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CHAPTER X

Butler s Advance on the South Side – How the Massachusetts Major-General Escaped Hanging – Returning to Grant’s Army – The Fight at Hawes’s Shop – A Dying Confederate’s Last Request – Holding Cold Harbor at all Hazards – Filling the Canteens – Running into the Enemy.

SHERIDAN’S weary troopers appreciated the three-days’ rest given them at Haxall’s phrase, but it expresses the character of the flotilla. Nearly every class of vessel, from the latest improved ironclad down to the slow-going canal boat, ascended the James to Bermuda Hundred, from which base Butler moved his troops in his attack on the rebel fortifications at Drewry’s Bluff.

While we were recuperating in camp, the army of the James was operating against Richmond. A courier came in from Gen. Kautz’s cavalry, then smashing things out beyond Petersburg, bringing encouraging news. Butler had sailed up the river with a fleet of mixed vessels – that may not be a strictly nautical Landing. An opportunity was afforded the recruits who had never been on a raid before to doctor their saddle boils, and rub horse liniment on the contusions they had sustained while being banged around on the march from the Wilderness to the James.

We did not know, at the time, what Butler was trying to accomplish, except the general statement that Grant had ordered him to co-operate with the Army of the Potomac in the advance on Richmond. The intricate details of the plan were altogether too perplexing for worn-out troopers to puzzle their brains with. An outline of what had taken place on the south bank of the river was given out, and as I remember it, the day that we started on our return to Grant’s army, it was generally understood that Butler had been driven back from Drewry’s Bluff into his breastworks at Bermuda Hundred, although we did not hear that he had been “bottled up” till several weeks later.

I did not know at that time that Butler had been declared an outlaw by Jeff Davis, but I suppose the commanding general of the army of the James was aware of the fact. Whether the same had any influence on Butler’s retreat down the river when worsted by Beauregard, I am not prepared to assert. It would be a serious breach of discipline for one of the few surviving privates of the great rebellion to intimate that the Bay State’s favorite major-general turned his back on Richmond, and sought the security of breastworks, with gunboat supports, to escape falling into the hands of the Confederates. And yet I have since discovered that had Butler been captured, he would have been hanged by the neck until he was dead, dead, dead.

Butler, as is well known, had given the Confederacy no end of trouble at New Orleans, when in command down there. He had caused the rebels to understand that the assassination of Union soldiers must be atoned for by the punishment of the assassins.

In “The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government,” by Jeff Davis, an account is published of what the rebel president declared to have been the “murder” of William B. Mumford, a “non-combative” citizen of New Orleans, by Butler’s order. Gen. Lee had written to Gen. Halleck about it, as instructed by Davis, and Halleck refused to receive the letters, because, as he expressed it, they were of an insulting character. Davis continues:

“It appeared that the silence of the Government of the United States, and its maintenance of Butler in high office under its authority, afforded evidence too conclusive that it sanctioned his conduct, and was determined that he should remain unpunished for these crimes. I therefore pronounced and declared the said Butler a felon, deserving capital punishment, and ordered that he be no longer considered and treated as a public enemy of the Confederate States, but as an outlaw and common enemy of mankind; and that, in the event of his capture, the officer in command should cause him to be immediately executed by hanging.”

According to Gen. G. T. Beauregard, who commanded the rebels at Drewry’s Bluff, Gen. Butler’s salvation from summary execution was due to the failure of the Confederate Gen. Whiting, to carry out the instructions given him by Beauregard, for the latter, in an article in “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War,” says:

“Nothing would have prevented Whiting from capturing the entire force of Gen. Butler, had he followed my instructions. We could and should have captured Butler’s entire army.”

I do not know but Beauregard’s expectations included the capture of Sheridan’s cavalry at Haxall’s, and, possibly, Grant’s army, too; but the modest Confederate is silent on this point.

I beg pardon for going outside the lines a little in speaking of Butler’s operations. Whatever may have been that general’s failings – if he had any failings – as a military commander, one thing the survivors of Sheridan’s cavalry corps will never forget: he fed them when they were hungry, and filled their haversacks for the march to rejoin the Army of the Potomac.

We started on the return trip Tuesday evening, May 17. I would have volunteered to be transferred to the navy, had there been a chance to do so. My saddle boils were all ripe, and a few hours’ riding brought matters to a crisis. But I became hardened to it later on, and never again suffered affliction of that character.

