Part 25

The 24th was Thanksgiving Day in New England and many a prayer was offered for the men at the front and many expressions of love and recollection were speeded southward for the delectation of absent ones. Nearly thirty tons of turkeys were said to have been sent from the North to the armies, and this vast amount of food, accompanied by all sorts of other meats and luxuries, must have gone far towards furnishing forth at least one good old-fashioned dinner for many thousands of men. As a sort of godsend to the enemy, possibly that they, too, might be thankful, on the 19th, some forty or fifty head of cattle, escaping from our corrals, made for the Confederate works where they were received as enemies, yet later found a thoroughly warm reception. On the 26th, the Ninetieth Pennsylvania, having reached the end of its term of enlistment, started for Philadelphia. It had been in the same division with the Thirty-ninth from the time of our joining the First Corps and, for the larger part of the period, in the same brigade. Its good qualities we had learned to appreciate. An outgrowth of the Second Regiment, Pennsylvania militia, it had served, under Colonel Lyle,[T] in the Three Months' call and, again, for three years. Recruits and re-enlisted men were transferred to the Eleventh Pennsylvania and all that were left of the originals were off for home. Towards the end of the month summaries were prepared of the losses sustained by the Army of the Potomac in the campaign so relentlessly waged and, according to Surgeon Thos. A. McParlin, Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, from May 3rd to October 31st, the number of wounded amounted to 57,496, exclusive of the Eighteenth Corps while serving in this army, and he does not include the Ninth Corps at the Wilderness and at Spottsylvania Court House. According to data prepared by General Warren the killed and wounded in the Fifth Corps, during this same period, amounted to more than eleven thousand. The precautions taken to preserve life, and at the same time offering readiness to receive as well as make attacks, taxed the highest talents and ingenuity of engineers and soldiers. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, were earthworks of the strongest character, though few cared to take the risk of prolonged observations. There were corduroy roads underground and covered ways of heavy trunks of trees under four or five feet of earth to prevent shells from reaching those beneath. Few men cared to be for any considerable time in these safety holes, the monotony and closeness being terrible.

[Sidenote: DEC. 1, '64]

Though the Army of the Potomac is nominally in winter quarters, this in no way prevents changes of location, the organization of raids and a degree of activity hitherto unknown among the veterans of one or more winter's experience, who are carefully watching rebels while, at the same time, keeping a careful reckoning on the time intervening before their muster-out. December comes in with a salute to the effect that it is the last one the Regiment will see in the field. On Thursday, the 1st, General Gregg leads a cavalry raid down the Weldon Railroad, starting before daylight, riding as far as Stony Creek, twenty-two miles below Petersburg, for the sake of destroying whatever stores may be collected there and to destroy also whatever advance may have been made in a proposed railroad connection between Stony Creek, the present terminus of the Weldon Railroad, and the Southside Road through a new track, laid down by way of the Dinwiddie and the Boydton Roads. With considerable adventure, this was successfully done and with a forty mile's ride, not to mention the fighting, to their credit, the expedition was back again at 11 p. m.

The early part of the month saw the return of the Sixth Army Corps from its experiences in the valley, and with the garlands of victory fresh upon it, the corps took its place along the Petersburg line. In July, when the Sixth started for Baltimore and Washington, the Union front extended only a little further than the Jerusalem Plank Road; now it is prolonged to Hatcher's Run, and every foot of the prolongation has cost effort and blood; eight miles of new frontage dearly won. Into this battle line Sheridan's "Foot Cavalry" settles as naturally as though it has been away only a day or two on a casual raid. What is left of Early's force has been back with Lee several weeks. Not satisfied with the cavalry demonstration of the 1st, General Warren is ordered to conduct a more formidable array on the 7th to the same region. The troops, Fifth Corps, Mott's Division of the Second Corps and a division of cavalry under Gregg, above 20,000 in number with twenty-two pieces of artillery, have been massed on both sides of the Jerusalem Road and after a cold night, in the face of a severe rain, are off. On the Nottoway River, they come to where Freeman's Bridge was formerly, twenty miles from Petersburg, and they cross the stream on a pontoon bridge. Next day (8th) the march southward is continued and at Jarratt's Station where the Weldon Railroad crosses the Nottoway, thirty miles from Petersburg, they burn the bridge, two hundred feet long, crossing the river. The railroad track is torn up in the effectual manner characteristic of the times and Thursday night is spent here. Friday (9th) the work of destruction continues down to Bellfield, twelve miles further along. Of course there is skirmishing with the enemy constantly, but he is not here in sufficient force to offer substantial resistance. The troops bivouac for the night at Three Creek, three miles this side of Bellfield. All the time the weather has been wretched, the constant rain rendering the roads almost impassable and, to crown all, this night (Friday) come snow and hail to add to the general discomfort. Saturday (10th) the expedition faces towards Petersburg, burning on the way back the buildings at Sussex Court House in retaliation, so said, for the shooting of some of our stragglers and here the army bivouacs; resuming the backward route the Nottoway was reached in the evening of the 11th and, on the 12th, the old quarters are struck by a very tired body of men; the net results being a march fifty miles long, three railroad bridges destroyed, fifteen miles of railroad track torn up and bent out of shape and a county court house burned.

