sedgwick]
The famous series of movements "by the left flank" was in progress,
and the regiment was in active motion at once. For more than a week
following its arrival at the front it was on the march practically all
the time while Grant pushed southward. To troops unaccustomed to
anything more arduous than drilling in the Defences at Washington,
it was almost beyond the limits of endurance. At the start, without
experience in campaigning, the men had overburdened themselves with
impedimenta which it was very soon necessary to dispense with. "The
amount of personal effects then thrown away," wrote the chaplain, Rev.
Winthrop H. Phelps, "has been estimated by officers who witnessed and
have carefully calculated it, to be from twenty to thirty thousand
dollars. To this amount must be added the loss to the Government in
the rations and ammunition left on the way." On some of the marches
days were passed with scarcely anything to eat, and it is recorded
that raw corn was eagerly gathered, kernel by kernel, in empty
granaries, and eaten with a relish. Heat, dust, rain, mud, and a rate
of movement which taxed to the utmost the powers of the strongest,
gave to these untried troops a savage hint of the hardships of
campaigning, into which they had been plunged without any gradual
steps of breaking in, and much more terrible experiences were close
at hand. Of these there came a slight foretaste in a skirmish with
the enemy on the 24th near Jericho Ford on the North Anna River,
resulting in the death of one man and the wounding of three others,
the first of what was soon to be a portentous list of casualties.
* * * * *
The movements of both armies were bringing them steadily nearer to
Richmond, and but one chance now remained to achieve the object of the
campaign, the defeat of Lee's army north of the Chickahominy and away
from the strong defences of the Confederate capital. The enemy,
swinging southward to conform to Grant's advance, finally reached the
important point of Cold Harbor on May 31st. Cavalry was sent forward
to dislodge him, and seized some of the entrenchments near that place,
while both armies were hurried forward for the inevitable battle. The
Sixth Corps, of which the Second Artillery was part, reached its
position on the extreme left near noon on June 1st, having marched
since midnight, and awaited the placing of other troops before the
charge, which had been ordered to take place at five o'clock.
It would have been a fearful waiting for these men could they have
known what was in store for them. But they were drugged, as it were,
with utter fatigue; the almost constant movement of their two weeks of
active service had left them "so nearly dead with marching and want of
sleep" that they could not notice or comprehend the significant
movements of the columns of troops about them preparing for battle, or
the artillery which soon opened fire on both sides; their stupor, it
is related, was of a kind that none can describe. They heard without
excitement the earnest instructions of Colonel Kellogg, who, in pride
and anxiety at this first trial of his beloved command, was in
constant consultation with officers and men, directing, encouraging,
explaining. "He marked out on the ground," writes one of his staff,
"the shape of the works to be taken,--told the officers what
dispositions to make of the different battalions,--how the charge was
to be made,--spoke of our reputation as a band-box regiment, 'Now we
are called on to show what we can do at fighting.'" The brigade
commander, General Emory Upton, was also watching closely this new
regiment which had never been in battle. But all foreboding was spared
most of the men through sheer exhaustion.
At about the appointed time, five in the afternoon, the regiment was
moved in three battalions of four companies each out of the
breastworks where it had lain through the afternoon, leaving knapsacks
behind, stationed for a few moments among the scanty pine-woods in
front, and then at the word of command started forth upon its fateful
journey, the Colonel in the lead.
The first battalion, with the colors in the center, moved at a double
quick across the open field under a constantly thickening fire, over
the enemy's first line of rifle pits which was abandoned at its
approach, and onward to the main line of breastworks with a force and
impetus which would have carried it over this like Niagara but for an
impassable obstruction. Says the regimental history, "There had been a
thick growth of pine sprouts and saplings on this ground, but the
rebels had cut them, probably that very day, and had arranged them so
as to form a very effective abatis,--thereby clearing the spot and
thus enabling them to see our movements. Up to this point there had
been no firing sufficient to confuse or check the battalion, but here
the rebel musketry opened. A sheet of flame, sudden as lightning, red
as blood, and so near that it seemed to singe the men's faces, burst
along the rebel breastwork, and the ground and trees close behind our
line was ploughed and riddled with a thousand balls that just missed
the heads of the men. The battalion dropped flat on the ground, and
the second volley, like the first, nearly all went over. Several men
were struck, but not a large number. It is more than probable that if
there had been no other than this front fire, the rebel breastworks
would have been ours, notwithstanding the pine boughs. But at that
moment a long line of rebels on our left, having nothing in their own
front to engage their attention, and having unobstructed range on the
battalion, opened a fire which no human valor could withstand, and
which no pen can adequately describe. It was the work of almost a
single minute. The air was filled with sulphurous smoke, and the
shrieks and howls of more than two hundred and fifty mangled men rose
above the yells of triumphant rebels and the roar of their musketry.
