USA > Illinois > The story of the Fifty-fifth regiment Illinois volunteer infantry in the civil war, 1861-1865 > Part 29
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Only two years had elapsed since its first battle at Shiloh, but of the whole number who were ever mustered into the regiment, more than one in four was in his grave-more than one out of every three had been hit by bullet or shell-more than one in every two had, by some disabling effect of war, dropped from the regimental rolls. Few such fateful records can be found in war annals. The regimental rolls now contained only four hundred and sixty-one names, accounted for as follows :
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FIFTY-FIFTH ILLINOIS INFANTRY.
Present for duty: Commissioned .... 26 Enlisted men .. .275 On detached service: 4
.. .130
. 26 Absent sick
Aggregate .30
431 -- 461
The muster-in rolls for veterans were promptly made ready, and on the twelfth of April the Fifty-fifth Illinois Veteran Volunteers were duly mustered into the United States service for three years or during the war. On April 16th, orders were received for the regiment to proceed at once to Chicago for thirty-days' furlough. The next morning, at seven o'clock, it marched in a soaking rain to Larkinsville, and at ten the cars bore it away for Nashville. Arriving there by night on the eighteenth, the Zollicoffer House, then unfinished and utilized as barracks, afforded comfortable shelter. The next day, marching to the headquarters of the department to pay the customary respect to the com- mander, the regiment was addressed at some length by General Sherman, who came out upon the sidewalk sur- rounded by his staff to receive and greet it. He reviewed in highly flattering terms its career from the time when assigned to his original brigade it first came with full ranks under his orders at Benton Barracks. He alluded to the fact that it had never since been detached from his com- mand, but had shared in all his successes and failures. He spoke of the brave tenacity and the almost unrivalled sacri- fice of the regiment at Shiloh, and said that since that mem- orable day the faces of the boys of the Fifty-fifth had become so familiar to him that it almost seemed that he ought to be able to call each one by name. He spoke of the gallant charge of the regiment with the Eighth Missouri, at Russell's House -- which he styled "the prettiest fight of the war;" of its always honorable record in camp, in march, in battle and siege,-from Corinth to Memphis, from Memphis to Chicka- saw Bayou and defeat,-from defeat to victory at Arkansas Post-and thence through the glorious Vicksburg campaign to Jackson and Chattanooga, and Knoxville. Commending the men for their patriotism in re-enlisting, he turned from retrospection to prophecy. He bade them enjoy to the utmost their well-earned rest, and when they should come
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315
ON VETERAN FURLOUGH.
back opportunity would be given for their valor to win fresh honors in new fields. In the spirit of one who could read clearly the unalterable decrees of Fate, he briefly outlined the coming campaigns now famous in history ;-- promised that Atlanta's streets should be soon overpassed in their victorious progress, -- that there should be no turning back- ward,-that their march should be thereafter onward with faces towards the sea until Savannah and Charleston should fall into their hands, and the baseless fabric of the slave- holder's Confederacy crumble into ruins.
At dark on the nineteenth we started upon the steamer Miami for Cairo, which we reached at ten in the night of the twentieth. As soon as it was light enough in the morning we disembarked, but could obtain neither transportation nor shelter, and remained upon the levee until night, when the Soldiers' Home was opened to us. On the noon train of April 22d we were northward-bound again, and twenty-four hours later were marching through a pouring rain to the Soldiers' Rest in Chicago, where the regiment was welcomed in a brief patriotic speech by Colonel Eastman. A substan- tial dinner was then set before us by the lady friends of the regiment who appeared in strong force, and it was discussed with appreciative appetites. That night and Sunday, the twenty-fourth, we remained at the Rest. At one o'clock of Monday afternoon we were marched to Camp Fry, where Adjutant-General Fuller came to visit us, and made a short address to the men, spiced plentifully with personal compli ments, which were respectfully accepted as being at least official. At last, on the twenty-eighth, Major Haynes ap- peared and paid the volunteers their dues. Then with hasty hand-shaking and good-byes all scattered their several ways to meet and greet the long waiting ones. And here the annalist may well leave the furloughed veterans standing on the thresholds of two hundred Western homes, to which the coming of their weather-browned faces and manly forms brought joy unspeakable and thanksgiving.
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CHAPTER IX.
THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN.
