Part 4

After this charge, in which General Johnson drove Longstreet's line back to and across the river nearly a mile and a half from where we had engaged him, we had time to look after our wounded men. I received permission to go out to the place where we had fought on the skirmish line. Seeing that all the wounded men were carefully removed to the rear, I hastened back to join my company. If I was filled with terror on going into the battle, I was doubly so now. To be lost from one's command in time of action is hard to explain, and a situation for which, among soldiers, there is ever exercised very little charity. I inquired of some wounded men the direction my regiment had taken, and hurrying on, fear lending wings to speed, I halted near a log cabin in a small opening where a six gun battery stood, and to the guns of which the men were attaching long ropes known as prolongs. I soon came upon my company and regiment lying flat on the ground, and evidently waiting orders. I took my position in the company, thankful that the regiment had not been engaged in my absence. In our immediate front all was still. The ground ascended in a gentle elevation, thickly covered with brush but here and there a tree. All at once there arose one of those terrible yells that only a mass of rebels could produce, and on looking to the front, I saw coming down the hill a solid mass of confederate infantry; their stars and bars flaunting gaily, as the color-bearers came dancing on. All at once the right of our line began falling back without firing a shot, until all had commenced retiring to the right of our company. I was chagrined at what seemed an ignoble retreat, leaving the battery I had passed to certain capture. The rebels had began firing, but seemed to fire far above us, as the leaves and small branches of the trees fell thickly about us. As they came nearer, their marksmanship seemed to improve, and several of my men were wounded, among the number was Lieutenant Charles M. Stedman, who, though badly wounded in the shoulder, refused to leave the company until the battle was over. He afterward laid his young life on the altar of his country at the battle of New Hope Church, May 27th, 1864. He was one of the very few _absolutely_ brave men, I ever knew. I turned to watch the advancing rebel hosts and to see what would become of the battery when their six guns opened one after another in rapid succession, and I saw lanes and alleys open in the solid ranks of confederate gray. This was repeated as rapidly as the guns could be worked and never an over-charged thundercloud seemed to strike more rapidly, than that grand old United States battery poured its double-shotted canisters at half distance into the now panic-stricken and flying rebel horde.

A lone battery with no infantry support on its left, with the infantry support on its right, for, to me, some unaccountable reason, retreating without firing a shot, fighting and repelling an entire brigade of confederate infantry. I never saw it repeated. I never heard of its being repeated in all of my experience in the war, thereafter. I don't know what battery it was, I never could find out with any certainty, but better work was never done by any of those brave men that worship their brazen guns more than did ever heathen devotee the molten image he calls his God.

I saw Colonel Beebe of General Hazen's staff after this eventful day, and he informed me that his duties called him over this portion of the field, and it was with difficulty he rode his horse among the dead.

Not thicker do lie the ripened sheaves in the harvest field, where nature has been most generous, than did the confederate dead on that lone hillside.

That night we marched to a new position and went into bivouac in line of battle. The night was cold and frosty, and as we were not permitted to have much fire and had left our knapsacks behind, we suffered from the cold; but "tired nature's sweet restorer" overcame all difficulties, and we lay down and slept among the dead as sweetly as though we had been bidden "good-night" in our own northern homes.

Thus ended the nineteenth day of September, 1863, and something of what I recollect of the campaign of Chattanooga and the first day's battle of Chickamauga.

Sunday morning, September 20th, dawned cold and cheerless on the waiting armies. The line had been reformed in the following order:

The 14th Corps occupied the extreme left, then came our corps, the 21st, with McCook on the right and the Reserve Corps not yet up. All felt that this Sabbath day would decide the fate of the army, as well as determine the result of the campaign, for good or ill, to the cause of the Union. Early in the morning we were ordered to construct such works along our line as the material at hand would admit of, for at that time in the war we had not learned the value of the pick and shovel. It is wonderful what men can do when in extremity, or when their own safety or that of the cause for which they battle, requires the exercise of ingenuity or industry. Soon old logs, fence rails and everything else that could stop a bullet, were being brought to the line. And by eight o'clock a line of works was constructed that, while not any defense against artillery, furnished quite a sufficient protection against small arms. My company was again ordered out as skirmishers into the woods in front of the brigade. We had not been on the line more than an hour when the rebels advanced their line of skirmishers, and the firing began.