Scouting parties were pushed to the front to feel the way, the exact location of Grant’s army being unknown to us. Our horses had recovered from the effects of the fatiguing march, and the troopers were in good spirits. The “new hands” began to feel confidence in themselves, and as they had not shown the white feather thus far, the old veterans were considerate enough to admit that the four new companies had the “makings of a good battalion.”

We crossed the Chickahominy at Jones’s Bridge, and camped in the vicinity of Baltimore crossroads Thursday night. From this place our division and Wilson’s were sent to explore the roads around Cold Harbor. Our movements were not opposed by the Confederates, and we rested our horses on what proved to be, a few days later, one of the bloodiest battlefields of the campaign.

At the old tavern at Cold Harbor we filled our canteens with water, the tavern being dry so far as liquor was concerned. We were only twelve miles from Richmond, yet the rebels were willing to give us full swing so long as we would keep away from their capital.

While the second and third divisions were scouting around Cold Harbor, Custer took his brigade to Hanover, destroyed Confederate stores at that station, and burned several bridges.

In the meantime, Merritt’s men had repaired the railroad bridge over the Pamunkey, and upon our return from Cold Harbor, everything was in readiness for continuing the march to rejoin the Army of the Potomac. Custer’s men reported that Lee’s army was intrenched along the North Anna, and that meant that Grant’s troops were on the opposite side, facing Lee.

Tuesday, May 24, just a week from the day we left the James, we joined the Army of the Potomac near Chesterfield. We had been absent sixteen days. Grant and Meade highly commended Little Phil upon the success of his daring raid, and the doughboys admitted that the cavalry, with Sheridan in command, was able to take care of itself, and could make a march in the enemy’s country without a column of infantry to keep off the rebels. The cavalry corps lost six hundred and twenty-five men and half as many horses on the raid.

The first and second divisions of Sheridan’s cavalry corps led the advance from the line of the North Anna, when the Army of the Potomac executed another left-flank movement, crossing to the south bank of the river the day after our return from the raid around Richmond. The third division, commanded by Wilson, was detached from the corps, and sent to look after the right flank of Grant’s army. Sheridan accompanied the advance, and he was instructed to put out and feel the enemy.

Gregg’s division engaged in a lively brush with the rebels at a place called Hawes’s Shop, May 27. The enemy had us at a great disadvantage, being posted behind breastworks. An infantry brigade with long toms kept the minie balls pinging around our ears, while the sharp reports of carbines, the cheers of our boys as they pushed forward, the rebel yell and the booming of field pieces gave warning to the troops in our rear that the cavalry was at it again.

We ran into the rebels rather unexpectedly, although we knew that they were close at hand. Our advance guard was fired on as the detachment approached a belt of timber skirting the road. In a few minutes our whole division was under fire, and the Johnnies stubbornly contested every inch of ground which they occupied.

While we were closing in on the rebel intrenchments, a young trooper on my right asked me if I had any water. I reached him my canteen. Just as he raised it to his lips a bullet from a rebel musket struck it, knocking it out of the trooper’s hand.

“That’s blasted mean!” he exclaimed.

“Pick up the canteen, maybe the water hasn’t all run out,” I shouted.

“It’s all gone,” he said. The ball had passed through, tearing a big hole in the tin.

“Take a drink from my canteen,” said another trooper, who had witnessed the incident.

“Thank you.” And holding the canteen up above his head, the thirsty soldier shouted: “Now, you miserable gray backs, shoot away; spoil this canteen, will you?”

Whiz! thug! And the second canteen was struck by a musket-ball and ruined.

“I guess I’m not as thirsty as I thought I was,” remarked the young cavalryman, as he declined the offer of another canteen.

A sergeant of a Pennsylvania regiment in the second brigade, was severely wounded in the leg. Two comrades attempted to assist him back behind a tree to the left of the road. The wounded non-commissioned officer was carried on a piece of board, which the troopers held between them, and supported himself by holding on to their shoulders.

Just as they were passing our position in line, a shell struck the board, and stove it into splinters. The sergeant was thrown on one side of the road, and his two comrades on the other. I thought they were dead, but in a few seconds the sergeant raised up on his elbow and called out:

“Jackson, are you killed?”