B Y frecing the Mississippi River from hostile obstructions the Western armies had effectually isolated an impor- tant food-producing portion of the Confederacy, and the navy vigilantly guarded the divisional line. The grand strat- egy of the commander of the military division of the Missis- sippi in the spring of 1884, was directed to again cutting the Confederacy in twain, on a line parallel with the former, but along mountain passes, following and relying for supplies upon a trunk railway. General Grant having been called to the highest military command at the East as the one whom the logic of success had proved the fittest to grapple with General Lee, his mantle fell upon General Sherman by the same process of natural selection. Sherman resumed the aggressive early in May, beginning the most brilliant cam- paign of the war ;- one grandly conceived and in good time brought skilfully to a glorious issue. In this campaign the Fifty-fifth bore a prominent part and added new honors to its established fame.
The non-veterans, while their re-enlisted comrades were revelling in the delights of home life as only furloughed sol- diers can, were assigned to the One-hundred-sixteenth Illi- nois Infantry and placed under the command of Lieutenant Barrett of that regiment. They formed a company of them- selves numbering about seventy-five, and remained on duty at Larkin's Landing bridge until the end of April, when the
317
A DANGEROUS EFFERVESCING DRAUGHT.
movement towards Chattanooga began. With the exception of a few who served at division headquarters, the company became from May Ist the division train guard. Marching from Larkinsville by the familiar route through Bridgeport, they passed Lookout Mountain May 6th, and followed in the rear of the ever victorious army as it persistently pushed or outflanked the Southern Fabius from his strongly fortified positions, one after another, -Dalton, - Resaca, -- Adairs- ville,-Cassville,-Dallas. Often their duties were fatiguing, entailing frequent and tiresome night marches; but for prac- ticed campaigners the service had its little compensations. It was at least a novelty for these men to be within hearing and sight of a battle and not be called to the front of it. June 13th the railway having been opened to Big Shanty, that station was made a depot of supplies and the detach- ment was sent thither to unload cars and await the return of their comrades from Illinois.
The medical officers did not accompany the regiment upon veteran furlough. Dr. Smith remained on duty with the division, and Dr. Roler had for some time previous been medical director of the Fifteenth Army Corps, and was sta- tioned at Huntsville. Here, just before the opening of the campaign, his valuable life was nearly sacrificed by the carc- lessness of a subordinate. Rising one morning with a head- ache, he asked the steward in charge of the medical stores to prepare him an effervescing draught of Rochelle salts. Hastily drinking what was brought him, he noticed a peculiar metallic taste. Almost immediately he began to experience violent pains and other symptoms of poisoning. An investi- gation soon proved that one hundred and twenty grains of tartar-emetic had been given him instead of the prescribed tartrate of soda and potash. There was no hope of his being able to survive the terrible exhaustion which would follow its action. He had taken enough to kill a dozen strong men. Everything that medical skill could do was promptly done, but with no expectation of long retarding the approach of death. The medical director at department headquarters, speaking of the pitiable condition of the surgeon in the pres- ence of the general, said that if he had plenty of ice he
318
FIFTY-FIFTH ILLINOIS INFANTRY.
should not altogether despair of saving his life; but there was no ice unless at a certain locality ten miles away, outside the lines. When General Sherman's little son had sickencd on the way from Vicksburg to Memphis, the preceding autumn, Dr. Roler had charge of the patient, and although he failed to save the boy, his devoted care endeared him to the parents, and Sherman has mentioned him in his Memoirs. With his personal interest inciting his natural sympathy, Sherman, without speaking of the matter to others, quickly summoned the commander of the cavalry and ordered him to take his company, with a wagon, and secure the ice with all speed and at all hazard. The ice came in good time, and by its free use Dr. Roler was enabled in a few days to appear again at his post of duty; but he never has recovered his normal health.
Obedient to the requirements of their leave of absence, the Fifty-fifth Illinois Veteran Volunteers began to assemble at Camp Fry in Chicago, the place of rendezvous, on May 29th, 1864. On the first day of June, with inspiriting music and under escort of the One-hundred-thirty-second Illinois Infantry, the regiment marched through the city to the Sol- diers' Rest and partook there of a parting feast provided for it by the patriotic ladies in charge of that beneficent hostelry. At nine o'clock in the evening it was upon the cars, south- ward bound, leaving many sad faces and sore hearts behind. Arriving at Cairo by night of the next day, it at once embarked upon the steamboat Armada, and at dawn landed at the dilapidated little village of Smithland, Kentucky. There a detention of twenty-four hours ended by the arrival of the Tennessce-River boat, Mattie Cabler, which bore the regiment on to Nashville, reaching there at nine o'clock in the evening of Sunday, the fifth of June. The men slept upon the boat, but very early in the morning marched to the Zollicoffer barracks. The commissioned officers at once be- sieged the paymaster, and the enlisted men rediscovered the city's highways and byways. On Tuesday morning at seven o'clock another stage of the journey was begun upon the top of cars loaded with stores for the army. That night at Huntsville progress was again interrupted, and during the
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319
RETURN TO THE FRONT.