My orders were to keep the line well out, and to retire only on the line of battle when the enemy advanced in force. It was soon evident to all that the rebels designed to force the fighting for we could see his charging lines rapidly advancing. We then fell back to our line of log and rail works, and in doing so had to run the gauntlet of the fire of excitable men of our line that could not be controlled.

Once over the works, and in position in the line, we had not long to wait for the onset. The eagerness of the enemy in following the skirmishers soon brought them into rifle range. Our Colonel Payne had been very severely wounded early the day before, and the command of the regiment devolved upon Major James B. Hampson, who afterwards gave his life to his country at Dallas, Ga. With the coolness and bearing of an old veteran he ordered our regiment to hold its fire until the rebels were within close range of our works, then, all at once, we arose and poured a well-aimed volley into their ranks. The 41st O. V. I., directly in our rear and forming a second line, then gave them a volley and their charge was ended. Three times that morning the enemy charged our position, only to be beaten back in disorder and confusion.

About this time occurred that terrible mistake in the battle that caused the panic and rout of a portion of McCook's Corps, and which carried our commanding general out of the fight and back to Chattanooga, leaving General Thomas to fight the battle alone. It was here that General Thomas received the title of the "Rock of Chickamauga;" and it was from this field that General Rosecrans was retired—never to be heard from again during the war.

About eleven o'clock a. m. the confederates commenced a most determined onset on the 14th Corps at our left. It soon became evident that the enemy was gaining ground, as the firing came nearer and nearer, and the left kept falling back until the cannon shot from the enemy cut the limbs from the trees above us, and we expected every moment to hear the order "change front to rear." The corps to our left had fallen back to nearly at right angles with our line, and we could plainly see the wounded men being borne back or slowly straggling to the rear. There are times in the life of almost anyone when the circumstances with which he is surrounded are burned into his memory as though graven with a pen of fire. So on this occasion, although the enemy had been badly beaten in our front, we saw our line of battle momentarily crumbling away on our left. Visions of Libby, Salisbury and Andersonville came before us, and it did seem as though our fate was destruction or captivity. While intensely watching the progress of the battle on our left, all at once we saw the front of a column of men coming on the double-quick out of the woods in our rear. They advance nearly up to our position, they halt, and face to the left. We saw an officer on a white horse ride up to a color bearer. He takes the standard out of his hand, and with the grand old stars and stripes in one hand, his sword in the other, he gallops to the front; the ranks of blue follow fast their intrepid leader. Then was battle on in all the grandeur of its pomp and circumstance. No one single musket could be heard, but as some vast storm that comes sweeping on from the northwest with a roar that is appallingly sublime, mingled the volleys of the contending hosts, while the salvos of the artillery cause the earth to tremble as in the throes of an earthquake. Our line swings back, like a gate on its hinges, to its former position. But where is that glorious spirit that led that gallant charge that has saved us from capture and our army from certain defeat? An orderly is seen leading back the white horse "that carried his master into the fray," but no rider is there. "Wounded, but not mortally" is the word that is passed from lip to lip. And that brave Polish officer, General Turchin, still lives to receive the thanks and honors of his adopted countrymen. This was the same officer that rebelled against the old world tyranny and, in 1848, with Sigel, Willich, Schurz, Austerhause and many others, fought for liberty in the fatherland until fighting was hopeless; and for the liberty they could never win in their country came to ours; but, strange to say, not one of them ever drew his sword in the cause of the slaveholder's rebellion. Very many of them, as some one has truly said, "wrote their naturalization papers in their blood."

