Part 8

I suppose very few of the people of the north ever had anything like a correct idea of the magnitude of the work undertaken by General Sherman in the campaign of Atlanta. The distance from Louisville to Nashville is stated to be one hundred and eighty-five miles, and from Nashville to Chattanooga it is said to be one hundred and fifty-one miles, and from Nashville to Bridgeport on the Tennessee river, two hundred and eleven miles. This long line of railway from Louisville to Chattanooga, and from Nashville to Bridgeport, Ala., five hundred and forty-seven miles, had to be guarded by military force every mile. For it must be remembered that while the state of Kentucky never went out of the Union and was ostensibly a loyal state, nevertheless, it required more soldiers to look after its disloyal citizens than she furnished to the cause of the Union, not for one moment forgetting that the state of Kentucky furnished some as brave and loyal soldiers as ever sprung a rammer and some as valiant officers as ever drew a saber. Notwithstanding, she had a large population in the aggregate that engaged in that disreputable kind of warfare known as _bushwhacking_, and very many that did not were ever ready to furnish aid and comfort to our enemy. Again, no portion of Tennessee, save east Tennessee, laid any claim to anything but intense love of the southern confederacy. Blockhouses had to be constructed every few miles of this route and a vast number of soldiers employed in keeping open this line of communications. Nashville was the grand base of supplies, where had been accumulated for many months all kinds of army stores, and from this base General Sherman had to draw supplies of rations, ammunition, and clothing for his campaign in Georgia; while the route from Nashville to Louisville must be kept open to renew the supplies at the base, as well as to send the sick and wounded to the northern hospitals.

It is almost needless for me to state before this intelligent audience that the genius of General Sherman was entirely equal to the emergency. And while the oddities and comical features of great men will usually be better remembered than any others, those of us that participated in that memorable campaign will remember well that no precautionary matter was overlooked by the ever watchful general. If what he really meant by "light marching order" was so difficult to understand that a cavalryman construed it to mean "necktie and a pair of spurs," he was no less exacting of himself and staff and many a night on this campaign he bivouacked as would a picket on an outpost. The thoroughness of his preparation was the sequel of his success. Knowing very well that overrunning rebel territory did not make loyal citizens of its inhabitants, he took the precaution to have his engineers make drawings of every wooden bridge between Louisville and Chattanooga, and between Nashville and Bridgeport. Nor was this all. He had his corps of mechanics construct duplicate bridges for the entire line south of Nashville. He was not satisfied only with his precautions to guard and care for his line of communications to his base of supplies, but he in some manner procured plans of the bridges from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and had bridges constructed and loaded on flat cars ready for use at any time when wanted. It was perfectly astounding the perfect order and dispatch with which he reconstructed the railroads as his campaign progressed, and with such celerity did his engineer corps perform its duty that after the bridge was burned by the rebel rear guards the same would be rebuilt, and the screams of the locomotive would mingle with the rattle of the musketry of the skirmishers just across the river, always reminding us that Uncle Billy's railroad was in good working order and that our "cracker line" was secure. But the vigilance of his preparation was not satisfied with being able to keep up his railroad lines—he had the finest pontoon corps that was ever organized.

Each man was drilled in the movements necessary to put down a pontoon bridge or remove one from the water and replace the same on the wagons as efficiently as an infantryman in the manual of arms or a cannoneer in the handling of a fieldpiece. It was a sight that seemed the perfection of celerity to witness his pontoon corps put down a bridge, and every line of march was thoroughly equipped in this particular.

But what I have heretofore described were not all the obstacles in the way of the making of the Atlanta campaign a success. While we were beyond the Tennessee mountains, while we had crossed the Tennessee river, the country from Ringgold to the south bank of the Chattahoochee river was naturally most admirable defensive ground. Every few miles were high ridges and small mountain ranges remarkably well adapted for defensive military positions; added to this the enemy had no rear that required guarding, had no hostile population to watch and distrust, had the most accurate information as to streams and roads, had swarms of volunteer spies to inform him of our every movement, and finally, had an army of slaves to do his intrenching ready to his hand and use when he was ready to fall back to a new position. This, all this, and more than I have time to describe, must be considered if we would thoroughly comprehend the military magnitude of the Atlanta campaign.

