USA > Connecticut > The story of the Twenty-first Regiment, Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, during the Civil War. 1861-1865 > Part 20
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Twenty-first Regiment Connecticut Volunteers.
During the night previous the Third Division had made good progress in strengthening the position ; a strong rifle pit with log traverses had been thrown up on the left and along the center, but the right had no such protection. My command, from the time that they entered the work in the morning, had been busily engaged in strengthening and ex- tending this line of defense, which, when completed, would make Battery Harrison an enclosed work.
Before this portion of the line could be completed, the enemy, at about 12:30 o'clock noon, threw himself in three lines upon my right, at the same time opening with two full batteries of field guns upon my center and left. I reserved my fire till they had emerged from the chaparal through which they advanced, when I opened a most effective fire of musketry. At the same time I replied to his artillery with the half battery mentioned in report of operations for the twenty-ninth, but with small effect. This battery had, under direction of the Chief of Artillery, been placed under a differ- ent commander from that of the previous day, and the officer now in command reported almost immediately after the action commenced that he was out of ammunition. Such careless- ness on the part of a commissioned officer is extremely repre- hensible, and I regret that circumstances which occurred an hour later have rendered it impossible for me to report the designation of the battery or the name of the officer. I directed that the guns should be withdrawn by hand, it being impossible to bring horses into the work, and sent a staff officer to corps headquarters for a full battery and a capable officer. Brevet Major General Weitzel, who had command of the corps, promised me every assistance.
The enemy's previous onset had been in the meantime repulsed with musketry alone, driving him to cover and leav- ing an immense number of dead and wounded in front of my right. He, however, quickly reformed, and with his accus- tomed yell tried the same position a second time. Finding that my ammunition was getting low, I had a few moments
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PRIVATE BENJAMIN F. BAILEY. PRIVATE HOWARD M. CHESTER.
PRIVATE ALING HI. POTTER. PRIVATE OSCAR 1. CHESTER,
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Eighteenth Army Corps.
before sent a staff officer with an order to bring up a wagon from my ordnance train. The wagon came just at the right time, during the second assault, and was driven up to the . sally-port of the fort by Captain John Bryden, One Hundred and Eighteenth New York Volunteers, and Acting Ordnance Officer of the Division, and kept there until the action was concluded. It was in full view and but a short musket range from the enemy, yet Captain Bryden gallantly held his mules, three of which were shot while he was thus occupied, while Lieutenants Burbank and Cook of my staff distributed the ammunition to the command.
I mention this circumstance thus particularly, because it was owing to the promptness with which my order was obeyed, and the gallant manner in which it was executed, that my command was enabled to repulse the enemy's second and his successive assaults.
During the progress of this second attempt to carry our position, I received a musket ball in the right arm, which shattered the bone above the elbow, and necessitated my re- moval from the field and amputation on my arrival at the hospital. A moment later, Captain Kent, Acting Assistant Adjutant-General, who was on the way to inform the senior Colonel that he commanded the division, was struck by a musket ball in the leg, incapacitating him for further duty- making the fourth officer of my staff disabled during the two days' operations.
My report of the operations of the division must neces- sarily close here; but I cannot close the report without a slight tribute to the steady valor and gallant bearing of the officers and men of this division which I have had the honor to command.
Among the officers who were noted for gallant bearing and whose names have not appeared in the report are: Lieutenant- Colonel J. B. Ralston, Eighty-first New York Volunteers, and Colonel E. M. Cullen, Ninety-sixth New York Volunteers, both of whom were conspicuous in the charge on Battery
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Twenty-first Regiment Connecticut Volunteers.
Harrison ; Lieutenant W: S. Hubbell, Twenty-first Connecti- cut Volunteers, and Acting Assistant Adjutant-General Third Brigade, who was severely wounded through the shoulder while taking a party of prisoners to the rear, which he had captured during the second day's operations, and Captain C. C. Clay, Fifty-eighth Pennsylvania Volunteers, and I would recommend that these officers also be promoted for gallant conduct. The records will scarcely show an instance where so sinall a body of men carried so strong a position as the work on Chapin's Farm, and after a loss of one man in five, held their position without assistance against all attempts to dislodge them by an enemy vastly superior in numbers and nearly all composed of fresh troops.