About two o'clock p. m. our brigade was relieved from the line where we had fought in the morning, and held in reserve, ready to be taken to any point on the line where our services might be most needed. The enemy, by the mistake that I have referred to before, had driven a portion of McCook's Corps from the field and entirely out of the battle, and had extended its left so far to the rear as to cut us off from a large spring that had furnished us with water the day before. From the time of this calamity in the morning we had no water, and the air was thick with the sulphurous smoke that created an intense thirst. The men were clamoring and insisting that someone should go for water. There was one member of our company, George Benton, that by his kindness of heart, and implicit and cheerful obedience to orders, had won the respect and confidence of his officers and the hearts of his fellow soldiers. In speech, modest and kindly, yet in the battle he had shown himself as brave as the bravest. George came to me loaded down with canteens, and asked permission to go to the rear and try to find water. I, with some emphasis, refused. The men at that set up a clamor, and insisted that they were suffering for want of water. I explained the hazardous nature of the enterprise. I assured them from the firing that our right was well turned, and that anyone going back, alone and unattended, was liable to be killed, wounded, or _captured_, which all dreaded more than death or wounds by reason of the inhuman treatment our soldiers received while in rebel prisons. I said to George, "I am afraid you will never come back." With a smile of determination lighting up that noble young face, he replied, "I will come back, captain, or I will be a dead Benton." I was not quite strong enough for the emergency. I made a mistake. That mistake cost George Benton his life. He never returned. Whether he fell by a stray bullet, in those deep woods and thickets, or whether he was captured and murdered in prison, I know not. The records of Salisbury and Andersonville were searched, after the war, but on none could the name of George Benton be found. After we had fallen back on Chattanooga letters came from his father and sisters, inquiring concerning the fate of son and brother. No one can know with what bitterness I reproached myself for allowing myself to be persuaded against my better judgment; and learning by that sad lesson—no member of company B was ever again reported "missing in action." I saw the father and sisters when we came back from the war, and told them what I had already written them before of the way George was lost; but "hope, like an anchor to the soul, sure and steadfast," would not suffer them to give up their dear boy as lost. They hoped that some day, like a lost mariner, he would come from perhaps captivity and sickness, to gladden their hearts and relieve the suspense that was crushing their lives. But twenty-seven autumns have returned since that brave boy was lost to sight in the smoke that covered that dread field of Chickamauga, but no tidings ever came of that one, who was gladly willing to risk his life to alleviate the sufferings of his comrades, and was permitted to do so by the weakness of his commanding officer.

At about four o'clock p. m. our attention was drawn to the heavy firing on our extreme right, and we conjectured that our Reserve Corps was being brought into action. It proved to be true. General Granger came up and with his corps that had known but little, if anything, of the disasters of the day, charged the enemy with the force and effect of victors.

But it seemed it was not the purpose of General Thomas to contend for the field of battle, and to General Granger's Corps was assigned the duty of covering the retreat of the balance of the army.

It was Wellington (whom his comrades loved to call the "Iron Duke") that said at the battle of Waterloo, "would that sundown or Blücher had come." And never did sundown hang his somber curtain over a more grateful body of men than those that remained of the Army of the Cumberland. Just as the sun began to cast the long shadows to the eastward our brigade was retired to the west for about half a mile, still in order of battle; but any one could discern that a general retreat was to be commenced as soon as the friendly darkness should cover us from the view of the enemy. While in this position we heard cheers from what seemed to be a great body of men, and the rumor was at once out that General Burnside had reinforced us from Knoxville. We answered the cheers as heartily as our tired bodies and depressed spirits would permit, and the sky was ablaze with the rockets that shot up from the direction from which we had heard the cheering. Mendenhall's battery of Rodman guns was at that time just in our front. He ordered his men to load with canister, and then I heard him remark "that is the last round of ammunition this battery has."

Some one out toward the skirmish line heard the order "Ninth Louisiana, forward, double-quick, march," and pretty effectually dispelled the delusion that the cheering and rocket party were our friends under General Burnside. It was now quite dark, and tired, depressed and supperless, we commenced the march that meant that the battlefield, with all its treasures of our dead heroes, was to be abandoned to the tender mercies of an enemy that looked upon us as invaders and destroyers of their rights and liberties. It was, indeed, a sad hour. Two days before we had gone into this conflict with full ranks and high hopes of victory. Now we were "silently stealing away" under cover of the darkness, like dastardly assassins, when, in fact, we were there in the holy cause of liberty for all men, and for the union of the states as against rebellion and treason. We were leaving our beloved dead, uncomposed, unburied, with nothing to mark the spot where they fell, with no place of sepulture, with no requiem, save the soughing of the south wind through the banners of the majestic pines, or the nightly songs of the sweet voiced southern mocking bird.

"We carved not a line, we raised not a stone, But we left them alone in their glory."

We drew away into the defiles of the hills, and the glad sound of the splashing of the horses' hoofs in the little streams that trickled from the hillsides, then the scraping of the tin cups could be heard (the efforts of the boys to get a drink of the muddy hoof-trodden water); but straining it through the teeth, no nectar quaffed by the fabled gods of old ever tasted so refreshing as did that grand beverage of nature to those battle-stained soldiers that night.