When General Sherman was ready to commence the forward movement, there must have been assembled from Chattanooga to Ringgold between eighty and one hundred thousand men, and on the third day of May, 1864, just as the magnolias were beginning to open their fragrant blossoms to the south wind, and the mocking birds were beginning to make the woods vocal with their songs, our division struck tents and commenced the march southward, and the evening of the fourth found us two and one-half miles from Ringgold confronting the enemy's pickets. From this time until the ninth we made short marches southward, skirmishing with the rebels each day. On the ninth our brigade was composed of the 124th O. V. I., the 41st O. V. I. the 93d O. V. I., the 9th I. V. I., and the 6th Ky. V. I. The brigade was commanded by General William B. Hazen and we had moved as far toward Dalton as a position known locally as Buzzard's Roost, a pass in the White Oak mountains. Here we found the rebels in position, the pass strongly fortified and commanded by a number of heavy guns.

At this position our brigade had an order to charge the mountain at the left of the pass, which order was executed, and we came within two hundred yards of the top of the mountain, where we found it broken off into palisades thirty feet in height. These palisades we had no means of ascending and so the charge ended. Our regiment lost three men killed and ten wounded. This movement was afterwards explained as a demonstration to deceive the enemy, but some of us will always think that we were the ones that were deceived. There was heavy firing on the right of the pass and in the direction of Snake Creek Gap, where a portion of Hooker's Corps fought a severe battle, the 29th O. V. I. losing very heavily. While in this position (Buzzard's Roost) we were terribly annoyed by sharpshooters posted above the palisades, the bugler of the 93d being killed.

All things considered, this position was properly named, and had Dore been there he could, without doubt, within the wilds of that mountain, have found some new illustrations for Dante's Inferno.

Early in the morning of the 13th we found the rebels had abandoned their position, and a party of us, while waiting for orders to move, managed to climb to the top of the mountain. Here we had a splendid view of the scenery of northern Georgia. Away to the north we could see old Lookout towering up, while beyond we could distinctly trace Waldron's and other ridges of the Cumberlands. To the south and west one range of hills after another, with an occasional mountain, as far as the eye could reach, showing us that our way was one of difficulty as well as danger.

About two p. m. we fell into line, marched into and through the pass, and had time to examine the strength of the abandoned rebel works. These works were evidently constructed with the hope that our commander would undertake to force the pass. That afternoon we marched through Dalton, a small village situated near an unbroken forest of pine, a kind from which the inhabitants make turpentine. The country seemed very poor, and from what we could see of the inhabitants we were forced to come to the same conclusion as to them.

The next day, May 14th, we struck the enemy in position at Resaca, and we immediately charged and drove him inside of his works, while our brigade occupied the line of a ridge running from near an angle of the rebel works and within a stone's throw of them. In this charge our young Colonel Payne, then in command of the regiment, just having returned recovered from a very dangerous wound received at Chickamauga that nearly cost him his life, showed consummate bravery, riding his horse in the charge across an open field in a perfect storm of bullets.

It was nearly dusk when we came into position, and before we took the ridge that finally formed our line, had some severe fighting. We had the opportunity of seeing a counter charge against General Willich's brigade on our right. The rebels came at Willich in fine shape, just as he was coming into position, but it seemed they had no real good appetite for an open field fight and got back into their works in the order of "every one for himself." That night we threw up intrenchments on this line and the next morning the enemy still confronted us.

We had orders early in the day that we should be required to charge the enemy's position in our front. In our immediate front there is a deep ravine, and the rebel works ran across this at right angles to our line. Whenever we charged from our works our right flank was exposed to the fire from the rebel intrenchments. At about two p. m. the charge was ordered and our line moved out over our intrenchments. No sooner was it exposed to the flank fire from the enemy behind the works than it went to pieces. Most of the men got back in as good shape as did the rebels that charged on Willich. Some of our regiment got into a position where they could not return with any safety, and stayed out and came in under the cover of darkness. Later in the afternoon the 20th Corps made two or three attempts to break the rebel line, but each time failing, and when the morning of the sixteenth dawned the enemy had abandoned his works and put the little river called Coosa between himself and us.