'About face,' shouted Colonel Kellogg, but it was his last command. He
had already been struck in the arm, and the words had scarcely passed
his lips when another shot pierced his head, and he fell dead upon the
interlacing pine boughs. Wild and blind with wounds, bruises, noise,
smoke, and conflicting orders, the men staggered in every direction,
some of them falling upon the very top of the rebel parapet, where
they were completely riddled with bullets,--others wandering off into
the woods on the right and front, to find their way to death by
starvation at Andersonville, or never to be heard of again."
The second battalion had advanced at an interval of about seventy-five
yards after the first, and the third had followed in turn, but they
were ordered by General Upton to lie down as they approached the
entrenchments. They could not fire without injury to the line in
front, and could only hold their dangerous and trying position in
readiness to support their comrades ahead, protecting themselves as
they could from the fire that seemed like leaden hail. There was no
suggestion of retreat at any point and several hundred of the enemy,
taking advantage of a lull in the firing, streamed over the
breastworks and gave themselves up, but through a misunderstanding of
the case the credit of their capture was given to other regiments,
though clearly due to this.
The history continues: "The lines now became very much mixed. Those of
the first battalion who were not killed or wounded gradually crawled
or worked back; wounded men were carried through to the rear; and the
woods began to grow dark, either with night or smoke or both. The
companies were formed and brought up to the breastworks one by one,
and the line extended toward the left. The enemy soon vacated the
breastwork in our immediate front, and crept off through the
darkness." Throughout the terrible night they held their ground,
keeping up a constant fire to prevent an attempt by the enemy to
reoccupy the line, until they were relieved in the early morning by
other troops; they had secured a position which it was indispensable
to hold, and the line thus gained remained the regiment's front during
its stay at Cold Harbor. Until June 12th the position was kept
confronting the enemy, whose line was parallel and close before it,
while daily additions were made to the list of casualties as they
labored in strengthening the protective works.
[Illustration: The first battle]
The official report of General Upton reads in part as follows: "The
Second Connecticut, anxious to prove its courage, moved to the
assault in beautiful order. Crossing an open field it entered a
pine-wood, passed down a gentle declivity and up a slight ascent. Here
the charge was checked. For seventy feet in front of the works the
trees had been felled, interlocking with each other and barring all
further advance. Two paths several yards apart, and wide enough for
four men to march abreast, led through the obstruction. Up these to
the foot of the works the brave men rushed but were swept away by a
converging fire. Unable to carry the intrenchments, I directed the men
to lie down and not return the fire. Opposite the right the works were
carried. The regiment was marched to the point gained and, moving to
the left, captured the point first attacked. In this position without
support on either flank the Second Connecticut fought till three A.M.,
when the enemy fell back to a second line of works."
The regimental history continues: "On the morning of the 2nd the
wounded who still remained were got off to the rear, and taken to the
Division Hospital some two miles back. Many of them had lain all
night, with shattered bones, or weak with loss of blood, calling
vainly for help, or water, or death. Some of them lay in positions so
exposed to the enemy's fire that they could not be reached until the
breastworks had been built up and strengthened at certain points, nor
even then without much ingenuity and much danger; but at length they
were all removed. Where it could be done with safety, the dead were
buried during the day. Most of the bodies, however, could not be
reached until night, and were then gathered and buried under cover of
the darkness."
The regiment's part in the charge of June 3rd, the disastrous movement
of the whole Union line against the Confederate works, which Grant
admitted never should have been made, was attended with casualties
which by comparison with the slaughter of the 1st seemed
inconsiderable. There were, in fact, losses in killed and wounded on
almost all of the twelve days of its stay at Cold Harbor, but the
fatal 1st of June greatly overshadowed the remaining time, and that
first action was indeed incomparably the most severe the Second
Connecticut ever saw. Its loss in killed and wounded, in fact, is said
to have been greater than that of any other Connecticut regiment in
any single battle.
