USA > Illinois > The story of the Fifty-fifth regiment Illinois volunteer infantry in the civil war, 1861-1865 > Part 20
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Sadly missed in tent and field were two captains recently lost by death: Casper Schleich and George Lee Thurston. The former, slain at Chickasaw Bayou, was a jovial com- panion and gallant soldier, whose nobleness of spirit was graced with manly beauty of form and face. Buoyant with enthusiasm and that self confidence which talents, health and youth give, every one he met was his friend. His loss for a time seemed to cast a shadow over the whole regiment. About this date came notice of the death of Captain Thurs-
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CHANGES OF OFFICERS.
ton, who for several months had been on sick furlough at his father's home in Lancaster, Massachusetts, awaiting the acceptance of his resignation. While on duty with the regi- ment, he had been one of the most universally popular men in it. Connected from his earliest manhood with military companies at the East and in Chicago, he was more acconi- plished than most of his comrades in the elementary knowl- edge of the art of war and the routine details of an officer's duty. Ambitious and valiant, equipped by nature with a taste and aptitude for arms and inspired with patriotic fervor, he seemed to deserve, and to be destined to win, high com- mand. But his health, always frail, utterly succumbed after the exposure and toil of Shiloh and the campaign against Corinth. Upon the stone over his grave these appropriate lines of "L. E. L." are inscribed :
" That soldier had stood on the battle-plain, Where every step was over the slain; But the brand and the ball had pass'd him by, And he came to his early home to die.
A saddened group one evening in the camp, embracing all with the command who had been their fellow officers, joined in a feeling expression of esteem for, and grief at the loss of, these valuable patriots and battle-tried comrades.
By the mail of January 27th a commission from the Gov- cravoor of Illinois came, promoting Lieutenant-Colonel Oscar Malmborg to be colonel, in place of David Stuart, whose resignation had been accepted while he awaited confirmation of an appointment as brigadier-general. Major William D. Sanger was at the same date commissioned lieutenant-colonel, and Captain Theodore C. Chandler, major. Major Sanger, who had enjoyed the advantage of three years' military edu- cation at West Point, having entered as a cadet in 1848, was a gallant and accomplished officer, much liked by the com- mand. Although detached from the regiment since the date of its leaving Paducah, he was probably the unanimous choice of the line officers for colonel. He, however, declined a regimental commission at once, in a letter which is honor- able alike to him and the Fifty-fifth.
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FIFTY-FIFTH ILLINOIS INFANTRY.
HEADQUARTERS FIFTEENTH ARMY CORPS, IN CAMP -BEFORE VICKSBURG, gth February, 1863.
His Excellency RICHARD YATES,
Governor State of Illinois.
GOVERNOR : Upon my return to this corps from a convoy of pris- oners taken at Post Arkansas, I received an enclosure covering a commission as lieutenant-colonel of the 55th Regiment Illinois Vol. Infty. I am compelled to decline the acceptance of this commission. The rea- sons are these, viz: Soon after the regiment took the field at Paducah, I was appointed an aid to General Sherman, and in that capacity I have served since the ioth of March last, until by an order of the War Depart- ment I was mustered out of service. At the time notice of the act of the War Department was received, the corps of General Sherman was taking the field as part of the expedition to open the Mississippi; I had so long been associated with the corps, that I felt reluctant to leave the field at that time in consequence of an order of the War Department which orig- inated in error. I therefore remained with General Sherman as a member of his staff. In that position I served through the campaign and its battles. General Sherman has seen fit to recommend my promotion to a lieutenant-colonelcy on his staff. I have therefore not been identified with the 55th as a field officer, during any of the campaigns in which the regiment has distinguished itself. It is but just that the line officers who have served with the regiment during its arduous, eventful and brilliant history should receive the promotion which changes have made neces- sary. I therefore most respectfully decline the commission as lieutenant- colonel of the 55th Ill. Vols.
With great respect, your obedient servant,
W. D. SANGER,
Major Sanger never entered the service again. He died in St. Louis, November, 1873.
