Part 7

The most untutored of those who had watched the varying fortunes of the field could see that if Lee’s right had been attacked while McClellan was thus hammering on his left, either his right or left must have yielded. We had seen troops moving from the one flank to reinforce the other, until it seemed as if none could remain to hold the right. From officers about the headquarters we knew that McClellan, in person, had the night before advanced the division of Burnside’s corps close to the bridge, and that he had told that general to reconnoitre carefully, in readiness for attacking in the morning. We knew that at six o’clock he had been ordered to form his troops for the assault upon the bridge, and that at eight o’clock orders had been sent to carry the bridge, gain the heights, and move upon Sharpsburg.

General McClellan himself looked not more anxiously for movement on the left, than did we who saw the gallant fighting of the right; but five hours had passed before the capture of the bridge by the twin 51sts of New York and Pennsylvania, and since then two more of those priceless hours had passed away. Oh! if Sheridan or our Griffin could but have been commanding there.

The last peremptory order to advance and “not to stop for loss of life” produced the wished-for movement, but it was too late and too hesitating to accomplish great results.

When, at last, the heights were gained, the division of A. P. Hill had arrived to reinforce the enemy, who could also spare something from in front of our now-weakened right.

Burnside’s men fought well--gave only slowly back, and that not far. Six battalions of regulars from our corps moved to the front, joining the right of Burnside’s corps to the left of Sumner’s, and leaving our (Morell’s) division, in the rear of the advanced line, the only reserve force of McClellan’s army. One brigade was sent to the left to strengthen Burnside, and at five P. M., our own, the last, was marched toward the right, but the declining sun already showed that the contest for the day must soon be ended. Just as it reached the horizon there was one roaring _feu d’enfer_ along both lines, and almost of a sudden the firing ceased, and the battle of the Antietam had filled its page in history. It was an important victory. By it Washington, Maryland, and Pennsylvania were relieved from menace and the country for a time was grateful.

Just as it appeared to the looker-on the battle of Antietam has been described. What happened, before our eyes has been told, without digressions, and the digressions may now be added.

The battle-field was all day long bathed in sunshine; hardly one cloud appeared to throw even a passing shadow over the fair autumnal landscape, of which the background was made up of shadowed tracts of woodland, and into which were introduced blocks of rough pasture, lawn-like vistas, rolling fields of corn ready for the harvest, with just enough of distant spire and nearer farmstead to add a look of human comfort to the natural beauty of the scene. Although the foreground and the middle distance of this picture were occupied by the various combatants--killing and maiming--wounded and dying--there was present to our sight no blemish of horror. We saw no ghastly wounds, no streams of flowing gore; we heard no groans nor sighs nor oaths of the struggle, and rarely did the sound even of southern yells or northern cheers penetrate the massive roar of ordnance to reach our ears; and yet before our eyes was fought a battle in which four thousand men were slain, and fifteen thousand more were disabled by savage wounds.

So entirely were the sadder sights of bloody war excluded from our minds, that when two men of our Regiment were badly wounded by the accidental discharge of a falling rifle, the incident created almost as much excitement as one like it might have done at a muster of militia here at home.

It must not be imagined that any one of us stood throughout that equinoctial day gazing upon the sunlit scene beyond the Antietam, for in time even the terrible events of battle fall tamely upon eye and ear. In the long pauses between the rounds of infantry fighting we sat down upon the green sward and ate our lunch, or strolled away to talk with the staff officers about the headquarters, or over to one of our other brigades to discuss the incidents of the action, or to hear or tell the news of its latest casualties.

The rank and file who had not the same liberty to stray away, and who, screened from the field by the knoll on which our batteries were planted, saw little or nothing of the fight--passed the time in chat with laugh and story, as they stood, or sat, or laid, keeping in some sort the form of the massed column which was more distinctly marked by lines of rifles in the stack. Every man of them knew that at any moment he might be called to be reaper or grain in the harvest of death so near at hand; but men cannot keep themselves strained up to the pitch of heroic thought or wearing anxiety, and so within the line of battle our men joked and laughed and talked and ate, or even slept in the warm sunshine.

No heartier laugh ever rewarded Irish wit than that which shook our sides when Guiney, the handsome Colonel of the Massachusetts 9th, bedecking himself in the gorgeous apparel of a brilliant sash, was reminded that it would make him a capital mark for the enemy’s sharp-shooters, and replied, “and wouldn’t you have me a handsome corpse?”