next twenty-four hours ample time was given for all to be- come disgusted with the hotels of the place, and charmed with the town itself and its wonderful spring, leaping out from the subterranean reservoir at the foot of the bluff.
On the ninth, by night, our train again started at laggard pace. We breakfasted on the tenth at Stevenson, and arrived in a soaking rain at Chattanooga early in the morning of the cleventh, where we went to the Soldiers' Rest. It was not long a resting place for us. Cars filled with wounded men were constantly arriving from the front, and we were soon driven out through mud and tempest to establish camp in an open field. Sunday, the 12th, was very generally improved by a visit to the storm-swept summit of Lookout, the day being especially propitious for full enjoyment of the exten- sive view from that bristling crag over the bewildering entanglement of majestic, forest-clad mountain ridges and shadowy valleys. Late in the following afternoon the regi- ment again mounted the cars, occupying two trains, and moved out from the shelter of the mountain through Tunnel Hill, where we had fought in the previous November, leaving Resaca behind at sunrise, and halting at length in Kingston. We passed line after line of elaborate intrenchments, some of which the Confederates had spent the winter in perfecting; we crossed numerous swift streams and saw many wooded defiles and mountain fastnesses on either side, with ever tpowing wonder that even the pluck of our army and the genius of its leader could in one short month have compelled their abandonment, and in the face of a skilful and deter- mined opposition forced a passage one hundred miles into the heart of so defensible a region.
After forty-eight hours of waiting at Kingston, our trains gained the right of way on the road, which had but a single track, and we crept slowly along past the impregnable fort- ress of Allatoona, and at last, on June 16th, reached the neighborhood of the contending armies at Big Shanty, where we went into bivouac, awaiting orders. Here we had come out from the maze of the foot-hills. Great stretches of a comparatively open and rolling country lay before us, out of which directly in our front, scarce more than a cannon-shot
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320
FIFTY-FIFTH ILLINOIS INFANTRY.
away, rose the twin summits of Kenesaw, six or seven hundred feet above the plain; and six miles to the west stood Lost Mountain, the southernmost of the noticeable isolated spurs of the Alleghany range. Between and upon these two moun- tains the Confederates were firmly intrenched. But on the very day of our arrival the smoke of battle could be seen on the far right, gradually sweeping down past Lost Mountain, and on the morrow Johnston's left wing was refused to a new line prudently fortified in anticipation of its necessity, and Kenesaw had become his salient stronghold.
We were soon joined by the non-veterans, with boisterous and joyful greetings. Lieutenant-Colonel Chandler here turned over the command of the regiment to the senior cap- tain, with the expectation of obtaining an order to report as provost-marshal to division headquarters. A week or two later we learned that his resignation had been accepted and he had left for the North. Colonel Malmborg was known to be on duty in the Seventeenth Corps, but he did not visit the regiment. A few weeks later he too had returned to Illinois, where he was reported to be acting as a recruiting officer for the U. S. Veteran Volunteers, known as Hancock's Corps; but he was not mustered out of the Fifty-fifth until Septem- ber 20th. It is said that he obtained a clerkship in the fourth auditor's office at Washington. He died in Kansas about IS74, having in his later years become nearly blind.