The reputation of a fighting regiment, which its fallen leader had
predicted, was amply earned by that unfaltering advance against
intrenchments manned by Lee's veterans, and that tenacious defence of
the position gained, but the cost was appallingly great. The record of
Cold Harbor, of which all but a very small proportion was incurred on
June 1st, is given as follows: Killed or died of wounds, one hundred
and twenty-one; wounded, but not mortally, one hundred and ninety;
missing, fifteen; prisoners, three.
General Martin T. McMahon, writing of this battle in "The Century's"
series of war papers, says: "I remember at one point a mute and
pathetic evidence of sterling valor. The Second Connecticut Heavy
Artillery, a new regiment eighteen hundred strong, had joined us but a
few days before the battle. Its uniform was bright and fresh;
therefore its dead were easily distinguished where they lay. They
marked in a dotted line an obtuse angle, covering a wide front, with
its apex toward the enemy, and there upon his face, still in death,
with his head to the works, lay the Colonel, the brave and genial
Colonel Elisha S. Kellogg."
Such was their first trial in battle.
Immediately after receiving news of the action of June 1st, Governor
Buckingham had sent a commission as colonel to Lieutenant-Colonel
James Hubbard. He, however, was unwilling to assume the responsibility
of the command; this had been his first battle, and he "drew the hasty
inference that all the fighting was likely to consist of a similar
walking into the jaws of hell. He afterwards found that this was a
mistake."
Upon General Upton's advice, therefore, the officers recommended to
the Governor the appointment of Ranald S. Mackenzie, then a captain
of engineers on duty at headquarters, and this recommendation being
favorably endorsed by superior officers up to the Lieutenant-General,
was accepted, and Colonel Mackenzie took command on June 6th.
Of the man who was now to lead the regiment, Grant in his Memoirs
writes twenty years later the following unqualified judgment: "I
regarded Mackenzie as the most promising young officer in the army.
Graduating at West Point as he did during the second year of the war,
he had won his way up to the command of a corps before its close. This
he did upon his own merit and without influence." Such a statement
from such a quarter is enough to show that once more the Second
Connecticut was to be commanded by a soldier of more than ordinary
qualities, a fact which was not long in developing.
Colonel Mackenzie's active connection with the regiment lasted only
some four months, but they were months of great activity and afforded
such occasions for proof of his abilities that his speedy promotion
was inevitable. He never achieved the general popularity with his men
that had come to his predecessor, nor cared to, but he did gain quite
as thoroughly their respect through his mastership of the business in
hand. It was not long after he assumed command that, as the regimental
history says, the men "began to grieve anew over the loss of Kellogg.
That commander had chastised us with whips, but this one dealt in
scorpions. By the time we reached the Shenandoah Valley, he had so far
developed as to be a far greater terror, to both officers and men,
than Early's grape and canister. He was a Perpetual Punisher, and the
Second Connecticut while under him was always a punished regiment.
There is a regimental tradition to the effect that a well-defined
purpose existed among the men, prior to the battle of Winchester, to
dispose of this commanding scourge during the first fight that
occurred. If he had known it, it would only have excited his contempt,
for he cared not a copper for the good will of any except his
military superiors, and certainly feared no man of woman born, on
either side of the lines. But the purpose, if any existed, quailed and
failed before his audacious pluck on that bloody day. He seemed to
court destruction all day long. With his hat aloft on the point of his
saber he galloped over forty-acre fields, through a perfect hailstorm
of rebel lead and iron, with as much impunity as though he had been a
ghost. The men hated him with the hate of hell, but they could not
draw bead on so brave a man as that. Henceforth they firmly believed
he bore a charmed life."
Colonel Mackenzie's advancement was brilliantly rapid, as Grant
states, and at the time of Lee's surrender he was in command of a
corps of cavalry, which had shortly before taken an important part in
the battle of Five Forks under his leadership.
When the war ended he became colonel of the Twenty-fourth Infantry in
the regular army, and later received a cavalry command, gaining much
distinction by his services in the Indian campaigns in the West and
on the Mexican border. He was made brigadier-general in 1882, shortly
after placed on the retired list, and died at Governor's Island in
1889.