[Sidenote: DEC. 10, '64]

No mention is made in the official report of the quantity of apple-jack which the curiously inclined Yankees sought and found and, to their own harm, imbibed. The section had not been overrun before, and consequently better stored farm houses were found than the men had been seeing of late and, notwithstanding the rigors of the campaign, possibly on account of them, they made merry with the seductive liquids made from innocent cider. The story was long current that one man, outside of fully three fingers of the booze, and growing correspondingly free with the dignitaries, slapped General Warren familiarly on the back, calling him "The little Corporal," a term which ever afterwards clung to the soldier himself. Canteens of the fiery stuff were carried back to camp for the benefit (?) of those who did not go. Had the weather been more propitious, it is possible that the expedition would have gone on twenty miles further to Weldon, on the Roanoke.

In the foregoing episode, the Thirty-ninth bore its part, having moved back to the rear line on the 5th and, at the start, taking the advance of the infantry. Just before reaching Halifax Road, the 8th, on indications of trouble ahead the Regiment was deployed and sent forward as skirmishers to hold the road. Having established a line of pickets, the Thirty-ninth stood by to guard the road while the main column passed on. Shortly after dark we followed the troops, overtaking them near Jarratt's Station, and there we took a hand in destroying the railroad. On the 9th we had a place at the extreme left of the corps, and picketed the front of the brigade, which was doing its best to make the road a hard one for the rebels to travel. At 6 p. m. we were withdrawn to Cross Roads, above Bellfield, one half going on picket, the other half into camp with the Brigade. In the movement backward, beginning on the 10th, we fetched up the rear and thus enjoyed frequent tilts with the close following cavalry of the enemy who, in spite of our best efforts, managed to capture any who straggled, in the number, our Regiment losing four men. On the 11th, starting before daylight, we crossed the Nottaway at four o'clock in the afternoon and at nine halted for the night. On the 12th, we were back again before Petersburg, having marched twelve miles. Encamping near the Jerusalem Plank Road, we were ordered to build huts for the winter and, following a week's work, we moved into our new quarters where, for about a month, we had almost easy times. At any rate we were not right under the fire of the enemy all of the time. We had to turn out at intervals on account of real or fancied dangers; drill and fatigue duties had their part and there were the regular details for guard and picket. Once we served as guard for a wagon train which went outside for bricks and boards, securing the same from a deserted house some five miles away.

It must be understood that absolute quiet in front of Petersburg was out of the question. The extended works were like a mammoth keyboard for an organ, whose dimensions transcended imagination and, seated thereat, all the gods and goddesses of War played music that rivaled the thunderbolts of Jove, now the low mutterings of distant lightning, anon rising to the fierce reverberations of an equinoxial as when, on the 19th of December, doubly shotted guns told the joy of the Union that Thomas had annihilated Hood at Nashville or, on the 26th, when Mars himself seemed to press those keys in token of the termination of the March to The Sea and that Savannah had fallen. Always catching up the refrain, the unterrified rebels, aided by their own warlike deities, hurled it back upon us, sometimes like an echo, immeasurable augmented, till veritably it seemed that the opposing lines, stretching away beyond human sight, could not have evoked a greater riot of sound had they been exits of Aetna and Stromboli. A topmost gallery seat in this magnificent theatre of war afforded, in the very mildest passages of Freedom's Oratorio, all the sound, melodious or otherwise, that the average human ear could appreciate.

[Sidenote: DEC. 25, '64]

Christmas brought nothing more notable than a beautiful day, which in the midst of a cheerless winter was not unwelcomed, but there were none of the festivities which untold generations have developed as essential features of the coming of the Prince of Peace and, for that matter, what propriety could there be in observing the advent of the Christ Child in an army, yet the world is full of just such anomalies. As December nears its end and dies with the old year, careful observers scan the retrospect, and in the deeds of Grant, Sherman, Thomas and Sheridan, behold the utmost encouragement. Grierson, with his cavalry marching from Tennessee to Louisiana, has discovered the Confederacy to be a "shell with nothing in it." With Grant holding Lee in his relentless clutches at Petersburg, Thomas looking about for the scattered remnants of Hood's Army, Price driven out of Missouri, Sheridan, at the head of his troopers, ready to vault into the saddle, and Sherman turning his face towards Augusta and Charleston, seemingly the "last ditch" is very, very near. Yet, that the enemy is not disposed to yield till forced to do so, on the very last day of the year, when "Happy New Year" is already ready for utterance by millions of happy voices, the Union picket line, in the region of Forts Wadsworth and Howard is surprised by a party of the enemy who charging furiously, yelling and firing rapidly, drive our men back into their main works with hardly a chance to exchange a shot. We lose two killed, three wounded and thirty-five captured, and the Johnnies took back with them the blankets, knapsacks and whatever other belongings they could find. So alert and swift were the rebels, so well had they planned their attack that they were out of range before the men in the forts could return their compliments. So ends the year.