What good results the battle of Resaca may have had on the campaign I cannot say, but it is certain the enemy was forced back by some movement made by General Sherman on his flanks that would compel him to fight outside of his works. We took a number of prisoners at this position, and our regiment lost quite severely. We marched through the town and found it all knocked into splinters by the shelling it had suffered during the two days' battle. We crossed the river and marched about five miles to the southward that night.

The experience of one day did not vary much from that of another. The seventeenth we marched through a county town called Calhoun, county seat of Gordon county. It was march and skirmish every day. This is a better country than any other we had seen in northern Georgia, but desolation was written all over it after we passed. At almost every plantation we came to the rebels made a stand and the mansion house a fortress from which to fire at our skirmishers, and when we drove them out the house almost invariably took fire, and at all times of day and night the heavens were lurid with the flames of rebel homes. The country from Resaca to the Etowah river was the most absolutely desolated of any that we ever left behind us.

Between Cartersville and Adairsville I picked up a muster roll of a company of an Alabama regiment that had written thereon eighty-four names. Until I found this roll I was not aware the Roman Catholic church was so strong in the south. The four commissioned officers signed the roll by their signatures, but the enlisted men each _put the sign of the cross_ in the place of the signature. On this march one of the boys found a copy of the debates of the Georgia convention, held in the winter of 1860-61, at which the state resolved to go out of the Union.

It contained the speech of Alexander H. Stevens, made in the convention, in which he warned the delegates of the deluge of blood and fire that would be poured down on their fair state by the invading armies of the north. It seemed almost prophetic to us who read this speech in the light of those blazing southern homes, and it also seemed that we were the ones he saw in his prophetic vision. Of course, all the prophetic power he had was the keen intellectual force he possessed, and whether he believed his own prophesies or not, he was afterward chosen vice president of the confederate states and served as such during the life of the rebellion. This book was carried along for days, hoping to save it as a relic of this memorable campaign, but the time comes in the experience of every soldier when a pocketknife seems a burden, and this book, containing all the venom of the southern fire-eaters, couched in language not only learned and chaste in style, but eloquent in diction, had to be thrown away. Stevens, alone, tried to stem the tide of secession, "but it was the voice of a drowning man in the midst of the breakers."

With marching and skirmishing every day the time wore away, and May 23d found us on the north bank of the Etowah, a fine river that comes down from northeastern Georgia, the valley of which seemed very fertile and productive. This river we crossed on one of Sherman's lightning bridges and struck out over what is known, locally, as the burnt hickory district, across the ridges of the Allatoona mountains in the direction of Dallas. Here Hooker's Corps had a heavy battle, but our corps was not engaged.

The next position taken by the enemy was known as Dallas, though the battles along the position were known by different names. I should say before passing that we were now in what (before the discovery of gold in California) was known as the gold region of Georgia. Our boys brought in from time to time, while in this position, some beautiful specimens of gold bearing and crystallized quartz, but I suppose they had to be thrown away to lighten the burden of the soldier when the time comes that one has to give thought and close attention to be able to put one leg before the other. This seems hardly probable to my young friends here to-day, so full of health and activity, but how many times have we heard the dear boys say, "Captain, _I cannot take another step to save my life_." Often we would pull out of the road and go into camp near some clear mountain stream, and you would see the boys pulling off their shoes and stockings and holding their blistered feet in the cool water by the half-hour, before making any preparations for supper or sleep. But what pen will ever be able enough, what tongue will be eloquent enough, to portray the trials and sufferings of the march and battlefield, to say nothing of sickness, death and wounds.

May 26th our corps found the enemy in position at what was known as Dallas. That night the rebels attacked General Logan's Corps and were badly repulsed. This was the only serious night attack I ever knew in all my army experience. All have known more or less firing at night, but this was the first and only charging column that I ever knew to be sent off at night. There seems to be too much uncertainty about it to favor nocturnal battles.