Lieutenant-Colonel Malmborg's manners and temper had so little commended him to the good-will or respect of those subject to his humors that, as has been told in preceding pages, an earnest remonstrance against his promotion, signed by nearly every line officer, had been received by Governor Yates. The news of the futility of this attempt to limit the continuance of an unreasoning despotism, though not unex- pected, was far from inspiriting. Five officers, among them some of the best manhood in the regiment, resigned, and were shortly after lost to the service. They were Captains Joseph Black, Timothy Slattery and William F. Cootes, and Lieuten- ants Elijah C. Lawrence and Henry A. Smith. Captains Black
215
RUNNING THE BLOCKADE.
and Slattery, the two senior captains, were officers whose sturdiness of character, military capacity, and wisdom in the management of men, were a grievous loss. The three others bore honorable scars received in the front of battle. Special Order 105 of the War Department, dated March 5, 1863, mustered out of the service six first-lieutenants who had been left behind at Memphis, sick or on detached duty. This order discharged them "for alleged disability, to date from November 26, 1862, they having failed to file the necessary certificates." They were: John H. Fillmore, Josiah E. Keyes, Daniel McIntosh, Albert F. Merrill, Joseph W. Parks, Joseph R. Roberts. Without doubt they must be considered victims to the unjust prejudice of an autocratic colonel, whose per- sonal reports to the War Department respecting them effected a discharge which they had not sought. They had shown themselves earnest patriots, and were intelligent, worthy young men, who, under other auspices, would have won larger honors. Brave and competent soldiers, meriting pro- motion for their battle records, succeeded to the numerous vacancies as they occurred; but the departures were none the less deplored, and the sundering of many friendly tics that had been welded in the heat of such experience as the Fifty-fifth had passed through together, left disheartening wounds slow to heal among those constrained to remain.
The wearisome camp routine during February was stirred with few excitements or alleviations more noteworthy than the coming of a mail from the North, a learned (?) discuss- sion in the officers' debating society, the killing of a poison- ous snake among the tents, or rumors of a marvelous cut-off at Lake Providence or the Yazoo Pass, which was expected to drink up the Mississippi. At times some movement in Admiral Porter's fleet awakened general curiosity ;- and curiosity rose to admiration and rejoicing on the morning of the second of the month, when the Queen of the West, a side-wheel unarmored ram, commanded by Colonel Charles R. Ellet, was seen, apparently loaded with bales of cotton, steaming down past Vicksburg and audaciously running the gauntlet of the batteries which, with much sulphurous smoke and infernal din, objected uselessly during the hour she was
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FIFTY-FIFTH ILLINOIS INFANTRY.
within their jurisdiction. During the night of the thirteenth all were awakened by the thunder of the same batteries, and saw the hills appearing through the darkness like active vol- canoes in miniature, belching flames and iron missiles towards some object in the river below. The news quickly spread that the Indianola, a powerful ironclad, had successfully fol- lowed the ram. Both soon fell into the hands of the enemy. Three or four days later cight thirteen-inch mortars, mounted upon rafts, opened fire upon the town, and kept up the bom- bardment night and day almost continuously thereafter, until the surrender.
Again on the eleventh of March the batteries of Vicks- burg woke the Union camps by their vigorous and prolonged bombardment of some object to us invisible. This proved to be an enormous sham ironclad, which had been fabricated in Admiral Porter's fleet and set afloat down the stream to trick the rebel gunners. It was founded upon an old barge. Its two stacks were made of hogsheads wrapped about with blackened canvas, and poured out a thick black smoke from kettles of burning tar hung within them. Big quaker guns peered from the port-holes of an imitation casemate, and huge mock wheel-houses bore a derisive legend for rebels. Such feverish alarm did this burlesque naval monster produce among the enemy that it may be set down as the best prac- tical joke of the war. Being at the mercy of every eddy, it chanced after passing Vicksburg to be thrown over to our side of the river, and came to land just below the mouth of the canal. Company B of the Fifty-fifth happened to be on picket duty at that point, and very early in the morning, seeing this strange black object, looming large through the dense fog, the men supposed it one of Porter's boats. A sentinel, Charles S. Vandervert, making a closer inspection, discovered the real nature of their voiceless visitor, and aided by his comrades succeeded with poles in pushing it off the bank and swinging it around until it was caught by the cur- rent from the canal and borne away into the main channel, headed straight for Warrenton. Just then the sun rose, slowly dissipating the heavy curtain of mist that enshrouded the river. The rebel artillerists caught a glimpse of the
217
THE SHAM IRONCLAD.