Sunday, June 19th, we were ordered to the front to join our old brigade. The command now numbercd three hun- dred and twelve present, about two hundred and seventy being in the ranks for service. After crossing one deserted line of rebel earth-works we came under the fire of the artillery upon Kenesaw, and here Michael Rayding of Com- pany I was instantly killed, being nearly cut in two by a frag- ment of a shell that burst in front of the marching column. Hle was of German birth, handsome in face and figure, a fine soldier, the first of the veteran volunteers to give up his life. Reaching the position assigned to us on the lower slope of the mountain, we were formed on the left of the brigade and at once began constructing strong rifle-pits. Although per- sistently annoyed by shells, grape and canister from the
321
BEFORE KENESAW MOUNTAIN.
artillery on the summit, the work went steadily on until the twenty-first of June saw our front covered by a finished carth-work with log revetment breast-high, and skidded head logs atop. The pickets kept up a continuous skirmish on the wooded mountain-side, and the roar of artillery duels went on all along the line. The Second division, under Gen- eral M. L. Smith, consisted now of but two brigades, each of six regiments; General Giles A. Smith commanding the First and General J. A. J. Lightburn the Second:
First Brigade.
Sixth Missouri. Fifty-fifth Illinois. One-hundred-sixteenth Illinois.
One-hundred-twenty-seventh III. Thinicth Ohio.
Fifty-seventh Ohio.
Second Brigade. Thirty-seventh Ohio.
Forty-seventh Ohio.
Fifty-third Ohio.
Fifty-fourth Ohio.
Eighty-third Indiana. One-hundred-eleventh Illinois.
On the twenty-third, a shrapnel shell bursting just in front of us wounded three men: David McKeighan of Company D), William Walker and Sergeant William Spencer of Com- pany K. Two iron balls passed through the upper part of Spencer's arm, shattering the bone. By a triumph of con- servative surgery his arm was saved, two or three inches of the injured humerus being exsected, shortening it by so much. The plucky young sergeant, elated with the prospect of sav- ing his good right arm, soon after the operation sent word to his company commander that he was "all right, and even had some advantage in his loss, for he would now be nearer the girls when he shook hands with them than the other boys."
On the right wing, where the obstacles interposed by nature were not unusually difficult, there seemed to be slow but steady onward progress- some gain of road or hill or stream almost daily made; but along our corps' front rose the steep scarp ending abruptly in many places with almost perpendicular ledges of rock, needing no defenders. The rebel pickets shouted down from their safe elevation invita- tions to our outposts: "Come up and see us;" and ours jocu- larly responded, "We're coming, waiting only for our ladders."
No weakening of the Confederate force in our front was obvious, but General Sherman, with the knowledge that 21
1
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FIFTY-FIFTH ILLINOIS INFANTRY.
Hood's Corps had been withdrawn from before McPherson to re-enforce the left of General Johnston's line against the energetic flank movements of Schofield and Hooker, reasoned that the rugged and almost inaccessible heights were prob- ably hield by artillery and a noisy skirmish line only, which might be broken through at some weak spot by a sudden and determined assault. Upon the rocky watch-tower of Kene- saw, however, sleepless eyes noted the slightest change in the features of the map outspread before them, and not a move- ment was made by day or by night but they marked it, counted its value, guessed its purpose, and deliberately made preparations for counteracting it. The Confederate left wing was now so far refused that Kenesaw was, as it were, the key- stone of a semicircular arch formed by the rebel lines. Along the chords of the long curve, at briefest notice the reserves could spring to protect sorely threatened points. A successful crushing through of this arc at any important point, however, would almost ensure overwhelming ruin to Johnston's army, and Sherman felt that the chance ought to be taken -- that even a sanguinary charge, if successful, would be economy of patriots' blood. He took the fearful responsibility, probably against the judgment of all the lead- ing general and field officers in the army, save some few whose judgment was distracted by an itching of their shoul- ders for a star. In his report General Sherman gives as one chief reason for ordering this assault upon carefully planned intrenchments, that the army needed to be taught that out- flanking was not the only mode of offensive warfare. The teacher himself seems to have learned one lesson at the same date. He never again ordered a charge in column upon a well-intrenched foc.
Sunday, the twenty-sixth of June, our division got orders to withdraw from their lines quietly after dark, the Second division of the Sixteenth Corps occupying the vacated position. We marched as we then supposed for a flank movement to the right, but were halted at midnight, after proceeding four or five miles, went into bivouac in the wood- land and slept until day-break. About seven in the morning the officers were summoned before the brigade commander,
323
ASSAULT UPON LITTLE KENESAW.