Early the twenty-seventh we were on the move, my company on the skirmish line. About ten o'clock we heard that our beloved major, James B. Hampson, who was on staff duty with General Wood, commanding division, was killed. This was very sad news, indeed, as the major was idolized by the regiment, and we all recognized the fact that he had done so much to make soldiers of us. He was one of the most intelligent, soldierly and brave officers in the 4th Army Corps. One thing was a little strange, the major always insisted that he would be killed in the service. Early in the war the major was a member of the Cleveland Grays, and belonged to that splendid organization for many years before. He was, without doubt, the best drilled man in the 3d Division.

It seemed to be the object of General Sherman to put the 4th Corps in on the left, find the right flank of the enemy, "catch it in air," if possible, bring on a general engagement, destroy the rebel army, and thereby end the campaign. It was the fortune of Company B, which I commanded, to be ordered to the skirmish line, with other portions of the brigade, and which line in front of our division was in command of Major Williston, of the 41st O. V. I. Very many times that day we moved to the front, but always found the enemy in very strong works, and then we would withdraw and move by the left flank still further to the left. Late in the afternoon we came near the Pumpkinvine creek, and found the rebels without works. This fact was immediately reported to division headquarters. We drove the rebel skirmish line back on his line of battle. Colonel Payne sent me an order to force the skirmish line well to the front, and word was sent back that we were fighting the main line of the enemy, not one hundred feet away. The rebel line was on the top of a ridge that runs along the valley of the creek, and is naturally a very strong position. Soon the brigade came up and charged the hill, but was unable to go beyond our skirmishers. Later on General Howard put in General Wm. H. Gibson's brigade, the general leading the charge on foot. Never did I see men show more courage than did Gibson's brigade in this charge, but all was unavailing. The rebels reinforced their line with General Pat. Cleburne's division, and thereby far outnumbered the men we had engaged in the action. Had an entire division been put in between our left and Pumpkinvine creek mill pond, early in the afternoon, I believe the result would have been different. As it was a brigade was fought at a time, on a very short line where the hill was steepest, and the enemy's position the most unassailable. The result was that our brigade was the worst cut up of all the battles in which we were engaged. We fought in this position until dark, and then what was left of the two brigades, that had been put into this slaughter pen, withdrew to the other side of the valley. I have said that my company was on the skirmish line and opened the battle, and fought with the main line when the same came up. About four o'clock in the afternoon I went over to the left of the line to see how the battle was progressing in that quarter, and met Lieutenant Stedman where an old road comes winding down the hill. I made some inquiry as to how the boys were getting on, and he told me Adam Waters had been killed. Adam Waters was one of the best men of our company. He also informed me that a great many others of the company and regiment were badly wounded. He said: "Captain, we can hold this position until reinforcements come up, can we not?" I replied, "I think so, but what we want is to carry this hill." I was facing up the hill, and he stood with his face toward me, and so near that I could have laid my hand on his shoulder. All at once a great stream of blood spouted from his left breast. He gave me one look, as much as to say "my time has come," and sank in my arms, dead. I moved his body out of the road, and folded his arms across his breast. I took his watch and memorandum book, and laid his new and beautiful saber on his body, marked the tree under which he laid with my knife, so I could find the spot again, and amid the thunders of battle I left him reposing on the loving breast of mother earth, while sadly I left for another part of the field. There on that lone hillside was sacrificed one of the very few absolutely brave men I ever knew. I moved over to the right of the line, and there I saw Captain John Irving, sitting up, his body reclining against the body of a small sapling, smoking his pipe, his face as white as the driven snow. I said: "Captain are you wounded?" "Yes, it is all day with me," he replied. I asked him where he was wounded, he pointed to his right groin. I learned from him that Lieutenant Colonel Pickands and Captain Wm. Wilson were also wounded. Captain John Irving died at the hospital at Chattanooga some weeks afterward. I think the 124th O. V. I. never had a line officer that was held in higher respect, for his great bravery, soldierly conduct, as well as social qualities, than Captain John Irving.

It was now quite dark, and the firing had ceased all along the line. The few men that came out of the battle together gathered around Colonel Payne. He was all alone. His gallant major had been killed early in the day, and his lieutenant colonel had been dangerously wounded. Of course, we had hopes that many more would come in during the night, as we were withdrawn from the field in squads, and without any word of command that all could hear, and the men were coming in all night.