Читать книгу: «Roster and Statistical Record of Company D, of the Eleventh Regiment Maine Infantry Volunteers», страница 2

The regiment took no part in the second day's fighting, constituting part of the reserve. That night they lay in the edge of a piece of woods. During it certain mules belonging to the Q.M. Department of our army were stampeded, galloping in a body along our line of battle, the rattling of the chains of their harnesses which had not been removed when they were unhitched from the wagons, so resembling the clanking of the scabbards of galloping cavalrymen, that many of the Eleventh, more than will confess it, were sure that the rebel Stuart and his cavalry were upon us. For a few minutes the utmost consternation and confusion prevailed, but the truth was quickly known and quiet restored. Of course no one was really scared, still it is said that some of the Eleventh, and they not all of the rank and file either, displayed an unexpected aptitude for tree climbing during the misconception.

After the battle we had occasion to look over the battle-field, for of course we did not know that our missing were captured, they might be killed or wounded.

It told the same ghastly story of war as that of Williamsburg. Our hastily abandoned camp had been rummaged by the Confederates and the shelter tents and old blankets taken from it to spread on the wet ground as they lay in line of battle. The long line of wet trampled tents and blankets told the exact position the enemy occupied the night of the first day of the battle. The kettles still hung over the charred embers of the extinguished cook fires, the headquarters' tents still stood in their places, the horns of the band still hanging on the limbs of the apple trees they were hanging on when the band took its hasty departure for Augusta. It tooted for us no more. In a day or two our division was placed under command of General Peck and ordered to guard the Railroad Bridge and Bottoms Bridge; Couch's division guarding the fords across the White Oak Swamp. For some days our position was at the bridges, we camping at the end of the Railroad Bridge, just where the Confederate artillery had stood when D and its Federal piece of artillery first opened fire on each other from opposite ends of the bridge. Then came the swift and almost unheralded march of Jackson from the Valley to the south side of the Chickahominy and the Seven Days' Battles. The story of the Battle of Gaines' Mills was brought to us by the seemingly interminable army of the disheartened troops that for hours filed across the Railroad Bridge, without officers or orders, clamoring that all was lost, and that Jackson was moving swiftly towards us, crushing all opposition.

With a well-manned battery, strongly supported, placed on the hill behind us, the Eleventh went down into the swamps of the Chickahominy, remaining there in a long skirmish line for two or three days, expecting every hour to hear the skirmishers of the enemy crashing through the woods of the opposite shore of the Chickahominy, now easily fordable by light troops. But before the momentarily uncertain enemy moved forward McClellan's rapidly laid plans had been fully acted on, our right wing was across the Chickahominy by its various bridges, the bridges were destroyed, and the retreat to the James River was in full operation. As we moved away from the Railroad Bridge, the center spans of which had been destroyed by axemen of the Eleventh the day before, the famous train of cars that our men had loaded with shells and combustibles at Savage Station came tearing down the track, and reaching the bridge took its mighty header.

General "Dick" Taylor, of the Confederates, who was in command of the troops at the other end of the bridge, says of it, while the battle of Savage Station was raging on the afternoon of June 29th, Magruder attacking Sumner, to be beaten off, the din of the distant combat was silenced to his ears by a train approaching from Savage Station, gathering speed as it rushed along, quickly emerging from the forest to show two engines drawing a long string of cars. Reaching the bridge, the engines exploded with a terrible noise, followed in succession by the explosion of the carriages laden with ammunition. Shells burst in all directions, he says, the river was lashed into foam, trees were torn for acres around, and several of his men were wounded.

To this harsh music we moved swiftly away till we had crossed White Oak Swamp Bridge in gathering darkness and reached the high ground beyond it. Here we bivouacked in line of battle, all but the guards sleeping on their arms, while the rear guard came filing across the bridge. In the morning exhausted troops could be seen lying fast asleep everywhere – in the fields, the woods, even in the dusty road itself. But all of our troops were across the swamp, and as fast as the packed condition of the roads to the James would permit, all but those of us to form the rear guard of the day, the divisions of Smith and Richardson and Naglee's Brigade, under command of Franklin, to lay here and hold Jackson himself at bay, were moving slowly towards the next selected position to make a stand – Malvern Hill. That Jackson was on the other side of the bridge we knew, the rattle of the skirmishers' rifles told us that. But just about noon he announced his presence by suddenly opening on us with thirty pieces of artillery.

One moment there was nothing above us but a cloudless summer sky, the next the air was full of shrieking shells, bursting in puffs of white smoke, and showering down a storm of broken iron. It was so startling in its suddenness that it is not strange, as the Second Corps chronicler says, that there was "a scene of dire confusion." And to add to it, the men in charge of a ponton train drawn up by the roadside, waiting for an opportunity to lumber away along it, unhitched their horses, mounted them and fled for the James River.

