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[Illustration: R. E. McBRIDE.]
IN THE RANKS:
FROM THE
WILDERNESS TO APPOMATTOX COURT-HOUSE.
THE WAR,
AS SEEN AND EXPERIENCED BY A PRIVATE SOLDIER IN THE
ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.
BY REV. R. E. M'BRIDE.
A tale of the times of old. The deeds of days of other years.
--OSSIAN.
CINCINNATI:
PRINTED BY WALDEN & STOWE,
FOR THE AUTHOR.
1881
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, by
R. E. M'BRIDE,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
PREFACE.
In giving this book to the public we do so under the same plea which
justifies those pleasant gatherings called "reunions," where men of the
same regiment, corps, or army, meet to extend friendly greetings to each
other, to friends, and all comrades in arms.
The writer has found it a pleasant task to recall the scenes of fifteen
years ago, when, a mere boy in years, he had a part in the events here
recorded. He is conscious of a kindly affection toward the men who were
his companions during those stirring times. Kindness, thoughtfulness,
forbearance, toward the boy-soldier, are not forgotten. If he found any
thing different from these in his intercourse with men or officers, it
has passed from memory, and he would not recall it if he could.
We trust, also, that this work may have a mission of utility to the
generation that has grown up since the war.
There is a certain almost indefinable something, which has been summed
up under the expression, "military traditions." This comes not alone
from formal histories of the wars of the nation, but more largely from
the history which each soldier carried home with him after the war was
over. It meant something more than a certain amount of small family
vanity, when men used to say, "My father was a soldier of the
Revolution;" "My father fought at Lundy's Lane."
There lay back of this the stories told to wondering little ones while
they gathered around the arm-chair of the soldier grandfather. Here were
planted the seeds of military ardor that found expression at Gettysburg,
Vicksburg, Atlanta, and the Wilderness. It is thus the past of the
nation projects itself into the present. Our comrades that sleep down
yonder guard their country more effectually than if, full armed, they
kept unceasing watch on all her borders. Though dead, they yet
speak,--yes _live_, in the spirit which yet lives in the hearts of their
countrymen. The cause they died for our children will love; the
institutions they preserved at such cost, our sons will perpetuate by
intelligent devotion to freedom and her laws.
Is it in vain, then, my comrade, that I sit down in your family circle,
and tell your children the story of our hardships, trials, reverses,
victories?
This narrative is submitted to you almost as first written, when
intended only for the perusal of my own family. In recounting events
subsequent to August 19, 1864, when the One Hundred and Ninetieth is
spoken of, the One Hundred and Ninety-first is also included, as they
were practically one.
Since completing the work, the author has learned that the report of the
Adjutant-general of Pennsylvania gives these regiments, the One Hundred
and Ninetieth and One Hundred and Ninety-first, no credit for service
subsequent to the battle of Welden Railroad, in August, 1864. We give
an explanation of this in the closing chapter, and send forth this
volume, hoping that it may serve, in some measure, to do justice to as
devoted a body of men as Pennsylvania sent to the field.
