bridges. The storm was over, but again the fog filled the low lands.
As it cleared away, some of us, from the piazza of the Phillips House,
saw the rebel skirmishers cautiously creeping toward the town, and
it was not long before the shouts from their lines told that the
evacuation was discovered. In the battle of Fredericksburg the 32d lost
thirty-five killed and wounded. Among the killed was Captain Charles A.
Dearborn, Jr.
IX.
_BETWEEN CAMPAIGNS._
With the close of the year 1862, Colonel Parker resigned the command,
Lieutenant-Colonel Prescott was promoted to the Colonelcy; Major
Stephenson was made Lieutenant Colonel, and Captain Edmunds, Major.
A vacancy occurred also in the medical staff, by the resignation of
Assistant Surgeon Bigelow, and an elderly, but very respectable M. D.
was gazetted in his place. It happened that the new doctor reported
for duty on the eve of a movement of the corps. He had no horse; said
he had left his trunk at “the depot,” meaning by the roadside, at
Stoneman’s Switch, and when told that he must march with the Regiment
next day he undertook to hire a buggy. The young gentlemen of the
Regiment kept him floundering about for a good part of the night in
search of an imaginary livery stable, and even sent him up to division
headquarters to borrow the General’s barouche. One day’s experience was
enough for him, and the next morning he declined to be mustered in and
went back--he and his trunk--to the more congenial white settlements.
After the disastrous attempt upon the heights of Fredericksburg, the
Regiment had remained in their old camping-ground near Stoneman’s
Switch, in the neighborhood of Falmouth. Excepting the reconnoissance
to Morrisville and skirmish there, with that terrible march on the
return when our brigadier, Schweitzer, led his “greyhounds,” as he
termed them, at such a terrific pace for twenty-five or thirty miles,
nothing occurred to break the monotony of camp life. The night of the
31st December, 1862--that of the march above alluded to--was extremely
cold, and the men, in light marching order, without knapsacks or
necessary blankets, compelled to fall out from inability to keep the
pace, suffered terribly from exposure, and many lost their lives in
consequence.
For two months, or since November 22d, 1862, we had been comfortably
encamped (including the episodes of the battle of Fredericksburg, and
the march and skirmish of Morrisville above-mentioned) near Stoneman’s
Switch--two months! which seemed so near an age, a cycle, or an
eternity of time in the Army of the Potomac in those days, that we had
prepared ourselves as if to remain forever. Our tents were converted
into comfortable huts, with wide chimneys and wooden floors; we had
tables and camp-chairs and bedsteads and looking-glasses--all rather
rudely constructed, perhaps, but to our minds luxurious to a degree
unprecedented. When, however, we got marching orders, every man seemed
to vie with his neighbor in displaying his contempt for all this
effeminacy, and his readiness to quit these “piping times of peace,”
by destroying all his possessions that savored of luxury, and throwing
away whatever could not be carried in knapsack or saddle-pack.
Adjutant Cobb was a sound sleeper. He did not average to sleep so long,
perhaps, as many others, but he would owl over his work or his letters
night after night, and then, when the conditions were favorable, would
do such solid sleeping for one night as would bring him out even. At
such times it seemed absolutely impossible to awaken him; no quantity
of shaking would make any impression, and it was necessary to let him
have it out.
Somewhere about midnight, before January 21st, an orderly came with a
written order, found the adjutant sleeping in his tent, and did his
best to waken him, but without effect. Finally he thrust the order
into Cobb’s hand, closed the fingers over it, and went his way. Before
daylight the adjutant was wakened by the beating drums, and found the
paper in his hand. Rising, he struck a light, read the paper and found
that it was an order for the Regiment to march at 3 A. M. It was then
half-past two, and an hour and a half is the shortest time in which a
command can get breakfast and make needful preparations for the route.
Matters were hurried up pretty lively, and inasmuch as there was the
usual delay in starting, the Regiment managed to come to time.