General Giles A. Smith, and notified that in half an hour the brigade was to lead in an assault upon Little Kenesaw, then not much more than half a mile distant in our front. The men were at once instructed to strip for fight, leaving every- thing but essentials at the bivouac. One man from each company was detailed to remain as guard over its property. Few but tried soldiers were in that little band waiting in the forest glade for the dread signal. Though thus surprised with the knowledge that in a few minutes they were to make a desperate dash against ramparts bristling with natural diffi- culties and defended by practical fighters, yet probably a casual observer would have noted in the occupation or out- ward manifestations of feeling among these men little to distinguish this from an ordinary group of soldiers resting on a march. The breakfast was eaten with appetite, the pipe smoking and discursive talk went on as usual. But comrades could read in each other's faces signs not always to be seen there; in those of the prominent officers sterner and more rigid facial lines, indicating the load of responsibility they felt resting upon them; in all countenances a more quiet and
fixed expression, almost amounting to a slight pallor. The laugh sometimes heard had no heart in it, the arguments no vivacity, the sportiveness was rare or spasmodic, and often a far-away look in some eyes told of thoughts wandering to the distant Northern home, perhaps never again to be seen. A few handed to some one of the guards, or to the chaplain, a valued watch or keepsake, with brief words of contingent instruction. A few wrote brief notes and placed them in their knapsacks.
The tendency of old soldiers to become fatalists has often been commented upon. Examples of this tendency were frequently noticed in the Fifty-fifth. Tales of premonitions justified by quick-following death or wounds are even now often in the mouths of comrades, while the examples, prob- ably far more numerous, of gloomy omens that came to naught, are all forgotten. Men who had marched confidently and undismayed into battle after battle, were suddenly on the approach of a fight seen to be out of heart, and save for their pride almost willing to own that their courage had all
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FIFTY-FIFTH ILLINOIS INFANTRY.
left them. Perhaps these cases of dismal foreboding among us were not more numerous on the morning of June 27th than before other bloody days in our experience, but several are remembered. A sergeant whose past record had proved him exceptionally brave, was exceedingly depressed and con- fessed to his company commander an immovable conviction that if he went into the impending battle he should never see the sun rise again; and asked if he could be saved from the death that stared him in the face, without disgrace. The officer reported the case privately to the senior captain commanding the regiment, who, knowing the worth of the sergeant, ordered him detailed to be left in command of the guard over the regimental property.
There was no one to excuse the captain himself. Physi- cally and morally an ideal company commander, tried in bat- tle, march, siege and assault, and never known to falter, he had been conversing cheerfully and displayed his usual calm demeanor. But he had quietly said to the friend and fellow captain sitting beside him, that he felt the oppressive shadow of near death hanging over him. He handed his friend a pocket-knife 'to remember him by,' took out a little mem- orandum book and wrote:
Monday, 27, 1864.
We marched last night until eleven -- got up at seven this morning - are to make an assault upon the breastworks at half-past seven. Our division takes the lead. Now may God protect the right. Ain doubting our success,
The order for the forward movement came, and Captain Augustine's voice in command rang out as sharp and clear as though on parade. The two brigades steadily advanced through the heavily wooded and undulating ground border- ing on the head waters of Nose's Creek, were formed in battle lines and began the charge. At first we were preceded by a regiment armed with magazine rifles and deployed as skir- mishers. We soon encountered the fire of the surprised rebel pickets, but without pause dashed over them-killing those who opposed, sending some as prisoners to the rear, and driv- ing the rest before us. The division artillery meantime poured a storm of missiles over our heads into the main works
325
ASSAULT UPON LITTLE KENESAW.
of the enemy. The roar of the cannon behind and before, the bursting of shells, rattling of musketry, Union hurrahs and answering rebel yells, made a horrible pandemonium of that little mountain valley, appalling even to the most expe- rienced. Rushing onward about five hundred yards beyond the little barricades of the picket-line, through dense imped- ing underbrush and down over a stretch of marshy ground, we crossed the little creek and came out upon an open arca at the base of a precipitous, rock-strewn hill, below the crest of which, within pistol shot, lay General Loring's veterans --- a brigade of French's division-behind strong walls of stone. Up the long incline to the higher ridge of Kenesaw on the lett ran a line of rifle-pits, the troops in which opened an enfilading fire upon us, while two batteries commanded the ground over which we charged. General O. O. Howard has recently put upon record his opinion that the Confederate line at Kenesaw "was stronger in artificial contrivances and natural features than the cemetery at Gettysburg. The com- piete works, the slashings in front, and the difficulties of the slope towards us under a full sweep of infantry and of artillery cross-fire made the position in itself next to impreg- nable."
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