SENECA, KANSAS, March, 1881.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
Alexander, John, 25
Appomattox Battle, 215
Amusements, 93, 158
Bethsaida Church, 66
Birkman, Capt., 72, 118
Boggs, Lieut., 35
Baiers, Lieut., 21
Carle, Col., 94, 100, 225
Coleman, Mike, 26, 68, 172, 182
Coleman, Sergt., 47, 72
Culp, Eckard, 68
Craig, Wm., 39
Delo, Chaplain, 59
Dodds, Jasper, 21
Dunn, Geo., 134
Dillinger, 121
Eshelman, Abe, 26, 85
Elliot, John, 28
Execution, 133
Edgar, John, 170
Fort Federal Hill, 112
Fort Steadman, 162
Five Forks Battle, 188
Gaines' Mill Battle, 20
Ginter, 217
Ghosts, 49
Graham, Daniel, 60
Gravelly Run Battle, 172
Grossman, Louis, 40
Harris, Wm., 135
Hatcher's Run Battle, 148
Hartshorn, 73
Hayden, Lieut., 73, 221
Hop, 135
Jones, Capt., 31
Kinsey, Capt., 73, 120
Kenedy, W. H. H., 224
M'Cullough, M. F., 31
M'Guire, J., 135
Miller, Ed., 182
Moreland, C. L., 63, 100
Mortars, 88
Mushrush, Benj., 27
North Ann River Battle, 62
Overdoff, 120
Petersburg, 85
Pattee, Col., 73, 85, 118, 179, 219
Peacock, Lieut., 118
Preston, Geo., 121
Quaker Road Battle, 171
Robbins, 215
Rowanty Creek Battle, 148
Running the Gauntlet, 90
Rutter, Wm., 85
Ramrods, 93
Stanley, John, 31, 69
Stewart, Joe, 25
Stewart, Capt., 22
Steen, David, 33
Shaffer, J., 68
Spotsylvania, 37
Walb, L. C., 204
Welden Railroad, 118
Welden Raid, 124
White, Allen, 31
White Oak Swamp Battle, 75
Wilderness Battle, 30
Woods, O'Harra, 22
Wright, Ernest, 218
Whisky, 140
INTRODUCTION.
I have long purposed the following work, designing to put in a form
somewhat permanent my recollections of experiences in the great war,
believing it may be a source of satisfaction to my children in later
years. Already many of those scenes begin to appear dim and dreamlike,
through the receding years, and many faces, once so clearly pictured in
memory as seen around the camp-fire, in the march, and on the field of
battle, have faded quite away. These things admonish me that what is
done must be done quickly.
In the following pages you will find the names of men otherwise unknown,
because their part in the great conflict was an humble one, yet none the
less grand and heroic. This is written during the brief and uncertain
intervals of leisure that may be caught up here and there amid the
pressing work of the pastorate. You will not, then, I trust, undervalue
it because of literary blemishes. It is _history_ as really as more
pretentious works. It is a specimen of the _minutiae_ of history, a story
of the war as seen by a private in the ranks, not by one who, as a
favored spectator, could survey the movements of a whole army at a
glance, and hence could, _must_, individualize brigades, divisions, army
corps. It is the war in field, woods, underbrush, picket-post,
skirmish-line, camp, march, bivouac. During 1864 no memorandum was kept,
and a diary kept during the spring of 1865 was lost, within a year after
the close of the war. Hence I have depended on memory alone, aided in
fixing dates, etc., by reference to written works. Beyond this, the
histories consulted were of little assistance, as their record of events
sometimes differed materially from my recollection of them. In such
cases I tell my own story, as the object is to record these things as
they appeared to me.
In recording events of which I was not myself a witness, I give the
story as heard from the lips of comrades. Such portions are easily
discernible in the body of the narrative. You can have them for what
they are worth.
"I can not tell how the truth may be,
I tell the tale as 'twas told to me."
IN THE RANKS.
CHAPTER I.
"WAR!"
It is a little word. A child may pronounce it; but what word that ever
fell from human lips has a meaning full of such intensity of horror as
this little word? At its sound there rises up a grim vision of "confused
noise and garments rolled in blood." April 12, 1861, cannon fired by
traitor hands, boomed out over Charleston harbor. The dire sound that
shook the air that Spring morning did not die away in reverberating
echoes from sea to shore, from island to headland. It rolled on through
all the land, over mountain and valley, moaning in every home, at every
fireside, "War! War! War!"
Are we a civilized people? What is civilization? Is it possible to
eliminate the tiger from human nature? Who would have dreamed that the
men of the North, busy with plowing and sowing, planning, contriving,
inventing, could prove themselves on a hundred battle-fields a fiercely
warlike people? The world looked on with wonder as they rushed eagerly
into the conflict, pouring out their blood like water and their wealth
without measure, for a sentiment, a principle, that may be summed up in
the one word--"nationality." "The great uprising" was not the movement
of a blind, unreasoning impulse. A fire had been smoldering in the North
for years. The first cannon shot, that hurtled around the old flag as it
floated over the walls of Fort Sumter shook down the barriers that
confined it, and the free winds of liberty fanned it to a devouring
flame.