We did not move until four. Meantime the work of destruction went on,
even to making bonfires of all comforts and luxuries in wood, around
which the men warmed themselves and laughed and sung. Even tent-cloths
and cast-off clothing were destroyed. Nothing was to be left that would
comfort Johnny Reb. But even before we moved off, some of us began to
regret our comfortable home; for a bitter cold north-east wind blew
fiercely, and the air was full of snow and sleet, which gradually grew
to rain. We moved at first pretty fast, and then the pace grew slower,
slower, slowest, with frequent halts, until after dark, when we drew
off the road and bivouacked for the night. The rain continued for some
time, and it was exceedingly chilly, and by no means an agreeable
opportunity for sleep. The men made fires among the trees, and sat
around them nearly all night. As morning rose the wind changed, the
rain ceased and when we resumed our march at about eight o’clock the
air was soft, bland, and beautiful, like a day in April or May. Heavy,
lead-colored clouds, however, hung low over everything, the air was
thick with mist, and vaporous masses of steam lay upon the fields and
woods. The snow had disappeared, and the frost was coming out of the
ground, and lay in pools and puddles, and finally, in lakes and rivers
of water, over roads and low-lying fields in every direction. Soon
it began raining again, first a drizzle and then a steady pour, and
the thermometer rose and rose and rose again, to fifty, seventy, and
eighty degrees, every object in the landscape began to exhale steam.
Men and horses and mules and wagons, every bush and blade of grass,
gave it forth in clouds and masses. There was a glow everywhere as of
early dawn, and a dank, earthy smell pervaded the air. The wagons and
trains, and everything that went on wheels or by horse-flesh, abandoned
the roads and took to the fields. Deeper grew the mud and deeper the
water over the mud. Still the moving masses of men pushed on, jumping
from hummock to stump, sinking in up to the thighs and being dragged
out half drowned, struggling through dense thickets rather than try the
road, and everything and everybody draggled and splashed and yellow
with mud; there had been something very much like this in the march
up the Peninsula under McClellan, in the trenches and corduroys about
Yorktown, and we did not expect to give it up. But at last we came to a
dead standstill. We were in a narrow wood-road and had passed several
teams of a wagon train completely mired, and apparently sinking deeper
and deeper, mules singing their peculiar lay with little above the mud
but their ears, when we were halted where the road made a sudden turn
and descent, and for the present at least, all further progress was
impossible. Our entire day’s march was only three miles.
The narrow road appeared to be blocked, wagons were upset apparently
one upon another, while men and horses were floundering about in most
dire confusion. In a very short time we made our way out of this
scene of disorder, and to the great relief of all who progressed by
horse-flesh, halted to wait a more agreeable season. Then again did we
regret the comfortable quarters we had left.
It was dreadful to think of camping where we were, worse to undertake
to go back again, or forward or anywhere. The whole country in all
directions appeared to be under water. The trees stood up as if in a
vast bog or swamp. At the first step off from a root or stump you sank
so deep as to make you catch your breath, and you were lucky if, in
extracting yourself, you did not leave behind both boots and stockings.
Virginia mud is a clay of reddish color and sticky consistence, which
does not appear to soak water, or mingle with it, but simply to hold
it, becoming softer and softer, and parting with the water wholly by
evaporation. It was difficult to stand; to sit or lie down, except
in the sticky mud, was impossible. Everything was so drenched with
water that it was difficult to make fires. The warm, moist atmosphere
imparted a feeling of weariness and lassitude, and in short our
condition was disgusting. Wet through, stuck-in-the-mud, we dragged out
the night.
The next day, January 23d, was bright, mild, and beautiful, at least as
far as sun and air went. A gentle breeze began to dry up the ground,
and the whole brigade was set at work to corduroy roads. The method
pursued by our own men was peculiar. They were marched across the field
and brought into single line before a Virginia fence. Every man then
pulled out a rail, shouldered it, and in single file the Regiment
marched to the place to be corduroyed, where each dropped his rail as
he came up.
The next day we returned to our camp at Stoneman’s Switch, which looked
on the whole about as comfortable and home-like as the inside of a very
mouldy Stilton cheese. In an incredibly short space of time however,
everything resumed its accustomed air of neatness and quasi-comfort.
The next Sunday-morning inspection showed not a trace of the mud in
which the Regiment with the rest of the army had been nearly smothered.
Youthful readers of Lovers’ romances are apt to jump at the conclusion
that “a soldier’s life is always gay,” or at least that gaiety is its
normal condition. Youthful patriots in our war time yearned for active
service, and saw themselves in dreams successfully storming forts,
capturing batteries, charging and driving rebel hordes. Always in their
dreams there was floating over them the flag of their country, (a
bright new one)--always drums were beating and bands were playing; and,
if the dream was dreamed out to the end, the great transformation-scene
at the close, displayed the dreamer in elegant uniform, crowned by
the genius of victory, while the people of the whole nation joined in
shouts of approbation.
As they approached the field of glory the halo faded, and often upon
the field itself it was not at all manifest to the eye. A disordered
liver turned the gold to green, and the arm which by the dream was to
have been waving a flashing sword in the front part of battle, was
more frequently wielding a dull axe in the woods, or a spade in the
open ground. Many thought that their patriotism had evaporated, but it
was only the romantic aureola that was gone.