The whole number of pieces of artillery captured by my command in the works on Chapin's Farm, including Battery Harrison, now called " Fort Burnham " in honor of the gal- lant and lamented General, was twenty two.
I wish in connection with this report to favorably mention the niembers of my staff, viz. :
Capt. Wm. L. Kent, 23d Mass. Vol. Α. Λ. A. G.
Capt M. B. Bessey,
25th Mass. Vol. A. A. I. G.
Capt. L. N. Converse,
2d N. H. Vol. A. Prov. Marshal
Capt. John Brydon,
1 ISth N. Y. Vol. A. O.0.
Capt. Male, 139th N. Y. Vol. .A. D. C.
Ist Lieut. C. W. Cook, 2 Ist Conn. Vol. Chief Pioneers
Ist Lieut. W. J. Ladd, 13th N. H. Vol. Asst. Com. Musters
tst Lieut. Wm. B. Burbank, 17th Vt. Vol. Asst. D. C.
2d Lieut. Chas. Fenton, 2Ist Conn. Vol.
A. A. Prov. Marshal for meritorious conduct, and I have the honor to ask that their just claims for promotion may be favorably considered.
(Signed) GEORGE J. STANNARD, Brevet Major-General Volunteers. (Signed) WILLIAM L. KENT,
Captain Twenty-third Massachusetts Infantry, Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.
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Battle of Fort Harrison.
CHAPTER XVIIE
BATTLE OF FORT HARRISON.
ADDRESS AT REUNION HELD AT WILLIMANTIC, CONN., MAY 16TH,
1872, BY CAPTAIN W. S. HUBBELL ; WITH APPENDIX.
Early in September, 1864, as we lay sweltering in the trenches before Petersburg, a fresh rumor passed from man to man, gathering strength and size as it traveled down toward the railroad battery on our regimental left. Strange! was it not, how those rumors would arise, the outlets of secrets carefully guarded at headquarters, yet somehow leak- ing through every barrier, and reaching the rank and file almost as soon as tidings were known by the division and corps commander. This time the rumor was an agreeable one, for faces brightened as the story spread. We were to move to the right and cross the Appomattox to the Bermuda Hundred front. If ever soldiers deserved a change, we were entitled thereto.
For nearly four months we had been constantly under fire and had taken our full share of the counter hits with which the rebels defended their capital. We had dug miles of parallels and covered-ways and rifle pits; had sallied forth in fierce assaults and had crouched low under terrific cannon- ades ; had witnessed mine explosions in our favor and against us ; had not seen a day for weeks in which no one was killed
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Twenty-first Regiment Connecticut Volunteers.
or maimed; had been broiled in the glaring sun and chilled with malarial dews; had been defiled with the vermin, which, despite all precaution, crawled from traverse to traverse in those dismal trenches ; had been deprived of sleep, of rest, of the conimonest comfort, and yet had been cheerful, and smoked our pipes through it all and never lost heart or doubted that somehow "Old Grant would pull us through and win the day." We had often heard with a sigh of envy, that across the river there was no picket firing and no need of burrowing in the sand. We had listened with a contemptu- ous shrug to those who told of the nice quarters in which the Tenth Corps were encamped, where none needed to dodge a bomb shell or stoop lest he invite a sharpshooter's bullet ; but now word was brought that the Tenth Corps was to relieve us, and that we should straightway enter their paradise.
Never did we set out upon a march with greater alacrity, nor continue one in better spirits, though it lasted all night and was interspersed with terrific thunder showers. The next morning we were wet, tired, hungry and happy beyond bounds. We had fairly become round shouldered from stooping to avoid wounds, and now we experienced the un- utterable relief of once more standing erect and fearless, for by tacit agreement there was no firing on the Bermuda Hundred front. So we rested for twenty days and grew clean and well-conditioned, and had not a grumble in our hearts. On the twenty-eighth an order came to brigade headquarters which made some of us look sober. There was to be a sudden move, if possible a surprise for the enemy-a sharp assault in which the bayonet was to do the whole, and not a musket in the column was to be discharged or even capped.
By nine o'clock in the evening the whole division was under arms and marching without noise toward Aikens' Landing. Not a clattering canteen was allowed to swing, nor a word of boisterous mirth to escape from any reckless lips. Quietly we sank down on the grass by the swift river
HOSPITAL. STEWARD, JULIAN N. PARKER. PRIVATE GEORGE T. MEECH.