The Yankee--let the name be proudly spoken--as he turned the furrow,
stood by his work bench, or listened to the jarring clank of his
machinery, had mused with heavy heart and shame-flushed cheek how a
haughty, brutal, un-American spirit had drawn a line across the land,
and said, "Beyond this is _not_ your country. Here your free speech,
free labor, and free thought shall never come." While this line was
imaginary, he had waited for better days and larger thought to change
the current of the times; but when it was transformed into bristling
bayonets and frowning cannon, the tiger rose up within him, and with
unquestioning faith he took up the gauge of battle. Men talked of the
"cold blood of the North." That blood had surged impetuously through the
veins of warrior freemen for a hundred generations. Here in the New
World it had lost none of its vigor. The sturdy spirit that in other
years ruled the hand that wielded the battle-ax, still ruled, when the
hand was employed in subduing mountain and prairie. The North was averse
to war, because it was rising to that higher civilization that abhors
violence, discards brute methods, and relies on the intellectual and
moral. Such a people, driven to desperation, move right forward to the
accomplishment of their object with a scorn of cost or consequences
unknown to a lower type. Hence it is that the people of the North,
without hesitation, grappled with a rebellion the most formidable ever
successfully encountered by any government. For a like reason their
great armies, melting away like frost before the sun when the rebel flag
went down, mingled again with the people without jar or confusion.
Turning away from a half million graves, wherein they had buried their
slain, their bravest and best beloved, they forgot all bitterness for
joy that peace had come. No people in the world had greater reason for
severity than the victors in this strife. War, willful, unprovoked,
without the shadow of justification, had been thrust upon them. This had
been preceded by a series of usurpations the most unblushing ever
endured by a free people. These were a part of the plan of a band of
traitors, who had plotted for years to overthrow the existing order of
things, and establish an empire with human slavery for its chief
corner-stone.
The "Golden Circle," with its center at Havana, Cuba, its radii
extending to Pennsylvania on the North, the isthmus on the south, and
sweeping from shore to shore, was the bold dream of the men who plotted
the destruction of the American republic. Their object was pursued with
a cold-blooded disregard of all right, human and divine, worthy of the
pagan brutality of the Roman Triumvirate. Prating about the
"Constitution" with hypocritical cant, they trampled upon every
safeguard of popular liberty, and at last, in defiance of even the forms
of law, plunged the people of the Southern States into a war with the
government, which, even if successful in securing a separation, could
only have been the beginning of woes, as their plans would develop.
But notwithstanding the heinousness of the accomplished crime, not a man
was punished. It is doubtful whether popular opinion would have approved
the punishment of even the arch-traitor, Jeff Davis. The common
sentiment was expressed by the oft-repeated verdict: "Enough of blood
has been shed." Whether this was wise or not it is vain to inquire.
Perhaps the future will vindicate the wisdom of the generous course of
the government. Thus far it has seemed like folly. The South has shown a
persistent vindictiveness unequaled in the history of any people, a
cruelty toward the helpless victims of their hate that is shameful to
the last degree. The cowardly assassination of political opponents, the
brutal murder of black men, women, and children, has been defended
openly or covertly by pulpit, press, and platform. If any disapprove,
their voice is not heard in condemnation of the wrong.
This may have resulted partly from the fact that many of the people of
the North, notably many so-called statesmen, ignored common sense and
gave way to gush and sentiment. There is nothing gained in this prosy
world by calling black white. The leaders of the rebellion were guilty
of the horrible crime of _treason_, and we baptized it something else.
The result is manifest to all who are not willfully and wickedly blind
to the facts.
Yet it is the part of duty to hope for the speedy coming of an era of
calmer judgment, of real and healthy patriotism, when every American
citizen will claim our whole land as his _country_.