Among the first volunteers to join our Newton Company was the Reverend
William L. Gilman, a minister of the Universalist denomination.
To us he was Corporal Gilman of Company K, doing his duty as a
non-commissioned officer quietly and well. On the 10th of December,
1862, the Colonel was in the dumps. He had been for two months
wrestling with the medical authorities of the corps, and the medical
authorities had near about killed him. Upon the eve of a movement and
a battle, they refused permission to send our sick to hospital, and
ordered our surgeons to follow the movement. More than twenty men were
very sick in our hospital tent, and the steward objected to the heavy
load which would fall to him if he were left alone in charge.
At this juncture appeared Corporal Gilman with a sad countenance, and
told how disappointed he was to find that his services seemed to be of
no value, and to ask if some position could not be found in which he
might have the satisfaction of feeling that he was of use to somebody.
A brief consultation with the Surgeon told the Colonel that the
corporal was in no state for marching or fighting, that his despondency
was the effect of a disordered liver, and thereupon he was detailed
to the military command of the patients in hospital, and before the
regiment left he was fully instructed as to the duty required of him.
To Corporal Gilman’s activity during the five days of our absence, is
due a large share of the credit of saving the lives of those entrusted
to his care. Shamefully neglected by the division surgeon who promised
to visit them, and who even falsely said that he had visited them,
these sick men would have died of starvation but for the unwearying
devotion of their two non-commissioned officers; and when the regiment
returned, Gilman himself was well, and had recovered that cheeriness
which was his natural temper, and which never afterward deserted him,
even when mangled and dying on the field of Gettysburg.
But after all there was some foundation for those youthful views. There
were men who could stand up against their own livers, and there were
times of general jollity.
Making a neighborly call at the headquarters of an Irish regiment, our
Adjutant found there quite a number of officers, the greater number of
them sitting or reclining on the ground, which formed the tent floor,
among them Captain Hart, A. A. General of the Irish Brigade.
Of course the canteen was at once produced, and a single glass which
was to go the rounds with the canteen. The whiskey was of the “ragged
edge” variety, from the commissary stores, and it required a stout
throat to drink it half-and-half with water; but when our adjutant, to
whom by reason of infirmity of the lungs whiskey was like milk, filled
the little glass with clear spirit and tossed it down his throat,
there was a murmur of admiring surprise which found expression in
Hart’s reverent look and in his exclamation, “Oh, sir! you ought to
belong to the Irish Brigade, for it’s a beautiful swallow you have!”
But the Irish had no monopoly of light-hearted soldiers. Dana of “ours”
was to the battalion what Tupper says a babe is to the household--a
well-spring of joy. Full of healthy life and spirits, he bubbled over
with jokes and pranks and mirth, and while no story of the 32d could
be complete without some stories of him, no one book could suffice to
contain them all.
Sent out with a party to corduroy a road, he announced himself at the
farm house near by as General Burnside, and demanded quarters, got
them, and fared sumptuously.
Detailed as acting quartermaster he kept no accounts, and how he
settled with his department no man knoweth to this day. The demand
of the ordnance department for property returns, although frequently
repeated, were quietly ignored, until the chief wrote to him: “Having
no replies to my repeated demands for your accounts, I have this day
addressed a communication to the 2d Auditor of the Treasury, requesting
him to withhold farther payments to you.” To which D. at once replied:
“Dear Sir,--Yours of the --th is received. What did the 2d Auditor say?”
A representative of the Christian Commission in clerical dress and
stove-pipe hat was distributing lemons to the bilious soldiers, but
refused to give or sell one to Dana, who thereupon proposed to arrest
him as a deserter from our army or a spy of the enemy’s; and when
the gentleman asserted that he was enlisted only in “the army of the
Lord”--“Well, you’ve straggled a good ways from that,” was the surly
rejoinder.
Sergeant Hyde of K Company was a Yankee given to the invention of
labor-saving contrivances, and was not fond of walking two miles under
a big log, which was then the ordinary process of obtaining fire-wood.
He thought that he might get his fuel with less labor, from the
generous pile which always flanked the surgeon’s tent. Getting one of
his comrades, in the darkness of night, to draw off the attention of
the headquarters’ negro servants, Hyde secured a boss log and escaped
with it to his hut, and there, with the aid of a newly-issued hatchet,
proceeded to demolish his log beyond the possibility of recognition.