The confusion lasted but for a minute, and in it the Eleventh had no share. We were lying in the edge of the woods that bordered the great cleared field in which the troops and trains were massed, and perhaps had an advantage in all being wide awake. At any rate we were not a bit demoralized. Scarcely a man started to his feet, all waiting for the word of command. It came quickly, and from the mouth of General Naglee himself, who riding up to us and seeing our immovability while the troops around us were in evident confusion, could not restrain his delight at our coolness, but cried out "Fall in, my Yankee squad," for the Eleventh was few in numbers now. We fell in, and as he proudly led us across the big field to a new position, we stiffened our necks and neither dodged or bowed to the storm of iron beating down upon us. We had made a hit, and we knew it.

Taking up a position behind the rails of a torn-down fence, the Eleventh lay listening to Jackson's cannon and watching Hazzard's battery as it swept the White Oak Swamp Bridge with a storm of grape and cannister that kept even Jackson at bay. The cannoneers fell one by one – were thinned out until the officers not yet killed or wounded dismounted and took their places at the guns. It was whispered that their ammunition was giving out – was most gone – a few rounds more and the last shell would be fired, and then Jackson and his 35,000 men would pour across the bridge and up the heights to learn what sort of stuff we were made of.

But this was not to be. Just as we were gathering ourselves together for the apparently fast coming struggle, there came a yell from the rear, a sound of desperately galloping horses, and with slashing whips Pettits' battery came tearing on at the top of their horses' speed, General Naglee leading them into position. Ours, as did all the regiments massed in the big field, rose and cheered Naglee and the artillerymen as they swept by. Inside of a minute from their first appearance, they were in position, unlimbered, and were sweeping the bridge with grape and cannister.

Away on the left, at Glendale, there was fighting, and hard fighting too. Our men were so hard pressed that Franklin felt obliged to return two brigades to Sedgwick that he had borrowed from him. And our old commander, Colonel Caldwell, who had been with us during the day (now a Brigadier-General and commanding a brigade in Richardson's division), marched away with his brigade too, and rendered effective service in beating the masses of the enemy off.

They attacked at several points in their efforts to break through the lines of our men covering the roads by which our supply, ammunition and artillery trains were retreating to Malvern Hill. Slocum, on the Charles City road, was attacked at half-past one o'clock, but held his position by a sweeping artillery fire. Then, McCall, at Glendale, a point half way to Malvern Hill, was heavily attacked. McCall and many of his men and guns were captured, but the strength of the rebel blow was exhausted in the necessary effort, so that Sumner, whose line had been in the rear of McCall's, letting the broken troops through, opened heavily with artillery and musketry, repulsing all the enemy's efforts to break his line. Later in the day an attempt was made on Porter, stationed at Malvern Hill. He, too, by the aid of the gunboats, maintained his position. As night fell, we prepared to retreat. The abandoned ponton train was set on fire, and by its flaring light we moved back, marching on and on until morning found us in position with our own division at Malvern Hill.

The line of battle stretched around Malvern Hill, which is a point on the James River of perhaps sixty feet in height with a broad cleared top. Our line of defence made a huge semicircle, the flanks on the river and under protection of the gunboats. Our own position was on the right flank, close to the river. But a third of the troops of our army were actually engaged in the battle of July 1st, 1862. It was an artillery battle; the hill was crowned with sixty pieces of artillery, planted to sweep all possible openings by which troops could advance. Magruder and D. H. Hill made determined efforts to withstand their fire but, when supplemented with a rolling infantry fire, no troops could stand it. Night fell with our position undisturbed at any point.

As for me, I slept through most of the uproar; slept the sleep of the thoroughly tired-out. And I understand that all that could of the army did so too, refreshing tired Nature against the hour of need; many of the troops actually engaged waking to do their brief part in repelling an assault, and that done, to lie down in their line of battle to fall asleep again.

When darkness set in the retreat was continued. Troops, batteries and trains moved towards Harrison's Landing all night. Morning broke, the heavens opened, and torrents of rain descended. Our division lay in a covering position to oppose any advance the enemy might make, but he had given up the chase. With our troops already on the James, under cover of our gunboats, he knew it was madness to pursue further. So, the sodden, tired men, the trains of wounded, batteries and wagons floundered unmolested through the mud into Harrison's Landing, and not till all were past us, the last straggling man and wagon, did we of the rear guard move into that haven of rest and safety for the beaten, battered, exhausted Army of the Potomac.