black bugaboo steadily approaching, silent and mysterious as Fate, and opened fire upon it from every available gun. The ram Queen of the West, a few weeks before captured from us and refitted, which had come up to Warrenton to procure some tools needed in the work of raising the sunken Indianola a few miles below, at sight of this appaling appari- tion advancing unharmed by the tons of iron hurled upon it, turned and fled at her utmost speed. Reaching the Indianola that valuable gunboat was hurriedly blown up, and the Queen of the West, with her consort, the Webb, under full head of steam, hurried south before the dread unknown. This was the first naval victory in which Fifty-fifth men were prime factors, and by it they got neither salvage nor prize money, nor cven "bubble reputation." They may of right claim, however, that they caused the destruction of the Indianola, and thereby prevented a dangerous reenforcement of the rebel navy on the Mississippi.
Newspapers were regularly received in camp, and often were found to contain letters "from the front," giving darkly colored description of hardships endured by the soldiers, discouraging accounts of the sanitary condition of the army, or complaints of its inaction, and even slanderous sugges- tions of inefficiency or worse in the commander. Sometimes grand strategic movements warranted to give us Vicksburg instanter, were urged upon the War Department -move- ments all too evidently planned upon a copy of Mitchell's school atlas. Such blind guides sadly misled the public, gave comfort to the foe, and exerted a seriously demoraliz- ing effect upon the Union army in general. But the veterans of the Fifty-fifth, like most who had long served with Sher- man, had learned to sympathize with "Uncle Billy's" con- tempt for the average newspaper reporter as an "eye witness" depicter of battles, or an unbiased chronicler of anything. The remembrance that their heroism and almost unparalleled sacrifice at Shiloh was practically ignored by the press at the time, and that their brigade or division rarely got more than bare honorable mention from any paper, scemed to them full justification for scepticism respecting letters wherein sundry exaggerations and the tenor of praise and blame pointed to
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FIFTY-FIFTH ILLINOIS INFANTRY.
the probability that the correspondent's news had been inspired by generous hospitality at the headquarters of one of our political generals. Experience in other ways also warranted their suspicions of special communications dated "under fire," but which bore internal evidence of having been written far from the smell of powder, in the cabin of a corps quartermaster's supply boat, or a hospital where sanitary stores were handy, and the stories of the homesick or demor- alized made a convenient woof in the weaving of an article.
The great state of Illinois was that winter disgraced by a copperhead majority in the legislature. A rugged speech made by the patriotic Isaac Funk, in the senate, was printed and circulated among the troops from that state, exciting great enthusiasm.
The rank and file throughout the armies had by this time become sharp critics of the political policy of relying exclu- sively upon a volunteer system for the suppression of the rebellion. Most soldiers could point to neighbors unexempt ยท by any natural law, who had thus far cvaded all share in the public burden, and were reaping in domestic ease and safety a golden harvest by shrewdly taking full advantage of the public exigencies. With reason they pointedly asked why the public-spirited and willing patriots should pay the whole blood tax for the nation, permitting the faithless and selfish, though bound by the same allegiance, to escape by the pay- ment at most of a moncy tithe out of the rich rewards offered at the rear to the shrewd speculator and dishonest contractor, as well as to the thrifty and energetic worker and tradesman. The army was in the spirit to hail with enthusiasm the en- forcement of a draft fairly distributing the burden of toil and peril, as taxation did the money cost of war, upon all men alike. But the cowardly and traitorous cry for concilia- tion and compromise had few sympathizers, in the Fifty-fifth at least.
A disloyal sheet published in Fulton county printed a lugubrious letter from Daniel Hedges of Company D, which was sent to the colonel by a lady, with a note asking if the troops were really in the miserable plight and discontented spirit set forth in that soldier's screed. The whole subject
219
COPPERHEADS REBUKED.
was laid before the regiment, and the enlisted men were so furious against their maligner that he narrowly escaped lynch- ing. The following patriotic resolutions-the original draft of which is found in the hand-writing of Captain L. B. Crooker-were passed, on the same day that President Lin- coln signed the Draft Act, and sent to the Illinois newspapers. Hedges, contemptuously spurned by all his comrades, was thereafter forced to tent and eat by himself:
CAMP OF THE 55TH REGT. ILL. VOLS., ) YOUNG'S POINT, LA., March 4th, 1863.