PRIVATE BENIJAII N. SMITH. PRIVATE HIENRY T. SELLEW.
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Battle of Fort Harrison.
and waited for the pontonniers to lay their floating bridge across the James. At three in the morning the column passed over, the Second Brigade, General Burnham in the van; the Third Brigade, Colonel Roberts, containing our regiment, coming in the center, and the First Brigade, Colonel A. F. Stevens, bringing up the rear. On reaching the oppo- site bank, the head of the column was turned to the left and guided along the Varina road towards Richmond. The Tenth New Hampshire and One Hundred and Eighteenth New York, having recently exchanged their muskets for Spencer repeating rifles, were now thrown forward under Colonel Donahue as flankers and skirmishers, and we began to beat the bush toward the rebel works.at Chapin's Farm.
About daybreak, the sharp crack of a rifle stirred the air with its tell-tale story, and we knew that we had struck the pickets of our foe. These were driven in upon the run, and after a lively popping of the Spencers, the dense woods were cleared of rebs, and they were pushed back about two miles on to their main line of works. As we debouched from the forest, we caught sight of the long stretch of ramparts running from the river for miles to the right, and directly before us, crowning a hill top, loomed up the principal object of our attack-the formidable Fort Harrison, over which streamed the rebel banner, and in whose embrasures were mounted twenty-three pieces of heavy artillery. To the capture of this tremendous battery we now prepared to advance, most of us, no doubt, with many misgivings, and with little expectation of seeing old Connecticut again or of enjoying this reunion to-day.
Just before the assault commenced, a staff officer rode up with a message from army headquarters, that we were before the only barrier between us and Richmond, and were to go forward to the utmost, remembering that the first regiment to enter the rebel capital should receive promotion of one grade for every officer and three months' pay for every enlisted man.
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Twenty-first Regiment Connecticut Volunteers.
Our three brigades were arranged in close columns by division, marching in parallel columns by division front, one brigade on the left of the road, one going directly up the road, and the third, containing our own regiment, marching on the right of the road over felled trees and through a morass about midway of the charge. Upon the bastion which faced our approach there was mounted a hundred-pounder Armstrong gun, which, with their other artillery, opened fire as soon as we were in sight. The first cannon ball passed nearly a hundred feet above our head, and was greeted with derisive laughter. The second shot struck the ground a few yards before us and ricocheted over the advancing column, causing much dodging and shouting. The third came with terrible accuracy straight for the center of the assailing host, and ere its dreadful plunge was stayed had slain thirteen of our brave men. There was no more laughing now, but steadily we pressed on up the slope nearer and nearer the belching fort. The rebels had ceased firing solid shot and were plying us with grape and shrapnel and soon with can- nister.
The ground was strewn with the wounded, the dying and dead. We were so near that we could see the faces of the rebel gunners. One rebel officer, stood on the parapet coolly firing his revolver at us as we neared him. Not a shot had we discharged as yet. We struggle upward, panting and furious until we gain the counterscarp of the work, and there for an instant, in sheer exhaustion, the column halts and lies down even under a galling fire. Then, after a moment's rest, the men nobly respond to their officers' call and pour over the edge of the ditch into the dry moat, and then, scrambling up the bank, some on hands and knees, some stepping on their bayonets thrust into the clay, some on each other's shoulders, the blue column mounts the parapet, lingers a moment in a fierce blaze of musketry on its crest, and finally, overflowing all barriers, pushes across the parade ground, driving the rebels from behind a massive traverse, on which
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Battle of Fort Harrison.
their flag is replaced by the Stars and Stripes. In the center of the work our brigade met the others who had scaled the fortress upon its opposite corner, and whose losses and valor equalled our own.
It is on the authority of Colonel Comstock, of General Grant's staff, who was watching the assault from its opening to its close, that I lay claim to the first honors for our own brigade. As the troops descended into the ditch simultane- ously on the right and left of the road, Colonel C. exclaimed : " There! those men will never get out of that place alive." . But even as he spoke the right bastion was swarming with assailants who won the day, at this critical stage of the con- test, and soon their flag was planted on the rebel stronghold. That flag, my comrades, is believed to have been the national color of the Twenty-first Connecticut, and for bearing it to its proud eminence, one of our gallant officers received public recognition in General Orders.