HARRISON'S LANDING

At Harrison's Landing our regiment was encamped on the left of the line, close to the river. There was but one alarm here, that of the morning of August 1, when the enemy ran some light guns to the opposite bank of the James and opened fire on the landing. For about thirty minutes there was a lively exchange of shot and shell between their battery and our gunboats, when the enemy fell back, and troubled us no more.

Here we remained until the middle of August, our life a monotony of picket duty in an open field, baking, sweltering under a hot sun, with only such shelter as kennels made of sticks and wheat straw afforded. In camp, a well shaded one fortunately, we lazily slept the time away, drilling occasionally, but not often, though when General Emory took command of our brigade here, General Naglee going north on leave, he established a series of brigade drills, the chief amusement in which, to the rank and file, was to see the commanders of the different regiments gallop up to the General after each awkward movement to receive the maledictory criticisms of that outraged old cavalry warrior on their evident ignorance of what to him was as familiar as winking. They passed his encomiums along to their line officers on returning to their regiments you may be sure, and the line officers took it out of their "non coms," who cursed the men for their stupidity, who damned the man who invented tactics and themselves for having been such fools as to enlist for soldiers with which officers could play shuttlecock and battledore.

Finally, the preparations for the evacuation of the Landing being completed, we of Keyes' Corps moved away from it the 16th of August. The 17th we crossed the Chickahominy near the mouth of the James, crossing on a ponton bridge of two thousand feet in length, reached Williamsburg the 18th, went into camp about where we did when there in May, marching to Yorktown the 20th.

YORKTOWN

All of the army but two divisions of our corps now took transports to go to the relief of Pope and Burnside, and to fight the battle of Antietam. Two divisions of our corps were left on the Peninsula; Couch's going with the main army. Our brigade took position at Yorktown, and proceeded to strengthen the defences of that place to enable it to resist any attack from the direction of Richmond. The work was soon completed, but we were not troubled by the enemy. Once a raid of Confederate cavalrymen on Williamsburg created a flurry of anticipation, but nothing came of it except an opportunity for General Emory to see the regiments promptly take their previously assigned positions. The General soon after this left us, General Naglee having returned, and it was known that though General Emory had taken command reluctantly, preferring his old command naturally, yet that he left us with characteristic and vigorous asseverations of regret at having to do so. Shortly before his leaving, the so-called "'62 men" joined us. Their recruits were rather looked down on at first by the "veterans" of one campaign, and for a time were kept in open-mouthed admiration by a few true, and many apocryphal, stories of the valor and endurance the story-tellers declared they themselves had so lately displayed. The men of '62 that D received were all good men and true, and added no little to the good fellowship of the company as well as to its strength. Many of them coming from seaboard towns, some of them seafaring men, they brought a new and rather desirable element, a jovial, adventurous one, into the ranks, until now almost entirely made up of plodding farmers.

Two expeditions were fitted out from Yorktown, in both of which D took a part, one to Matthews County and the other to Gloucester Court House. As Captain Maxfield, then a private of Company C, was an active participant in both these movements, and the compiler of these sketches was in neither, Captain Maxfield will tell of what befell the troops of these expeditions.

MATTHEWS COUNTY

Nov. 22, '62. Nine companies of the regiment left camp between 8 and 9 p.m., and embarking on the gunboats Mahaska and Putnam and the tugboat May Queen, proceeded down the York River and up the Chesapeake Bay. They entered the Mob Jack Bay about 8.30 a.m. on the 23d, and proceeded up the East River, where they landed in Matthews County, Va., at 11.30 a.m. The force was divided and sent to different plantations, where they destroyed large quantities of salt and salt works, or salt kettles. The male portion of the community were taken and held as prisoners while we remained. The writer was in the detachment commanded by Captain Libby of Company A, and went to the plantation of Sands Smith. We shall never forget the warlike picture of little Pete Neddo of Company A breaking the big kettles with a sledge hammer, or the poor old negro woman, whose son had run away a few months previous and had accompanied us as one of the guides of the expedition, at sight of the boy. She threw herself on her knees and with hands upraised, exclaimed "Is this Jesus Christ! Is it God Almighty!" Nor could we refrain from expressing the wish that this "cruel war" was over when we made prisoners of the old gentleman and the young men who had come to his house to spend the pleasant Sunday afternoon in the society of his lovely daughters. We returned to the gunboats soon after dark.