At a meeting of the 55th Regt. Ill. Vols., of which Col. Oscar Malmborg was elected chairman, and Chaplain M. L. Haney, secretary, held March 3d, 1863, the following preamble and resolutions were adopted without a dissenting vote :---
Whereas, the ordeal through which our nation is passing is a very trying one, indicating the necessity of union upon the part of its friends against all enemies whatsoever ; and whereas certain diabolical agencies have been operating to divide and paralyze the defensive powers of the government, and in order to accomplish dastardly ends, would make the impression upon the public mind that those who have been ready to sacrifice their all upon their country's altar, and have stood midst the desolating agencies of the bloody field for the rescue of her flag and the perpetuity of her institutions, are now ready to bend the knee like craven cowards to those who have menaced our liberties and murdered our brothers; and whereas, through the kind agency of some unknown Christian patriot of the city of Canton, Ill., a copy of the Fulton County Ledger has been furnished the colonel of our regiment,-accompanied by a very appropriate patriotic note,-containing an article headed "Camp Correspondence" and signed: "D. H.," the author claiming to be a member of the 55th Regiment, and to represent its views, which article, on account of its falsehood and its cowardly truckling, is highly discred- itable to the character of our regiment; and whereas, said paper circu- lates in communities largely represented by the 55th Regiment ; there- fore,-
Resolved, That we have left our homes and separated from our avocations for the defence of the best government upon the earth.
Resolved, That the present rebellion against the rightful authority of the United States of America, is unparalleled for its atrocity in the annals of the world.
Resolved, That all sympathizers with armed traitors are our enemies, and, in proportion to the sympathy rendered, they are weakening our hands, nerving the rebel arms and making our conflict prolonged and terrible.
Resolved, That the same reasons which prompted us to stand unflinch-
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FIFTY-FIFTH ILLINOIS INFANTRY.
ing at Shiloh, Russells' House, Corinth, Chickasaw Bayou and Arkansas Post, will nerve us for each succeeding conflict until we witness the death agonies of this godless rebellion.
Resolved, That we will heartily sustain the administration in each and every effort put forth consistent with the laws of civil warfare, for the suppression of rebellion, and we hail with gladness the Conscript Laws of Congress, hoping thereby all vacant ranks will be filled, treason speedily annihilated and the majesty of the law vindicated.
Resolved, That, for reasons indicated in the preamble, we denounce the execrable article of Daniel Hedges, and regret that its drunken, vulgar author should mar the beauty of our ranks; and that those of us who have been personally acquainted with him, both at home and in the army, know him to be better clothed, better fed and less drunk, as well as less a vagrant here than elsewhere.
Resolved, That a vote of thanks is hereby tendered to our patriotic friend of Canton, for the interest taken in our regimental honor; to the government for leaving none of our wants unsupplied; and to all who rejoice at our success and weep over our misfortunes, assuring such that to the end we are one and inseparable.
Resolved, That a copy of these proceedings be furnished for publica- tion in the Fulton County Ledger, Canton Register and Fulton Democrat.
O. MALMBORG, Colonel commanding 55th Ill. Vols.,
M. L. HANEY, Chaplain, Chairman.
Secretary.
The Confederates had early attempted by breaking the levees to flood the low lying lands, and had loudly proclaimed that they would drown us out of our camps like muskrats out of their holes. Their attempts had availed little save to widen the bayous into lakes, and to relieve us from need of picketing our rear. We were slowly developing into semi- amphibians; but suddenly, on the seventh of March, the river burst through its artificial bounds at the junction of the old with the new embankment at the head of the canal, and chased the troops upon the levee. Along the inner slope of this mound the Fifty-fifth formed a huddled, uncomfortable camp. The tents were by necessity placed on the steep incline, for the narrow crest had to be reserved as the only possible thoroughfare for the troops. This necessitated the removal of head-boards and the leveling of graves, many of which there were upon the levee, the only dry ground in a water-logged land. Here, on the twelfth, Major Hazeltine distributed four months' pay.
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221
AT GREAT AMERICAN BEND.