Early in the day, as soon as we were in position in rear of the batteries, some of our mounted officers naturally desiring to get a correct idea of the lay of the land and the order of the battle, rode at a foot pace to the summit of the knoll in front, and from their saddles were quietly examining the position of affairs through field-glasses, and pointing hither and yon as they conversed, when the chief of some rebel battery, possibly suspecting them to be big generals and high functionaries, began from two guns some practice with round shot, using the mounted officers for the bull’s-eye of the target. In their innocence they assumed that this sort of thing was a matter of course on such occasions, and for a time they went on with their observations.

It was not long however before the aim became more accurate, and our officers suddenly became aware of the scared looks of the German gunners, who, watching for the smoke of the rebel guns, dodged behind the trail of their own pieces until the shot had passed by, and presently a sergeant ventured to suggest that the gentlemen were drawing the fire on the battery, and to prefer the request that they would send away the horses and pursue their study of the field dismounted, which not unwillingly they did.

Not far from mid-day, in an interval of comparative quiet along the lines, most of us stretched at full length basking in the sun and waiting for “what next?” enjoyed a beautiful sight in the endeavor of the enemy to shell our division.

As we were hidden from his view no direct shot could reach us, and he seemed to have calculated that by exploding his shells high in the air, the fragments could be dropped among our ranks. What became of the fragments we did not know, hardly one of them fell near us, none of them did us injury; but we watched for the shells with interest, and were sorry when they came no more. Gazing up into the clear blue sky there would from time to time suddenly appear a little cloudlet, which unfolding itself drifted lazily away, and soon melted in the air. Each of these cloudlets was the smoke from an exploding shell, the rapid flight of which gave no other evidence of its existence to the eye, and all sound was lost in the general tumult. Each seemingly miraculous appearance of the cloudlet was hailed with admiration, and we were quite ready to enjoy the entertainment as long as our friend the enemy chose to supply it, and were inclined to be gruff with him when it stopped.

While the divisions of Generals Richardson and French were advancing on the Confederate centre, a gun from one of Porter’s horse batteries was run out quite a distance to the left, where, from a little swell of land, entirely unsupported, it opened upon the rebel infantry. The rake upon the enemy’s line was so complete that after the first few shots we could see them breaking; but the position was untenable and after the gun had been discharged perhaps a dozen times, the enemy got two guns to bear upon it, whereupon our gun was hastily limbered up and went scampering back to cover as fast as four horses could run with it, and as it went rebel shots could be seen striking up the dust all about its track, as the stones strike about an escaping dog when boys are pelting him.

When such an incident occurred we could hardly refrain from cheers. And when--as was once or twice the case--we could see some movement of the enemy against our lines which was unseen to those it menaced, it was almost irresistible to cry out a warning, and several times shells from the batteries of our division gave to the Union troops the first warning of a threatening movement.

Twenty-five days after the battle our Company C on detached service encamped for a night on the plateau, the summit of the heights which were won by Burnside’s charge, and Captain Fuller observing that the line of battle could even then be traced by the cartridge papers which lay in winrows on the ground, wondered that troops which had so gallantly charged up the steep ascent should have halted in this place long enough to have used so many cartridges.

On the 18th of September, Porter’s corps relieved Burnside’s at the lower bridge, and then we saw only too many of the woful sights which belong to battle, and saw them without that halo of excitement which in the midst of the contest diminishes their horror.

On the 19th, at dawn, we were in expectation of immediate participation in a second battle, but the enemy had retreated. In the pursuit Porter led the way. After passing through the town of Sharpsburg, the artillery occupied the roadway, the infantry moving along the fields on either side. At each rise of the land, a few pieces dashed to the summit and shelled the nearer woods, the infantry forming in the hollow in the rear, and so we felt our way a mile or two down to the Potomac. The rear guard of the enemy had just crossed the river, and General Griffin with parts of two brigades followed closely, capturing some prisoners and much property, among which were the very guns that were lost on the Peninsula from the battery he then commanded.

Returning, he reported the enemy as in full flight, and on the 20th Porter prepared to give immediate chase. A part of one of his divisions had crossed the ford and gained the bluffs on the right bank. Our own brigade was on the high lands of the other bank, when, looking across we saw the woods swarm out with rebel infantry rushing upon our little force. A sharp cannonade checked them and covered the return of nearly all our regiments, but the 108th Pennsylvania was cut off from the road to the river crossing, and forced to retire up a rising ground, terminating at the river in a high bluff, from which the only escape was to scramble down the steep cliff and thus to gain the ford.

The men poured like a cataract over the edge and down the declivity, and so long as they stayed at its immediate base they were tolerably safe, but their assailants soon gained the edge of the bluff and lying flat, could pick off any who attempted to cross to the Maryland side, and many were killed or wounded and drowned before our eyes.