FOOTNOTES:

[N] It is claimed that the body of Colonel Davis was carried from the field by Corp. S. H. Mitchell, "A"; Corp. B. F. Prescott and W. S. Sumner, both of "H"; and Sergt. L. A. Spooner of Company I.

[O] November 14, 1911, when visiting the Robert E. Lee Home for Confederate Veterans in Richmond, John Maxwell, an ex-confederate, whose later days were passing in this congenial harborage, was introduced and requested to tell the Northern visitors how he blew up the Yankees. Nothing loth, the veteran in gray, holding in his hands the works of an alarm clock, told the story of his sneaking into the Union lines and, when opportunity offered, placing his infernal machine, with his time-wheel for explosion properly set, where it would do the most execution and then hastening away. His auditors, so recently from the dedication of a Massachusetts monument on the edge of the Crater, recalling an even greater explosion, were hardly in position to find any great amount of fault with his act, since "Sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander." "Where were you, Johnnie, when the thing went off?" was a natural question from one of the hearers. "Oh, I was two miles away, making the best time possible towards the Confederacy." (Vid. R. R. Serial No. 87. p. 954).

[P] When the rails, thus heated, were grasped at their ends by several stalwart men and carried so that the red hot middle might hit a good-sized tree, the extended iron would be bent almost double. The two ends being somewhat divergent; four rails thus carried and thus applied and symmetrically placed about a tree made a very good Maltese Cross, the badge of the Fifth Corps and other army corps were wont to say when, as at the North Anna, they saw many tokens of this sort, "Well, the Fifth Corps has been here." A. S. R.

[Q] At the last reunion, attended by Sergeant McFeeley, he gave the following version of the day's incident, stating that when the Union batteries began to play on our lines, the commander of the color guard sent him back to stop the firing and in so doing, he ran into the rebel line. At once he tried to hide behind some bushes but a Johnnie got his eye on him and ordered him to come out, which he did. Walking along in the ranks, a prisoner, he saw a reb have a stand of colors and, on account of the rain, they were done up in their case, which he recognized as one that he had mended, and he also knew the staff which had been scarred by battle as belonging, both of them, to the Thirty-ninth. Naturally McFeeley kept as near the colors as possible and their present holder, who was very happy over his proud possession, though he had only picked them out of the rut where Adams had thrown them. When Wheelock's relieving column came charging through, McFeeley stepped up to the rebel and remarked that he guessed he would hold that same flag awhile, thus saving the precious token from gracing some Confederate collection of curios.

[R] Colonel Thomas F. McCoy of Scotch-Irish lineage, was born in Mifflin County, Penn., 1819. Having served seven years in the Militia, President Polk made him a first lieutenant in the Eleventh U. S. Infantry, when the Mexican War began. Participating in the principal battles of that strife, he came home a captain. A lawyer when the Rebellion began, he offered his services to Gov. Curtin and was made deputy quartermaster general of the state. When Col. Thos. A. Zeigle of the One Hundred and Seventh Penn. died July 16, '62, on the vote of the line officers of the Regiment, he was made colonel. He had a part in all of the varied service of the One Hundred and Seventh to the end and went home a Brevet Brig. General. General Warren was particularly warm in his appreciative remarks about the colonel. Going home to Lewistown, Penn., he resumed the practice of law. Marrying May 22d, '73, Miss Margaret E. Ross of Harrisburg, he led the life of respect and responsibility, one of the most prominent citizens of his town, for nearly half a century a ruling elder in the Presbyterian church and died July 20, 1899. His son, Frank R., a West Pointer, an officer in the Tenth U. S. Infantry, was wounded at San Juan, Cuba, and is now a Captain on the General Staff, Washington. Ancestors of the Colonel were in the Colonial Wars, members of Morgan's Riflemen in the Revolution; were in the War of 1812, and through father and son, in every National war since.

[S] Many opinions exist as to what and where the Petersburg Express was. Some even aver that it was a Confederate institution. General H. L. Abbot, in his History of the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery, has the following, "To check an annoying enfilade firing from the left bank of the Appomattox, a thirteen inch sea coast mortar was mounted on a curve of the Railroad track by Company G. This novelty was widely known as the 'Petersburg Express.' The mortar, on a heavy granite foundation, since Sept. 25, 1902, has stood upon the State House grounds, Hartford, as a memorial to the First Heavies."