At 9 a.m. on the 24th, as we were about getting under way for our return, a farmer came in with a flag of truce, who said a supply train was passing at a short distance and could be easily captured. The force on the Putnam, consisting of Companies A, C and D, was landed, and under command of Captain S. H. Merrill of Company I, ordered to reconnoitre for one hour. We advanced about three miles, which brought us in sight of Matthews Court House, where there appeared to be a small force. After commencing our retreat we found we were pursued by a body of cavalry. Lieutenant F. M. Johnson and Corporal J. F. Keene of Company D, who allowed themselves to be separated from the command, were taken prisoners. We immediately returned to Yorktown, where we arrived about sundown.

No field officer of the Eleventh accompanied this expedition, it being under the command of Major Cunningham of the Fifty-second Pennsylvania Volunteers.

GLOUCESTER COURT HOUSE

Dec. 11, '62. The regiment left camp before sunrise, crossed the York River to Gloucester Point, and in company with the Fifty-second Pennsylvania, Fifty-sixth and One Hundredth New York, and Battery H, First New York Artillery, took up the line of march for Gloucester Court House, where we arrived at 4 p.m. We remained in the vicinity of the Court House, sending out foraging parties in different directions, who captured herds of cattle, sheep, mules and some fine horses. The cavalry, which led the advance from Gloucester Point, advanced to within a few miles of the Rappahannock. The expedition was commanded by General Henry M. Naglee, and was intended as a diversion in rear of the rebel army during the battle of Fredericksburg.

We commenced our retreat just after sunset on the 14th, and arrived in camp at 3.30 a.m. on the 15th, without the loss of a man, bringing our captured herds and the prisoners captured by the cavalry.

One of the incidents of this expedition occurred when a member of the Eleventh attempted to pay for certain articles of food at a house near the Court House. The occupant absolutely refused to accept greenbacks, but one of his comrades perceiving the dilemma, produced a bill on the Bank of Lyon's Kathairon, a patent medicine advertisement, which the lady readily received, supposing it to be genuine Confederate money.

THE DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH

In December we began to hear rumors that our brigade was to take part in an expedition to the further South, and soon active preparations for a movement were going on around us. The sick were sent North, ammunition and other supplies were plentifully provided, transports began to swing at anchor in the bay, and the 26th of the month we of the Eleventh found ourselves sailing away on the old steamer Cahawba in company with the 98th New York, General Naglee and staff, and the brigade band, bound for Morehead City, where we arrived the first day of January, 1863.

We had a stormy passage, especially off Cape Hatteras. Here we saw the original Monitor in tow of the transport steamer Rhode-Island, passing closely enough to them towards night to see the heavy seas washing over the Monitor's low decks, to the evident discomfort of the bare-legged seamen. Before morning the Monitor had gone down, but her crew was saved by the Rhode-Island.

We landed at Morehead City and marched to Carolina City, a few miles away, where we went into camp. The term city as applied to these and other Southern places is usually mighty misleading. For example, Carolina City consists even now of little more than a railroad depot, and Morehead City is but a little larger.

Our brigade remained comfortably encamped at Carolina City for a few weeks, our idea being that we were intended to form part of a force to descend upon Wilmington.

And, when the Eleventh went on board the Cahawba again, this time in company with the 104th Pennsylvania instead of the 98th New York, and put to sea in company with a fleet of transports carrying our new division, we thought that Wilmington was our objective point. General Naglee, now the commander of the division our expedition consisted of, was on board the Cahawba with his staff, as was Colonel Davis, now again in command of our brigade, and his staff. We soon learned that we were bound for Port Royal, S.C., and that to capture Charleston was the object of our expedition.

But though we went on board the Cahawba the 20th day of January, it was not till the afternoon of the 29th that we put to sea. We arrived at Port Royal January 31st, and entering the harbor, found ourselves one of a large and growing fleet of transports and gunboats. The 3d of February we sailed up Port Royal Sound to Beaufort, where we landed that the Cahawba might be cleaned, then reembarked on it the next day and returned to Port Royal. We were not landed again for some days, and the warm Southern sun operating on men as crowded together as we were, without opportunity for exercise and proper cleanliness, was not conducive to good health. Sickness cropped out, ship fever prevailed to an alarming extent, and a number of the Eleventh died before the troops were landed at St. Helena Island, which they were on the 10th of February. Landing, our regiments went into camp, and winter as it was, we found it necessary to cover our tents with an awning of palmetto branches spread on a frame work of crotched uprights and cross sticks.

The health of the men improved rapidly. Their life was rather monotonous – drill, dress parades, reviews by Major-General Hunter and guard mountings taking up the time. The enemy was not near us, the labyrinth of rivers and waterways surrounding the nest of Islands known as Port Royal, enabling the light draught gunboats of the fleet to keep them on the inland, well out of our way.