Our brigade was formed near to the ford; sharp-shooters were placed along the river bank, and the artillery rattled solid shot upon the summit of the bluff. After a time the Pennsylvanians began to run the gauntlet of the ford, but it was several hours before all of them had left the other shore.

In this time many gallant acts were performed, but none more daring than that of the Adjutant of the 108th, who, after reaching the Maryland shore, walked back upon the plate of the dam just above the ford, and standing there midway across the river, exposed from head to heels, shouted the directions to his men as to the manner of their escape from their awkward fix.

When this fight at the ford was over it was near nightfall, and the army encamped along the river side, the pickets of each army occupying its own bank, and for weeks it was all quiet on the Potomac.

VII.

_AFTER ANTIETAM._

The life of a soldier in war-time is made up of alternating seasons of severe toil and of almost absolute idleness. For a few weeks he will be marched to the utmost limit of endurance--will be set to felling forests--building bridges or roads--constructing defences--and then may follow other weeks when his heaviest occupations are made up of drills, parades, and drawing or eating rations.

Such a time of repose was that which we passed on the banks of the Potomac, near Sharpsburg, guarding the line of the Potomac which for lack of heavy autumnal rains was fordable almost anywhere. Generals, quartermasters and commissaries may have been busy, but it was an idle time for the bulk of the army. Stretching for some fifteen miles along the course of the river, the various corps were encamped in due form, the entire regularity of which could be seen from any neighboring eminence. From some such points one could take into view a landscape brilliant with the colors of autumn made yet brighter by the gleam of the orderly array of white tents, and could see the bounds of each regiment, brigade, or division, as if marked upon a map. At night, before tattoo, the lines of lighted tents would show from a distance, like an army of glow-worms.

To supply the wants of the army of men, another army of wagon trains was kept in constant occupation, and the road was soon covered with fine dust, which rose in clouds when it was stirred by the movements of the trains, or by the horses of mounted officers or men; and as these roads extended everywhere among the camps, we lived all day long in an atmosphere of dirt, which when moved by fresh winds, drove and drifted about to our exceeding discomfort. As the weather grew cooler this was increased by the smoke of the camp-fires, until everybody was habitually clothed in dust, and red about the eyes.

Along the picket lines the men of both armies, having agreed not to fire without previous notice, lolled in the sunshine, chaffed each other over the water, and occasionally traded newspapers even, or union coffee for confederate tobacco.

Once in a while there was a foraging expedition or a reconnoissance across the river. In one of these we captured quite a number of prisoners at Shepardstown, chiefly officers and men absent on leave and visiting their friends in that vicinity. One reconnoissance to Leetown occupied two days, and was followed back right sharply by a strong force of the enemy. We remember particularly the fact that on the advance we found where a long-range shell had exploded among a card party of the enemy’s men, one or two of whom lay dead with the cards still in their hands.

This uneventful life, aided no doubt by prevalent but not serious bilious disorders, developed in our Regiment a general tendency to homesickness and “hypo.” To counteract it several attempts were made to initiate games and athletic exercises among the men, and the officers were requested to set an example to the men by organizing amusements among themselves--but it amounted to nothing, it seemed impossible to induce the men to amuse themselves.

We kept no very careful note of time. One day was pretty much like every other. Sundays were noticeable only for the absence of drills and a little more stupidity. To go home was the height of anybody’s ambition.

Private Callahan, of K Company, sought to be discharged for disability--the disability was beyond question, for he was born with it, and he was told by the Surgeon that he ought not to have accepted the bounty for enlistment; that he “ought to be hung” for doing it, to which somewhat severe criticism the soldier retorted that he “would die first.” It may not be necessary to state that Callahan was Irish. At Fredericksburg he lost a finger and obtained his coveted discharge.

We were so long here that, as the season advanced, we began to construct defences against the weather, and the acting adjutant even dreamed of a log hut, with a real door and real hinges. The only artificer at his command was his negro servant, a man who could admire but could not comprehend long dictionary words. The Adjutant, directing the negro as to the construction of the door frame, told him certain parts were to be perpendicular, others horizontal, and others parallel; but the black man’s face showed no evidence of comprehension, until after a dozen different forms of the same instruction had been resorted to and the master’s patience was exhausted, the idea penetrated the darkened mind of the servant, who turned upon the officer with the pertinent remark, “Why, massa, what you wants is ter have it _true_, ain’t it?”

New orders of architecture were rapidly developed, and the manufacture of furniture became an extensive occupation. It was quite wonderful what results could be obtained in both of these industries by the use of barrels and hard-bread boxes. Of the barrels we made chimneys and chairs; and of the boxes, tables, washstands, cupboards, and the walls and clapboards of our dwellings.