[T] Peter Lyle, Colonel of the Ninetieth Pennsylvania, Bvt. Brig. General, and for much of the service of the Thirty-ninth in the Fifth Corps, commander of the Brigade, was born in Philadelphia, Christmas Day, 1821. Receiving very little education from the schools, he was apprenticed to the cigar trade while yet a boy. His marked boyish predelection was love for military matters, and he drilled his boyish associates, formed into a company, till they became noted for their proficiency, accomplishing in their juvenile way wonders with their broomstick guns. When only sixteen years of age, during the absence of the officers, he commanded and paraded the City Phalanx. While still a youth he organized an independent company which he commanded until it was taken into the National Guards. In 1846 he succeeded to the command of the company which before the war had increased to a battalion, becoming a regiment in 1860 under the command of Colonel Lyle. His organization had volunteered for service in the Mexican War but, the quota being full, it did not go. At the outbreak of the Rebellion, the Regiment, as the Nineteenth Pennsylvania, volunteered and so served for three months. Reorganized in August, 1861, it was sworn in for three years as the Ninetieth Regiment, still commanded by Colonel Lyle. He never fully recovered from a wound received at Antietam. Subsequent to the war he was elected sheriff in 1867, being a Democrat in politics, serving a single term. Much that he had acquired during his term was absorbed by an agricultural venture in Maryland which, failing finally, he was thrown entirely upon the outcome of carriage making, a business to which he gave immediate attention after the discharge of the Regiment, his associate being his late Adjutant, David P. Weaver. His last public appearance in a military capacity was during the riots of 1877 when, though suffering agonies from bodily ills, he sat his saddle and discharged his duties faithfully. Soon after he declined a re-election to the command of the Regiment and died in Philadelphia, July 17, 1879. His burial was attended with all the honors due a full Brigadier General, his body having lain in state in the armory of his Regiment that he had led so long and so well; it was buried in Ivy Hill Cemetery by the side of his brother, David M. Lyle, the last Chief Engineer of the Philadelphia Volunteer Fire Department. For the foregoing facts we are indebted to Captain P. Lyle Weaver, a son of Adjutant D. P. Weaver, himself a Philadelphia journalist.--A. S. R.

1865.

January, the month of good resolutions and merry greetings, finds the opposing armies in front of Petersburg still grimly plying their guns and wishing for the end of the war. In the campaign from the Rapidan southward to the end of the year, Grant has lost in killed, wounded and captured more men than Lee was reputed to have had under his command when the fight began, yet the line in blue in front of the beleaguered city is just as persistent, just as vigorous as when the siege was started. While the exhaustless resources of the North are indicated by Lincoln's call for a half million more soldiers and follows that with a proposition to draft 300,000 more, Lee is writing the Confederate Secretary of War, "There is nothing within reach of this army to be impressed. The country is swept clear. Our only reliance is upon the railroads. We have but two days' supplies." General B. F. Butler, after the failure of the Fort Fisher attack has been relieved and sent home to Lowell, and General Terry is organizing a new expedition against the great fortification and ere the month is over his success will be heralded the country over. In its snug cabins or huts, the Potomac Army is gaining strength for the signal which will draw the men from their repose and send them forward. The winter is unusually severe, but, well clad and covered, the men in blue wot little of the sufferings of their adversaries in gray who are passing through all of the anguish which their fathers knew at Valley Forge. Of the Fifth Corps it need be said only that it and its many regiments are writing letters home, reading the matter sent them from those same homes, watching the foe and looking toward the end. The end of the month was signalized by the arrival of the so-called Peace Commission, consisting of Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens of the Confederacy and others who, February 3rd, met President Lincoln and Secretary Seward at Fortress Monroe, but, as the President would not enter into any negotiations without assurance of unconditional acknowledgment of perpetual union and the abolition of slavery, which the Confederates were not prepared to grant, nothing came of the meeting.

[Sidenote: JAN. 31, '65]

It is in this same January that Major A. R. Small, in his history of the Sixteenth Maine[U] has the following very pleasant words about the Thirty-ninth, words that the members of the Bay State Regiment thoroughly appreciate and fully reciprocate:

Among the strongest and most lasting attachments formed by the Sixteenth for other troops during its term of service was that for the Thirty-ninth Massachusetts, Colonel Davis commanding. I have no record of the date when it joined the First Brigade, but it was a day which marked an era of progressive good feeling, which ripened into warm, personal attachments. The Regiment was splendidly officered, and under its able commander was an ever present incentive for us to do our very best. We never reached its precision in the manual of arms. We doubt if in this particular qualification it had a superior in the army; certainly it had not an equal in the Corps. Colonel Davis had a quiet way of coming into our hearts and he came to stay.