* * * * *
The unsuccessful assault on Lee's works at Cold Harbor marked the end
of the first part of Grant's campaign. The next move was to swing the
army southward to the line of the James River and prepare to move upon
Richmond and its defences from that side. This change of base was one
of General Grant's finest achievements, admirably planned, and so
skilfully executed that for three days Lee remained in total ignorance
of what his adversary was doing. The Second Connecticut withdrew from
its position on June 12th, late at night, reached the river on the
16th, and, moving up it in transports, was disembarked and sent toward
Petersburg, to a point on the left wing of the army. It reached
position on the night of the 19th and entrenched. The usual
occurrences of such marches as attended this change of scene were
varied for the men, as the regimental history suggestively relates, by
a notable circumstance--a bath in the river. "It was the only luxury
we had had for weeks. It was a goodly sight to see half a dozen
regiments disporting themselves in the tepid waters of the James. But
no reader can possibly understand what enjoyment it afforded, unless
he has slept on the ground for fourteen days without undressing, and
been compelled to walk, cook, and live on all fours, lest a
perpendicular assertion of his manhood should instantly convert it
into clay."
The operations against Petersburg had been going on for some time when
the regiment arrived, and for two days it lay in the rifle pits it had
dug under continual fire, with frequent resulting casualties. It was
"the most intolerable position the regiment was ever required to hold.
We had seen a deadlier spot at Cold Harbor, and others awaited us in
the future; but they were agonies that did not last. Here, however, we
had to stay, hour after hour, from before dawn until after dark, and
that, too, where we could not move a rod without extreme danger. The
enemy's line was parallel with ours, just across the wheat field; then
they had numerous sharpshooters, who were familiar with every acre of
the ground, perched in tall trees on both our flanks; then they had
artillery posted everywhere. No man could cast his eyes over the
parapet, or expose himself ten feet in the rear of the trench without
drawing fire. And yet they did thus expose themselves; for where there
are even chances of being missed or hit, soldiers will take the
chances rather than lie still and suffer from thirst, supineness, and
want of all things. There was no getting to the rear until zig-zag
passages were dug, and then the wounded were borne off. Our occupation
continued during the night and the next day, the regiment being
divided into two reliefs, the one off duty lying a little to the rear,
in a cornfield near Harrison's house. But it was a question whether
'off' or 'on' duty was the more dangerous."
On the 21st, relieved from this post, the regiment was moved to a new
position further southwest and about the same distance from the city
of Petersburg, which lay in plain view and whose city clocks could be
heard distinctly. The Sixth Corps was engaged in an operation having
the purpose of breaking Lee's communications with the South by the
line of the Weldon Railroad, and in the course of this the Second
Connecticut took part in a "sharp skirmish" with Hill's Division, on
June 22nd, an affair which to other experiences would be notable as a
battle of some proportions. The desired result was not gained; the
attempt on Petersburg, which if successful might have hastened the end
of the Confederacy by six months, and which came so near success, was
changed to besieging operations, and for some time Grant's army lay
comparatively quiet. In its four days in action here, the regiment
suffered as follows: Killed or died of wounds, fifteen; wounded but
not mortally, fifteen; missing, three; prisoners who died, five.
[Illustration: Colonel Wessells]
On July 9th came the orders which took the Second Connecticut for many
months away from its place before Petersburg, where, after the
activities described, it had settled down to a less exciting course of
constructing batteries, forts, and breastworks, and laying out camps,
with days of comparative peace and comfort notwithstanding several
alarms showing the possibility of more arduous service.
The Confederate Army which had been sent under General Early into the
Shenandoah Valley to create a diversion in that quarter, had
unexpectedly appeared on the Potomac in a sudden dash upon
Washington, then defended chiefly by raw levies. Part of the Sixth
Corps had been detached from Grant's army and sent to protect the
capital a few days before; now the rest of the corps, including the
Second Connecticut, was hurried north and reached Washington just in
time to defeat Early's purpose. He had planned to storm the city on
the 12th, and with good prospects of success; it was on that very day
at an early hour, that the reinforcing troops arrived. They were
hurried through the city to the threatened point, and the enemy,
seeing the well-known corps badge confronting them at Fort Stevens,
and recognizing that the opportunity was gone, promptly retreated,
after an engagement in which the Second Connecticut took no active
part. This occasion was notable by reason of the fact that for the
only time during the war President Lincoln was under fire, as he
watched the progress of affairs from the parapet of Fort Stevens.