The next day the regiment was ordered on board the steamboats, D. A. Tatum, Fanny Bullitt and Champion, leaving convalescents in charge of the camp, and moved up the river about one hundred and twenty-five miles to the Great American, or -- as the boatmen generally preferred to style it-Shirt-tail Bend. There we disembarked at the landing of the extensive Worthington plantations and took possession of large amounts of corn and sugar, scores of hogs, nine hundred head of cattle, and over five thousand bales of cotton. The last was discovered in three huge piles in the woods four or five miles from the river, the place of its concealment having been revealed by slaves attached to the plantation. The bales were all marked C. S. A. On the fifteenth the outposts had an unimportant skirmish with a company of Confederate cavalry, and mounted scouts were constantly hovering about during our stay. Colonel Malm- borg finding himself the senior officer of an independent expedition, proceeded at once to magnify his opportunity, and began the development of an elaborate Halleckian policy in his department. And first he set about planning and constructing a fort in the swamp. About the time this redoubt assumed shape, Captain E. D. Osband of General Grant's staff who was present, found it advisable to send for Colonel T. E. G. Ransom, then at Lake Providence. He appeared on the eighteenth, bringing with him detachments of the Eleventh Illinois and Fourteenth Wisconsin Infantry, and took command. While here his commission as brigadier- general arrived. Additional boats were sent for from Milli- ken's Bend, and during ten days all worked diligently hauling the confiscated property to the landing and loading it upon the transports. The soldiers lacked no creature comforts in this land of abundance; but some of them, reasoning from the stand-point of hard work, thirteen dollars a month and no prize money, made wry faces when, as they tumbled the cotton from the army wagons at the landing, they saw a gold- laced official from the "tin-clad" gunboat in the stream, standing by with pot and brush to mark each bale in staring capitals :- "Captured by the U. S. Navy."
The extensive negro quarters of the plantations were
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FIFTY-FIFTH ILLINOIS INFANTRY.
occupied by motley battalions of slaves of all shades and ages, whose excited manifestations of feeling at the coming among them of the "Linkum army," were by turns intensely ludicrous or pathetic. We had here a rare opportunity to study the characteristics of the negro race, and especially their religious fervor ; for abounding joy at the loosing of their bonds broke out in rapturous song and prayers of thanks- giving. The chosen preacher of the community was a note- worthy character in his line, and probably selected, as usual, because ready with a glib answer to every possible question upon theology or biblical exegesis. One evening several of the regiment attending the meeting at the quarters were surprised to hear him, while wrestling in prayer, use the expressions :-- O Lord ! come down and jine with us; come down ,mongst us hyar. Come two Lords, come three Lords, ( come down!" The next day one seeing him asked if he believed there was more than one Lord. "Sutny, massa," said the old man, "sutny; gret many Lords ; don know how many, but jes ez many Lords ez debils; an doan de scripter tell how seben debils wuz carse out o won pusson ?"
The Fifty-fifth, returning upon the Von Phul, landed at Milliken's Bend on the twenty-fifth, and marched down the levee to its old camp the next day. Upon the boat during the journey unusually noisy hilarity among the men led to the discovery that, although no rations of strong drink had been issued for a long time- except to field officers-canteens containing something exhilarating were passing from hand to hand and mouth to mouth. A single barrel containing whis- key stood among the commissary stores on the deck in plain sight, apparently undisturbed; but upon examination a con- siderable portion of its contents had disappeared. A picked squad of the fittest, having slily made careful measurements to fix the geographic position of the barrel relatively to the hatchway, had gained access to the hold with a small auger, and boring up through the floor into the cask, inserted a piece of cane as a faucet and issued rations without formality of surgeon's orders. An investigation failed to discover the depredators.
During our absence the other regiments of Stuart's divis-
223
FARRAGUT'S VISIT.
ion had been sent out with a combined naval and land expe- dition up Steele's Bayou, in search of a navigable passage through the labyrinth of creeks in the Yazoo wilderness, to some point flanking the fortifications at Haines's Bluff. Com- ing back unsuccessful from their laborious and exciting trip on the twenty-seventh, a novel and inspiriting sight met them. A short distance below the southern end of the canal -which had been abandoned as a complete military and engineering failure some days before-were anchored two war vessels from Farragut's fleet, the Hartford and Albatross. The admiral's pennant waved over the former. With taper masts overtopping the trees and their gracefully curved bulls standing high above the water-line, they formed a marked and pleasing contrast to the frail, light-draft stern and side- wheel river steamers, the tin-clad mosquito boats, the rams and iron-clad "turtles," which made up the fleet of Admiral D. D. Porter. The next day the two vessels steamed down out of view again, and the booming of their guns in reply to the hostile salute of the batteries at Grand Gulf was their final good-bye to Vicksburg and Grant's army.
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