But alas for the glories of war, they are dearly bought ! Our losses during these short morning hours were frightful. The field return for September 28th gave an aggregate of three thousand one hundred and fifteen men effective for duty in the division. Out of this assaulting force there were killed outright eight commissioned officers and eighty-four enlisted men, while there were wounded thirty-six officers and five hundred and two enlisted men, besides three hundred and thirty reported missing. General Burnham was mortally wounded in the bowels as he entered the fort. General Stan- nard, soon after, lost his right arm. Colonel Stevens, con- manding brigade, was severely wounded and never fully recovered during the war. Colonel Donahoe was badly wounded in the thigh. Five out of the six staff officers of the division were disabled. Captain Bessey was blown from his horse by a shell exploding in the poor animal's body. Major-General Ord, the corps commander, received a painful wound in the leg. In the little enclosure where an entrance was forced into the work lay a heap of twenty killed and
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Twenty-first Regiment Connecticut Volunteers.
wounded, mostly of the Fifty-eighth Pennsylvania, which regiment gallantly led the column up the hill to the assault. Our losses were enhanced by the terrific shelling which we received from two rebel gunboats in the James, whose enfilad- ing fire of quick projectiles was demoralizing and murderous in the extreme.
From the report of the division commander I quote a single paragraph : " The record will scarcely show an instance where so small a body of men carried so strong a position as the work on Chapin's Farm, and after a loss of one man in five, held their position without assistance against all attempts to dislodge them, by an enemy vastly superior in numbers, and nearly all composed of fresh troops."
As you well remember, we had a night of labor with the spade, and made of the fort an enclosed work, connecting it by horse-shoe entrenchments with the James on either flank, and therein repulsed three desperate assaults from the rebels, under General Lee in person, on the next day. Had we known the full extent of our victory, we might easily have entered Richmond on the 29th of September, as the road was open before us. Nevertheless we seized the most advanced approach to the rebel capital and the point from which its captors issued forth on the day when Richmond fell.
General Butler remarked in wrath, "that if we had not stopped to cackle like an old hen over her eggs, we should have taken Richmond on that day." But our leaders were all killed or disabled, and Butler himself, who ought to have marshalled us for the onset, was busily engaged with crowing on a safe perch several miles from the sight of carnage and the smell of gunpowder.
In all the scenes which have been thus briefly rehearsed, the Twenty-first Connecticut was honorably conspicuous. We were singularly fortunate in our losses, but we did not escape for lack of exposure to all the dangers of that trying engagement. Still we suffered heavily of our gallant boys, and many a brave heart beat its last throb on the slope of
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Fort Harrison. Several of our regiment were designated by name for bravery on that field. Among them the faithful and noble-hearted Captain Jennings, who was shot through the lungs and survived but a few days; Captain Walter P. Long, who bore our flag to its first place on the ramparts ; Captain Cyrus W. Cook, whose gallantry attracted the notice of General Ord ; Sergeant Buck of the sharpshooters, who there won his shoulder-straps, and received them by request of the General commanding; Captain Fenton, who was recom- mended by General Stannard for promotion ; and others, no doubt, whose names I have forgotten, in these seven years which have glided so swiftly away. But, ere I close this hasty sketch, I would pay a comrade's tribute to one other man who played the hero in this bloody encounter. At the close of the second day's battle there fell, with four wounds, an officer of the Twenty-first, who once had shown a favor to Private Kelly of the Pioneer Corps. When Kelly was told that his friend lay wounded where no one dared to bring him in, the great Irishman, with a mighty oath, strode through thick danger to the spot, and putting his strong arms about the wounded man, lifted him as eagerly and tenderly as a mother would her child, carrying him to a stretcher, and then, with another's help, to a place of safety. I am told that poor Kelly is dead, but I rejoice at this opportunity to deco- rate his memory with my thanks for service to me in my dire extremity.
And, if I mistake not, my comrades, we all feel a warming of the heart toward one another to-day, and are linked more closely than ever before in the thought that we served to- gether on many a hardly-contested field. This is no time to revive a single alienation or a bitter memory of our soldier days. Enough for us that we fought together, conquered to- gether, and were comrades in the old Twenty-first.
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Twenty-first Regiment Connecticut Volunteers.
APPENDIX TO BATTLE OF FORT HARRISON.