“No, sir; but I’m unconscious.”

“Where’s Corbet?”

“Here, sir; but I’m unconscious, too. There’s no breath left in me body.”

Then the two troopers lifted their heads and looked cautiously around. They had escaped serious injury, but the sergeant’s other leg was badly shattered. They picked him up and bore him to the rear.

Gen. Gregg fought his division well, and the survivors of the engagement at Hawes’s Shop will bear testimony that the rebels held their ground bravely.

We pressed forward to the breastworks, but were unable to carry the line. The Confederates poured volley after volley into our ranks. Still the troopers, with averted faces, worked their way to the front, securing a position and holding it within pistol range of the enemy. Boys in blue and boys in butternut went down.

The regiment on our right made a sudden dash, and swept back the Confederate line. But our boys were unable to hold the advance position. The Johnnies fired upon them from both flanks, and back they came, slowly and with their faces to the foe, loading and firing as they retreated. They brought in a score or more of prisoners.

“Halloo, Reb! What are you fellows blocking our road for?” shouted a blue-clad trooper to a Confederate sergeant, as the prisoners were hustled to the rear.

“Who’s a-blocking the road, Yank? I’m done. You all gobbled me in a squar fight.”

“Where do you hail from?”

“Ole South Carliney, and if you’ll give me my parole, I’ll go down thar and stay till the wah’s over.”

We were having a lively exchange of leaden compliments, when the boys in charge of our horses – we were fighting on foot – began to cheer, and we knew that help was at hand. In a few minutes we saw Gen. Custer, at the head of his Michigan brigade, coming up the road.

Sheridan had sent Custer to Gregg’s assistance at the request of the latter, who had informed Sheridan that he could drive the rebels from their breastworks with the help of a few more men. Of the closing up of the battle Gen. Gregg says: “Soon Custer reported with his brigade. This he dismounted and formed on a road leading to the front and through the center of my line. In column of platoons, with band playing, he advanced. As arranged, when the head of his column reached my line, all went forward with a tremendous yell, and the contest was of short duration. We went right over the rebels, who resisted with courage and desperation unsurpassed. Our success cost the Second Division two hundred and fifty-six men and officers, killed and wounded. This fight has always been regarded by the Second Division as one of its severest.”

The Confederates left us in possession of the field and the dead and wounded. Inside the earthworks, a little to the left of the road, a young rebel lay dying. A bullet had struck him in the breast, and his life’s blood was flowing from the wound and from his mouth. He was not more than seventeen years old. The dead and dying were thick around the boy, showing that he had fallen where the fight was the hottest.

“I can’t do anything for you, my son,” said a grayhaired Federal surgeon, who had examined his wound.

“Am I dying, Doctor?”

“Yes, my son; the wound is fatal.”

“Can my head be raised?”

“Certainly. Here, boys! bring an overcoat or a blanket.”

The old doctor’s voice was tremulous and his eyes were moist with tears. A dozen blue overcoats were offered, but only one was needed. This the surgeon folded so as to make a pillow for the wounded Confederate. Tenderly the doctor raided the boy’s head and placed it on the overcoat. As he did so the blood flowed afresh from the wound in the breast.

“Doctor – picture – mother – pocket – let me see it.”

“Yes, my son.”

The surgeon took from the boy’s butternut jacket a picture of a sweet-faced woman, and held it before the dying soldier’s eyes.

“Closer, Doctor.”

The boy had attempted to take the picture in his hand, but his strength was gone – he could not use his arms. The doctor held the picture against the lips of the youth. It was stained with blood when taken away, but there was a smile on the face of the boy.

“Doctor,” he said faintly, “tell mother I died like a soldier – will you write to her?”

“Yes.”

The old doctor’s tears were flowing freely now. And so were the tears of fifteen or twenty Union troopers who had gathered around the dying boy.

“Yes, I’ll write – what’s the address, my son?”

“Mother’s name is – ”

The voice sank to a whisper, and the Federal surgeon placed his ear close to the lad’s mouth.

“Is what?”

“Mother – O, Doctor! – meet – heaven – good-by!”

He was dead.

“He was so much like my boy who was killed at Antietam,” said the surgeon, as he folded the dead Confederate’s hands over the mother’s picture.