Unfortunately for Hyde, the sharp hatchet glanced off the log and cut
an ugly gash in his leg--a serious wound, which made it necessary
to call on the surgeon and break his rest. The doctor was kind and
sympathizing beyond his wont, and very curious to learn all about the
accident, but to this day the sergeant believes that if that doctor had
known all the particulars, the treatment might not have been so gentle.
Whenever the army was idle for a time, officers were apt to be prolific
in written communications, recommendations, and endorsements, and
these were not always merely dry routine. The officer of the guard
who knew more about tactics than any other learning, one day on his
report wrote a suggestion that “sum spaids and piks” be provided for
the use of the guard. This passing as usual through the hands of the
officer-of-the-day, who knew more about books than tactics, he added
over his official signature, “approved all but the spelling.”
A. Q. M. Hoyt having in a written communication to the General
of the division called attention to the fact that the division
quartermaster was using an ambulance and horses for his own private
occasions in violation of an order of the War Department, was by
endorsement directed to “attend to his own duty,” whereupon he sent
the same paper to the Adjutant General at Washington, with this
additional endorsement. “In compliance with the above order of Gen.
---- the attention of the War Department is called to the case within
described.” The ambulance had to go.
It was in one of these prolonged waiting seasons that the assistant
surgeon with great exertion at all of the headquarters, secured a
thirty days leave of absence in order to be present at his own wedding.
Nothing now could make his face so long as it was next morning at
the mess breakfast, when an orderly brought, and when the adjutant
read aloud a general order from headquarters, Army of the Potomac,
cancelling all officers’ leaves “pending the present operations of
this army.” A premature chuckle from one of the conspirators exposed
the forgery and lightened the doctor’s heart.
It was not in every place and presence however, that even a full
surgeon could indulge his natural bent for humorous relation, as indeed
the chief of our medical staff discovered, when, after convulsing a
Court Martial with a vivid description of a pig hunt, where he came in
at the death to find the prisoners cutting up the pig, and the Adjutant
General of the division “presiding over the meeting,” he found his
reward in “plans and specifications,” upon which he himself was tried
for contempt of court, or something to that effect.
St. Patrick’s Day was always a day of great jollity, for the religious
children of that holy bishop and his cherished isle are quick to break
forth into mirth and sport when opportunity is offered. The festival of
1863, however, closed with a strange accident and a sad tragedy.
A course had been provided for horse racing, and after the races laid
down in the programme had been run, a variety of scrub matches were
made up _extempore_. Unfortunately it happened that two of these
were under way at the same time and in opposite directions, and at
the height of their speed, two horses came in collision so directly,
and with such a fearful shock as to cause the instant death of both
animals, the actual death of one, and the apparent death of both the
riders. He who escaped at last, was the dear foe of our Quartermaster
Hoyt, who, over the senseless body pronounced the officer’s eulogy, and
expressed his deep contrition for all that he had ever said or done to
offend the sufferer, but with the reserved proviso that “if he does get
well this all goes for nothing.”
X.
_CHANCELLORSVILLE._
The commencement of the year 1863 brought the not unwelcome
announcement to the Army of the Potomac that General Burnside had been
relieved from the command, and General Hooker appointed in his stead.
The disastrous failure at Fredericksburg, and the rather absurd attempt
which will be known in history as the “mud march,” had not increased
the confidence of the army in Burnside’s ability, and it was with
feelings of satisfaction that the soldiers heard the order promulgated
which relieved him and appointed his successor. Notwithstanding some
grave defects in the character and habits of General Hooker, as a
soldier he had enlisted the confidence and won the affections of the
men. The plucky qualities which had given to him the name of “Fighting
Joe,” seemed to be an assurance of that activity and energy that were
so necessary to the successful ending of the contest, while his kindly
nature, and his genial, social temperament, won the love and good
wishes of all who came in contact with him. In appearance, when in
command, he represented the dashing, chivalrous soldier, of whom we had
read in history and fiction, inspiring confidence and awakening our
enthusiasm. As he rode along the line, while reviewing the 5th Corps,
mounted upon a snow-white steed, horse and rider seemingly but one,
erect in all the pride of command, his hair nearly white, contrasting
strongly with his ruddy complexion, he looked the perfect ideal of a
dashing, gallant, brave commander. We soon learned that his skill in
organization fully equalled his bravery upon the battle-field, and
the results were apparent in the improved discipline and _morale_ of
the troops. To his administration must be given the credit of the
introduction of the corps badges, which proved of great value in the
succeeding days of the war.