In 1885 a letter was received by the writer from Colonel Cecil Clay, who commanded the Fifty-eighth Pennsylvania in the Fort Harrison assault, and who was later in the Department of Justice at Washington and also commanded one of the two militia regiments in the District of Columbia. He protested vigorously against the implication of the current army histories that the capture of Fort Harrison was made by General Burnham's brigade alone, and stated that there seemed to be no report of that affair on file at the War De- partment, except that of General George J. Stannard, which is given in the following pages. Another correspondent, a Mr. Thompson, was also stirred up by the excess of credit given to that brigade, and in 1889 was collecting materials to right the wrong which had been done to the Third Brigade under command of Colonel S. H. Roberts.
It is therefore proper to add some other incidents of the engagement, partly by way of explanation for any omissions or inaccuracies which may occur in the report of General Stannard, whose severe wound, resulting in the loss of his arm near the shoulder, prevented him from any share in the preparation of his report, which was written, according to the usual custom, by his Adjutant-General, Captain W. L. Kent, of the Twenty-third Massachusetts Infantry. The latter's term of service had expired before the battle, and he was serving in the action as a volunteer. He was a brave and competent officer and a very fair-minded, accurate man, but was himself wounded in the leg, and wrote his report under some disadvantages in Boston, after reaching his home. General Stannard had designated me as Captain Kent's suc- cessor, in which capacity I was serving when wounded at the close of the second day's encounter. Probably no one had better facilities than myself for observing the progress
THE COLORS, AND PART OF THE COLOR GUARD.
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of the whole affair, inasmuch as I was not absent from the front line for a moment during the entire movement, includ- ing our assault and the three counter assaults by the enemy on the second day.
The fact that General Burnham's Brigade chanced to be the first to cross the pontoons at Aikens' Landing on the morning of September 29th, seems to have been accepted as evidence that they led the march throughout. Such, how- ever, was not the case. When we emerged from the woods in sight of Fort Harrison, and the first shot was fired from that work, the gun was directed at the Third Brigade, on the right of the Varina road, drawn up in "column by division" and awaiting orders. Two regiments of the Second Brigade (General Burnham's) had been detailed as skirmishers and were posted at our left, together with a part of the Twenty- first Connecticut, under Colonel James F. Brown, which did not participate in the assault. Colonel M. T. Donahue, of the Tenth New Hampshire, whose name is mentioned in General Stannard's report as gallantly aiding in the charge, was not serving with his regiment, being under arrest by General B. F. Butler for some trivial violation of a petty rule, but had insisted on coming with the expedition on his own responsi- bility and without a sword, of which he had been deprived. He wore a dark blue cape, with light blue lining, and many eye witnesses will remember that streaming cape as he rushed up the hill, beckoning with his unarmed hand for the men to follow. Before the fight was over he was in command of his brigade. His conduct amid the perils of that hazardous move disposed of the charges against him and of his dis- obedience in going into battle while under arrest. A wound in the thigh, however, cut short his active career before noon. But let us return to the outset of the charge.
The three brigades were thus halted in the edge of the woods below Fort Harrison on that early morning. General E. O. C. Ord, our corps commander, was examining with his glass the formidable work which seemed to loom up like a
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Twenty-first Regiment Connecticut Volunteers.
mountain of red sand against the sky. He said : "It is too strong for us to risk an attack; I can count fifteeen cannon bearing on our line of march ; we must wait for the other division before we assault." General Stannard, who sat on his horse beside General Ord, remarked with his usual vehe- mence, " Oh, hell, General ! my division can take that fort !" "Very well, General, if you think so, then go ahead!" General Stannard turned at once to me and exclaimed, "Tell Roberts to push right on up the hill for that bastion where the big gun is firing !"
We moved forward without delay, and the third shot from that one hundred-pound Armstrong gun struck our march- ing column fairly in the center, with terrible slaughter.
Probably the brigade of Burnham started forward at the same time, on the left of the road, and also the brigade of Colonel Stevens moved up between us. But I am positive that, at the start, the Third Brigade was first in motion and first drew the enemy's fire. We pushed on up the steep incline, and were punished worse and worse the nearer we drew to the frowning parapet. At last, after a slight pause to recover breath, we made a rush for the great trench at the foot of its walls, and into this ditch we tumbled pell-mell to escape the destructive fire at close range.
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