Captain Stanwood of D had resigned before now, its First Sergeant, Brady, had been promoted to Second Lieutenant of Company G, and Second Lieutenant Butler, of Company H, was made First Lieutenant of D, and commanded the company.

The 4th day of April, the regiment, the 104th Pennsylvania, with General Naglee, Colonel Davis, and their staffs again reembarked on the old Cahawba, and the 5th sailed in a fleet for the North Edisto Inlet. Anchoring in that now crowded roadstead, we waited the success of the fleet's attack on Charleston, when the division was to land and march on that city. But the fleet found the forts guarding Charleston Harbor beyond their weight, so clearly so that as Admiral Ammen puts it, "even the common sailors knew that Charleston could not be taken without a protracted siege." The only thing left for us all to do, was to return to Port Royal, which we did the 10th of April, the old Cahawba leaving the swiftest of the fleet out of sight on the run, even sacrilegiously running by the "Flag Ship" of our transport squadron, and entering Port Royal while that seat of authority was still hull down.

It was our last cruise on the steamer Cahawba. Afflicted as it was with the third plague of Egypt, it had been our home for so many days, had borne us safely over such a stretch of water, in storm and calm, that we had a rough affection for the stout old transport; and for Mr. Davis, her second mate, too. We had heard the command from the wheel-house so often of "Stand by your anchor, Mr. Davis," and the hoarse return of that old mariner, "Ay, ay, Sir," that he seemed part of the ship itself. As the regiment came alongside in a small steamer to go on board the Cahawba, to take a part in this very expedition, and our men saw the head of the rough old sailor peering over the side of the Cahawba at them, what a yell of "Stand by your anchor, Mr. Davis," rang out of five hundred throats. I am sorry to have to state that instead of the orthodox reply to this nautical command, Mr. Davis only growled "There's that damned Eleventh Maine again." The Cahawba steamed up the Sound to Beaufort with us the 11th of April, where the regiment landed and went into camp.

Lieutenant Butler, who had been ill for a day or so, now grew worse rapidly. His disease proved to be a malignant fever. He died April 14th. We buried him in the cemetery in Beaufort, with the military honors due his rank. His grave was near that of another young officer, one who had died in the Mexican war, and whose body had been brought home to be buried. I remember that over the young South Carolinian's grave stood a monument representing the trunk of a young palmetto tree, its top broken off. Where Butler is buried I do not know, at his old home, I hope; and if he sleeps under the marble representation of a young, prematurely splintered pine tree, it is fitting. Young, handsome, intelligent, respected and admired by his men, cut down at his post in his years of high promise, wherever his grave is, it is that of a true son of our old Pine Tree State.

Our sojourn at Beaufort was a pleasant one. The town, though now sadly neglected, retained all its beauty of semi-tropical flowers and plants, and, under a beautiful sky, in an enervating climate, we took lazy comfort in our camp on the bank of the river. Besides a plentiful supply of regular rations, the men of D were here regaled with luscious blackberries. They grew abundantly in the neighborhood, and the negroes were delighted to exchange quantities of them for our broken victuals. We had a big Quartermaster's "fly" pitched for our company and a long table built down the center of the space it covered, with benches fitted on each side of it. And when the table was set for breakfast with bright tin dishes – the men's plates and cups – with a ration of good white bread by each plate that our own Prince Dunifer had baked for us at the post bakery, with hot coffee in the cups, and mess-pans filled with baked beans strewed along it, that table was a sight for a hungry soldier. And at dinner, with boiled beef and rice in place of the beans, it looked appetizing enough, too But at supper, with tea in place of the coffee, and with each plate well filled with ripe blackberries to eat with the white bread, and with dishes of brown army sugar to pass around among the sweet-toothed, it bordered on the luxurious. But where was the soldier that was ever satisfied with his rations? Not in Company D, anyway. Under the leadership of one or two past masters in the art, the men growled at even these rations until the cooks threatened to reduce themselves to the ranks. This would not do. The Articles of War didn't seem to cover the case, providing neither shooting nor hanging for this particular offense. When, lo, some one in authority had a bright thought. It was adopted, the cooks returned to the ranks, and the leaders in the grumbling mutiny, somewhat aghast, found themselves in charge of the cook house. They were told that such excellent critics of cookery must needs be good cooks, but the argument didn't hold good, though seemingly logical, for they proved not to be good cooks; nay, they were the worst ones D ever had. The men tried to swallow their discontent from very shame, but they could not swallow the victuals. The discontent became an uproar, with the result that the old cooks returned to the cook house, and if the men of D grumbled thereafter beyond the wide latitude military custom allows, they took good care to do so, as Corporal Annis used to smoke, with their heads under their blankets.