Part 9

The reports of the battle of Fredericksburg describe occurrences that never happened, movements that were never made, incidents that were impossible. “History” tells how six brigades formed for attack on our right, in column of brigades, with intervals of two hundred paces--where no such formation was possible, and no such space existed. And at least one general (Meagher), in his reports must have depended much upon imagination for the facts so glowingly described.

To the memory now comes a strange jumble of such situations and occurrences as do not appear in the battles of history or of fiction. Of our Regiment separated from the rest of the brigade, getting into such positions that it was equally a matter of wonder that we should ever have gone there, or having gone should ever have escaped alive--of rejoining the division, where, one behind the other and close together in the railroad cut, were three brigades waiting the order for attack.

We recall the terrific accession to the roar of battle with which the enemy welcomed each brigade before us as it left the cover of the cut, and with which at last it welcomed us. We remember the rush across that open field where, in ten minutes, every tenth man was killed or wounded, and where Marshall Davis, carrying the flag, was, for those minutes, the fastest traveller in the line; and the Colonel wondering, calls to mind the fact that he saw men in the midst of the severest fire, stoop to pick the leaves of cabbages as they swept along.

We remember how, coming up with the 62d Pennsylvania of our brigade, their ammunition exhausted and the men lying flat on the earth for protection, our men, proudly disdaining cover, stood every man erect and with steady file-firing kept the rebels down behind the cover of their stone wall, and held the position until nightfall. And it was a pleasant consequence to this that the men of the gallant 62d, who had before been almost foes, were ever after our fast friends.

Night closed upon a bloody field. A battle of which there seems to have been no plan, had been fought with no strategic result. The line of the rebel infantry at the stone wall in our front was precisely where it was in the morning. We were not forty yards from it, shielded only by a slight roll of the land from the fire of their riflemen, and so close to their batteries on the higher land that the guns could not be depressed to bear on us. At night our pickets were within ten yards of the enemy.

Here we passed the night, sleeping, if at all, in the mud, and literally on our arms. Happily for all, and especially for the wounded, the night was warm. In the night our supply of ammunition was replenished, and toward morning orders were received not to recommence the action.

The next day, a bright and beautiful Sunday, there was comparative quiet along the lines, but to prevent the enemy from trees or houses or from vantage spots of higher land bringing to bear upon our line the rifles of their sharp-shooters, required constant watchfulness and an almost constant dropping fire from our side.

Several attempts were made to communicate with us from the town, but every such endeavor drew a withering fire from the enemy. None of us could stand erect without drawing a hail of rifle balls. A single field-piece from the corner of two streets in the city exchanged a few shots over our heads with one of the batteries on the heights, but soon got the worst of it and retired.

Sergeant Spalding, in a printed description of this day, says: “It was impossible for the men in our brigade to obtain water without crossing the plain below us, which was a hazardous thing to attempt to do, as he who ventured was sure to draw the enemy’s fire; nevertheless, it was not an uncommon thing to see a comrade take a lot of canteens and run the gauntlet.” Seldom were they hit, but in a few instances we saw them fall, pierced by the rebel bullet.

“I remember seeing a soldier approaching us from the city, with knapsack on his back and gun on his shoulder. I watched him with special interest as he advanced, knowing that he was liable to be fired upon as soon as he came within range of the enemy’s rifles. He came deliberately along, climbed over the fence, and was coming directly towards where we lay, when crack went a rifle and down went the man--killed, as we supposed, for he lay perfectly still. But not so, he was only playing possum. Doubtless he thought that by feigning to be dead for a few moments he would escape the notice of the enemy. So it proved, for unexpectedly to us, and I doubt not to the man who shot him (as he supposed), he sprang to his feet and reached the cover of the hill before another shot was fired.”

The day wore away and the night came again, and we, relieved by other troops, returned to refresh ourselves by sleeping on the wet sidewalks of one of the city streets.

The next day three lines of infantry were massed in this street, which ran parallel to the river, but the day passed without any renewal of the battle. It was not pleasant, looking down the long street so full of soldiers, to think what might happen if the rebel guns, less than a thousand yards away, should open on the town--but it was none of our business. As it came on to storm at nightfall we took military possession of a block of stores, and the men, for the first time for many months, slept under the cover of a roof. It was a fearfully windy night, and whether it was the wind, or anxiety about the situation, the Colonel could not sleep. His horses were kept in the street conveniently at hand, and once or twice he rode out to the front and heard Captain Martin objurgating the General for his orders to entrench his battery with one pick and one shovel.

About 3 A. M. came an orderly seeking the commander of the brigade, whom nobody had seen for the past two days. The Colonel was inclined to be gruff until he learned that the orders were to move the brigade back over the river; then, indeed, he was sprightly. Declaring himself the ranking officer of the brigade, he receipted for the order and, sending his orders to the other regiments, began to retire the brigade to the easterly bank, and thence ordered the regiments to their old camps at Stoneman’s Switch, where the real brigadier found them soon after dawn.

At 8 A. M. Burnside had withdrawn his entire army and taken up his 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.