We were really getting to be very comfortable in the latter days of October, 1862, when the orders began to intimate that we would not live always in that neighborhood. First, our Company C was detached for a guard to the reserve artillery, where it served for ten months. Then, on the 30th, the whole army drew out like a great serpent, and moved away down the Potomac to Harper’s Ferry, crossing the river there, then up on the Virginia side, and along the foot hills of the Blue Ridge.

It was lively times again, and the march was rapid--often forced; but the weather was cool and bracing, and the men were glad of the change. From the 2d to the 15th of November we were on the eastern slopes of the Ridge, and Lee’s army in its western valley, racing each for the advantage over the other.

At each gap there was a lively fight for the control of the pass, but we were always ahead, and possession is as many points in war as it is in law. Holding these passes, our movements could be, to a considerable extent, masked from the observation of the enemy, while his were known to our General, whose object was to keep the army of the enemy strung out to the greatest possible length, and at a favorable moment to pounce upon its centre, divide and conquer it.

With the sound of guns almost always in our ears, we raced away through Snickersville, Middlebury, White Plains, and New Baltimore to Warrenton, with little to eat and plenty of exercise. Near White Plains, on the 8th, we marched all day in a snow-storm, and at night, splashed and chilled, bivouacked in a sprout field, making ourselves as comfortable as might be on three or four inches of snow.

Throughout this march the orders were very stringent against straggling and marauding. No allowance was made for transportation of regimental rations except the haversacks of the soldiers, and on the march in cold weather it is a poor (or good) soldier that does not eat three days’ rations in two. Our changes of base left us often very short of supplies, and it was not in the most amiable mood that we came to our nightly camp.

Acting-quartermaster Dana, hungering for fleshpots, was tempted by the sight of a fat turkey on a barn-yard fence. The road was a by-way, and not a soul in sight. Before he could recall the tenor of the orders, he had covered the bird with his revolver, but at that moment General Butterfield, with his staff and escort, following the abrupt turn of the road, came upon the quartermaster in the very act, and scared the bird, which flopped heavily down from the fence and disappeared. To the General’s angry demand for an explanation, Dana quietly replied that he was about to shoot that “buzzard.”

“Buzzard!” roared the General, “that was a turkey, sir.” “Was it, indeed?” replied the innocent officer; “how fortunate, General, that you came as you did, for in two minutes more I should have shot him for a buzzard.” Dana thought that, amid the laughter which succeeded, he heard the General describe him as an idiot, but he was not sufficiently certain about it to warrant charges against the General for unofficer-like language.

The hurried march from Sharpsburg to Warrenton was fruitful in cases of marauding for court-martial trials, but these courts very generally refused to convict, on the ground that the men had been so ill-supplied from our commissariat, that some irregularity was excusable.

One of our sergeants, a butcher by trade, strolling about the woods, came upon a party of men who had captured and killed, and were about cutting up, a rebel pig. Shocked at the unskilful way in which they were operating, our sergeant volunteered his advice and services, which were gratefully accepted. In the midst of the operation the party was surprised by one of the brigade staff, and the non-commissioned officer, being tried by court-martial, was by its sentence reduced to the ranks and deprived of six months’ pay. The story ends sadly, for his mortification from loss of rank, and possibly his anxiety from fear that his family might suffer from the loss of pay, caused him to droop and die.

One of our men, returning from a private foraging expedition laden with a heavy leg of beef, was captured by the provost guard, and, by order of General Griffin, was kept all day “walking post,” with the beef on his shoulder, in front of the headquarters’ tents. As the General passed his beat he would occasionally entertain him with some question as to the price of beef, or the state of the provision trade, and at retreat the man, _minus his beef_, was sent down to his regiment “for proper punishment,” which his commanding officer concluded that he had already received.

Yet another soldier was sent to our headquarters by the Colonel of the Ninth Massachusetts, with the statement that he had been arrested for marauding. Upon cross-examination of the culprit it appeared that he had been captured with a quarter of veal in his possession by the provost guard of the Ninth Regiment. A regimental provost guard was a novelty in the army, but when, on further questioning, it appeared that the offending soldier had been compelled to leave the veal at Colonel Guiney’s quarters, the advantage of such an organization in hungry times to the headquarters’ mess was apparent, and our Colonel at once ordered a provost guard to be detailed from the Thirty-second, with orders to capture marauders and turn over their ill-gotten plunder to his cook. Unhappily, within the next twenty-four hours, some high General, whose larder was growing lean, forbade regimental provost guards in general orders.