Of the route we marched that night I never had the least information; but when the sun arose over the mountains of North Carolina, the twenty- first day of September, it looked down upon the old army in order of battle on the summit of Missionary Ridge. All day we kept this position, but the confederates wanted no more fighting on this occasion, and, you can believe me, _they had my entire sympathies_.

Some have said that both armies retreated from the field of battle, and had our army stayed on the field the night of the twentieth, no confederate army would have confronted it on the morning of the twenty- first. But this story, though I am told it has gone into history, I never believed to be true. In the first place, the confederate general, Bragg, had, when the campaign commenced, an army nearly equal in numbers to our own, with no rear to take care of and guard. Secondly, after he crossed the mountains he was reinforced by General Longstreet's Corps from the army of northern Virginia. And, thirdly, he had at his command (but not called into the battle to any extent) a large force of Georgia state militia.

Then again, the second day of the battle McCook's Corps was largely cut to pieces and destroyed for fighting business. The 14th and 21st Corps were badly cut up in the two days fighting, and at the close of the second day almost destitute of ammunition. And finally, there was the movement of men before sundown to inform that _we_ were abandoning the field. So it never seemed credible that the confederates were retreating the night of the twentieth as well as ourselves.

The night of the twenty-first we fell back and entrenched a position just outside of the then small village of Chattanooga. The victorious confederates occupied the whole extent of Missionary Ridge, and soon appeared in force on the summit of Lookout.

So I have given you, in great weakness and imperfection, some of my recollections of the memorable campaign of Chattanooga and the battle of Chickamauga. I have read no book or history giving an account of the campaign and battle. Being simply an officer in the line my chances for observation were very limited, and very many of my conclusions are, _without doubt, inaccurate_. The plans of a battle, always an interesting feature of history, I have, as a matter of course, been compelled to omit.

But if this unworthy effort has revived patriotic memories in the minds of those of you who can remember the war, or revived the recollections of my old comrades in arms, or given some faint idea to those that have come after us of what was attempted and suffered by those that strove "to keep our flag in the sky" in all those dark years, I have been amply rewarded for the attempt.

Chickamauga was in one sense a battle lost; but by it we won the campaign, and from the ground beyond the mountains and beyond the river that we had crossed, the invincible Sherman led his victorious legions into and through the very vitals of the confederacy.

It was one of those grand struggles between brave men that has marked the progress of liberty and right in all ages; that has cemented us firmly in the bonds of UNITY and FRATERNITY and made us in arms invincible as against the world.[2]

Footnote 2:

First delivered before the River Styx Literary Society, March 12th, 1887.

THE SIEGE OF CHATTANOOGA, THE BATTLE OF LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN, AND THE STORMING OF MISSIONARY RIDGE.

The battle of the nineteenth and twentieth of September, 1863, had resulted in disaster instead of victory. The Army of the Cumberland had been forced to retire, to abandon Missionary Ridge, and to fortify a line running through the outskirts of the village of Chattanooga from Cameron Hill, near the river below to the river above.

The victorious rebels came on and took possession of the entire length of Missionary Ridge, fortifying the same with strong parapets of earth, while one hundred pieces of artillery soon found position on the Ridge from right to left.

General Bragg also took possession of Lookout mountain, and planted some very heavy guns near the summit, just above the palisades. I never knew why those guns did not render our position around Chattanooga entirely untenable, unless it was the poor quality of the guns or lack of ammunition. All the execution that I ever heard of those guns doing was to kill a mule that would have died of starvation later on. Those hundred-pounders that were planted on the summit of Lookout were, for some reason, only fired a few times, and not for weeks prior to the time the siege was raised.

Never in the history of the Army of the Cumberland had the spirit of its officers and men been more depressed. The battle of Chickamauga had not only been fought and lost, but we also lost what was more than losing a battle. We had lost confidence in our commander.

And I think when the order came relieving General Rosecrans and placing General Grant in command of the Army of the Cumberland, there were few regrets expressed, even among those that had theretofore given General Rosecrans the title of "Hero of Stone River." But, in my humble judgment, one thing, and one thing only, saved the Army of the Cumberland. If General Rosecrans had shown himself incompetent to command the army at the battle of Chickamauga, the rebel general, Bragg, was possessed of a stupidity that more than overbalanced the incompetency of Rosecrans.