Search was made for a letter or writing that would identify the boy or reveal his mother’s address. Only one letter was found in his pocket. There was no envelope; no postmark. It began, “My darling soldier boy,” and breathed the mother’s anxiety for the welfare of her son, and the prayer that he would be spared to return and make glad that mother’s heart. And the signature – “Your fond and affectionate mother.” Nothing more. There was no time for ceremony; barely time to bury the dead. The boy’s body was wrapped in a U. S. blanket and put in a trench hastily dug and hastily filled.

The advance on Cold Harbor was led by the First and Second Divisions of the cavalry corps under Sheridan. The Third Division under Wilson had been sent out on the right flank to tear up the Virginia Central railroad. That duty was performed, and at the same time Wilson’s division engaged the Georgia cavalry under Gen. P. B. M. Young, at Hanover Court House. The Confederates were driven out. In the meantime we were having our hands full at Cold Harbor, toward which place we marched all night, after the fight at Hawes’s Shop. Sheridan had pushed forward Torbert’s division, and a severe fight was had with the enemy, resulting in the occupancy of Cold Harbor and the important cross-roads by the First Division. While Torbert’s men were fighting at Cold Harbor, our division guarded the road near Old Church. An order came from Sheridan for Gregg to send re-enforcements, to Torbert, and Davies’s brigade was ordered to the front. We arrived too late to help the First Division drive out the rebels, but we were in time to assist in holding Cold Harbor the next day till the infantry came to our relief.

Sheridan had concluded that he could not hold Cold Harbor without infantry support, and the doughboys were eight or ten miles away. Orders were given to fall back to Old Church during the night of May 31. The withdrawal was made in good order, and we were congratulating ourselves on escaping from the trap the rebel infantry was preparing to spring upon us at daybreak, when we received orders to face about and hold Cold Harbor “at all hazards.” Back we went, and preparations were made for resisting the attack of the enemy, which we felt sure would be made at daylight. If the rebels had discovered that we had moved out of the breastworks in their front, and had advanced and occupied the line, they could have held Cold Harbor against our four brigades, as the Confederate cavalry was supported by Hoke’s and Kershaw’s infantry.

Our position at Cold Harbor was anything but satisfactory, as we “turned doughboys” and began to dig for our lives, the necessity of entrenching our line being well understood, as we were to fight on foot. Sheridan says in his Memoirs, speaking of the return to Cold Harbor: “We now found that the temporary breastworks of rails and logs which the Confederates had built were of incalculable benefit to us in furnishing material with which to establish a line of defense, they being made available by simply reversing them at some points, or at others wholly reconstructing them to suit the circumstances of the ground. The troops, without reserves, were then placed behind our cover, dismounted, boxes of ammunition distributed along the line, and the order passed along that the place must be held. All this was done in the darkness, and while we were working away at our cover, the enemy could be distinctly heard from our skirmish line giving commands and making preparations to attack.”

Thursday morning, June 1, the rebels attacked Sheridan at Cold Harbor. The troopers were not directed to withhold their fire till they could “see the whites of the eyes” of the foe, but they permitted the Johnnies to come within short range before opening on them. The Confederate infantry charged the breastworks, the rebel yell being heard above the terrible din of battle. Sheridan’s men demonstrated to their commander and to the world that they could fight afoot or on horseback. The rebels did not get near enough to stick any of our boys with their bayonets, which had been fixed for that sort of butchery. Before they came within bayonet distance they were so badly demoralized by the raking fire of the Federal cavalrymen armed with breach-loading carbines, that they took to their heels and skedaddled back to the woods from which they had started on their charge. Their flight was accelerated by the terrible fire poured into their ranks by our flying artillery, which had opened on the rebels as they came forward to the attack.

Again the Johnnies came, after they had recovered somewhat from their first repulse. But the Yankees gave the enemy another red-hot reception, and the rebels were forced to take to the woods. Before the second charge our regiment was mounted and sent out on the flank to support a battery that had been ordered to shell the Confederates out of a piece of woods.

It was a very trying situation. The artillerymen ran their guns out to the skirmish line, unlimbered and opened on the woods. The rebels replied with artillery and infantry, and the enemy’s gunners got our range in a short time. The shells were bursting all around and over us for fifteen or twenty minutes. We sat on our horses ready to charge the rebels should they dash out of the woods and attempt to capture our artillery. It was far more trying on the nerves to sit bolt upright in the saddle as a target for rebel cannoneers and infantry, than it would have been to charge the enemy’s lines and engage in hand-to-hand conflict.

A solid shot cut Corporal Goddard’s haversack from his saddle without injuring the corporal or his horse. Corporal Jack Hazelet was on the left of the squadron. The corporal was given to stammering, and so was the captain and brevet major in command of the next squadron on our left. As a shell went shrieking through the air just over our heads, the boys naturally began to dodge. Then the captain shouted:

“Wha-wha-what you, you, you dod-dod-dod-dodging at, Cor-cor-corporal?”

“Who-who-who’s a dod-dod-dod-dodgmg, Ma-ma-major?”

“You-you’re dod-dod-dodging, Cor-cor-corporal!”

A shell burst in front of the captain, and he was seen to duck his head as a piece of the shell went whizzing close to his ear.

“Wha-wha-what you, you, you dod-dod-dodging at, Ma-ma-major?”

“Who-who-who’s a dod-dod-dod-dodging, Cor-cor-corporal?”

“You-you-you’re dod-dod-dod-dodging, Ma-ma-major!”

Of course everybody dodged – it was natural that they should under such circumstances.

I was detailed with another trooper to go down in a ravine to the right of our position, to fill the canteens of the company. I jumped at the chance, as I thought it would take me out of the direct range of the rebel artillery for a little while. We kept well to the rear of the regiment till we reached a row of trees and underbrush skirting the ravine. Then we faced to the front and followed a fence about half a mile. We found water and dismounted to fill our canteens. Pieces of shell began to drop all around us and into the water. We sprang up to ascertain the cause of this new departure, and discovered that the rebel artillery was shelling the woods. It was subsequently learned from a rebel prisoner that the Johnnies thought a column of Federal infantry was advancing upon their position under cover of the trees.

“We can’t stay here,” exclaimed my companion.

“I should say not.”

“Let’s go back to the company.”

“All right; go ahead.”

We sprang into our saddles and hastened to get out of the woods.

As we came into the open field near where we had left our company, we saw a column of infantry moving into position. The doughboys were rushing forward at a dog trot, with their long toms at right shoulder. It was a division of the Sixth corps, and was commanded, I think, by General David A. Russell, who was wounded that day or the next while gallantly leading his division against the enemy’s lines. He was subsequently killed at the battle of Opequan, while serving under Sheridan in the valley. The cavalrymen were rejoiced at the arrival of the infantry, and at once mounted and pushed out toward the Chickahominy to cover the left flank of Grant’s army.

Our regiment and the battery had been withdrawn as soon as the infantry had arrived, and had moved to the left with the rest of Davies’s brigade. When the two water-carriers, who had been shelled out of the woods, reached the position where we had left our company, the regiment was nowhere to be seen.

“Which way did the cavalry go?” I asked an infantry colonel.

“They pushed on to the front,” he replied.

“Into the woods?”

“Yes.”

We put spurs to our horses and dashed down the road in that direction.

We reached the edge of the woods and pushed on, jumping our horses over temporary rifle pits and rail barricades which had been occupied by the Confederates, and from which they had been ousted by the fire of our battery. We saw dead rebels in the rifle pits and in the road. We galloped on, and as we were beginning to wonder what had become of our regiment, we came against a column of rebel infantry marching toward the rifle pits we had passed a few minutes before.

“Whew!”

“Where’s our cavalry?” I stammered, scarcely knowing what I was doing.

“What cavalry?” asked a rebel sergeant, who was in charge of the advance guard of the column.

“Hampton’s?”

“Off to the right.”

“We must get there at once – important dispatches.”

Our advent was so sudden that the meeting was as much of a surprise to the rebels as it was to us, and as it was not uncommon for rebel cavalrymen to don blue jackets when they could get them by stripping prisoners, the Confederates did not seem to grasp the situation till we had turned about and were galloping back over the road toward the Federal lines.

“Halt!”

“Halt, you infernal Yankees!”

The order was backed up by a volley from the rebel advance guard. The bullets whistled about our ears, but we bent low in our saddles and never looked behind us until we had placed the Sixth corps between us and the Confederates. Then we drew rein and took an inventory. Several canteens were missing, but otherwise we were “all present or accounted for,” and we rode out to the left and rejoined our company.