USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. II > Part 2
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The day after the army, so suddenly and laboriously raised, was all ready to march to Louisville to defend that city, General Wallace was relieved from the command. He took leave of Cincinnati in the following address:
" For the present, at least, the enemy has fallen back, and your cities are safe. It is the time for acknowledgments. I beg leave to make you mine. When I assumed command, there was nothing to defend you with, except a few half-fin- ished works and some dismounted guns; yet I was confident.
12
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
The energies of a great city are boundless; they have only to be aroused, united, and directed. You were appealed to. The answer will never be forgotten. Paris may have seen something like it in her revolutionary days, but the cities of America never did. Be proud that you have given them an example so splendid. The most commercial of people, you submitted to a total suspension of business, and without a murmur adopted my principle, 'Citizens for labor, soldiers for battle.' In coming times, strangers viewing the works on the hills of Newport and Covington will ask, ' Who built these intrenchments ?' You can answer, 'We built them.' If they ask, ' Who guarded them ?' you can reply, ' We helped in thousands.' If they inquire the result, your answer will be, 'The enemy came and looked at them, and stole away in the night.' You have won much honor. Keep your organi- zations ready to win more. Hereafter be always prepared to defend yourselves.
LEWIS WALLACE. Major General."
General A. J. Smith succeeded to the command of Cin- cinnati, while General Wallace was ordered to Columbus, Ohio, and placed in charge of a camp of mutinous paroled prisoners, with instructions to organize them for service against the Indians in the Northwest.
From the City Council of Cincinnati, and the Legislature of Ohio, he received formal votes of thanks "for the signal service he has rendered to the country at large in connection with the army during the war; and especially for the prompt- ness, energy and skill exhibited by him in organizing the forces, planning the defence, and executing the movements of soldiers and citizens under his command at Cincinnati in August and September, which prevented the Rebel forces under Kirby Smith from desecrating the soil of our noble State."
In commemoration of the promptness with which the Governor of Indiana came to their assistance, the citizens of Cincinnati, after the war was over, procured, by the hand of their favorite artist, the portrait of Governor Morton.
13
THE ENEMY DISAPPOINTED.
A few months after the close of the war General Wallace met General Heath at the Burnet House, in Cincinnati, and spent an evening in conversation with him, chiefly in regard to the affair in which they had been engaged and opposed. Heath stated that the day before he returned to Lexington he had issued orders for an assault, and his troops were in motion to take up their positions when he received a dis- patch from General Kirby Smith ordering him to return without attacking. This interference was all that prevented attack. General Heath was very confident of success. The point he had chosen for the assault was between Fort Mitchell and the river. He disclaimed any intention to de- stroy the city, had he taken it, and asserted that his purpose was merely to levy a contribution. As he would hardly have been satisfied with less than fifteen or twenty millions, his success would somewhat have impoverished the rich city.
The failure made the South sore enough. The blame, however, fell not upon Smith, but upon Bragg. "Had Gen- cral Bragg done his duty as well and promptly as General Smith did," declared the Atlanta Intelligencer, "Louisville would have been ours, Cincinnati would have furnished us supplies, while Columbus, Ohio, might have been our head- quarters. Then would the Vallandighams of Ohio, and the Brights of Indiana, have rallied to the issuing of General Bragg's noted proclamation; then would many thousand friends in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois have joined the South- ern army; then, too, could General Bragg, having cut off the Western from the Eastern States, have whispered terms of peace into the Northwestern ear; and then might we reason- ably have hoped for peace."
Had General Bragg done his duty, in the Southern ac- ceptation of the word, and had Kirby Smith, in conse- quence, with all his veterans, been free to appear before the coveted city, he would have found himself mocked by the living wall which rose in its front. It was that wall, more than Bragg's remissness, which baffled him now.
While the enemy still dallied before Cincinnati, a long train of wagons, with sanitary stores, and doctors, and
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
women from our State, wound over the Kentucky hills towards the scene of the late struggle.
On the night of Sunday, the 31st of August, Governor Morton, with such hospital supplies and assistance as he could procure at a moment's notice, went to Louisville, whence he proceeded to Lexington. On his return, which was without delay, he empowered Dr. Bullard to afford relief to the hospitals in Richmond, and to bring home such wounded as he should find able to be moved, putting in his hand a sum amounting to one thousand dollars, and author- izing him to use as much more as would be necessary. Dr. Bullard left Indianapolis Sunday evening, September 7th. He was compelled to wait three and a half days in Cincin- nati while the United States and the Confederate authorities made arrangements for his passage through the Rebel lines. During the delay Dr. McDermot, Medical Director of the United States army, arrived from Richmond to procure the articles and the assistance with which Dr. Bullard was sup- plied; also, ex-Governor Dennison added ten ambulances to the train. Dr. MeDermot joined the expedition, which now consisted of forty ambulances, with about sixty persons, drivers, doctors, nurses and commissaries, and a very small escort. On the 11th it crossed the Ohio on the pontoon bridge, and a few miles from the river submitted to an hour's delay, until the flag of truce had silenced the bullets which constantly whistled between the Union and Confederate lines, not more than three or four hundred yards apart, and until a Confederate Colonel appeared to conduct the train through the camp. During the delay a lively and amicable conversation was carried on with the Rebels who were on the spot. They were the flower of the Southern army, accord- ing to one of the doctors, rugged and ragged, without insig- nia of rank, or uniform, but all boasting some distinguished antecedent or high-sounding title.
On the 13th the train entered Lexington, finding there thirty-seven wounded, twenty of whom were Indianians. They were overjoyed to learn that they were affectionately and thoughtfully remembered. They had been removed to an old boarding-house from the fine large halls of the Uni-
15
EXPEDITION TO RICHMOND.
versity, which had been appropriated to their use by the United States authorities, and had been deprived of medical stores, beds, and bedding, but they had not otherwise been ill-treated. It was to the interest of the Confederates to conduct themselves civilly in Kentucky, as their object was as much to convert as to conquer.
The train arrived at Richmond on the morning of the 15tli. All the public buildings and many of the private houses in the village and for miles around, were used as hospitals, while three hundred wounded had been taken into private families, some of them many miles distant in the country, and tended and entertained with the utmost kindness. Evi- dences of unkindness and neglect were found in but one place, a young ladies' seminary, which had been appropriated as a hospital, and now held ninety-six patients. Immedi- ately after the battle the building was occupied by four hun- dred wounded, while the small enclosure round it served as a prison for two thousand men. A large number of ampu- tations had been made in it and many men had died. But neither the house, nor the inclosure had received the slightest attention in regard to cleanliness. Floors and walls, clothes and bedding were spattered with blood, and there were am- putated limbs unburied in the yard. The sight was too hor- rible for description. Some of the patients had not been washed since they were wounded. Some lay in narrow, dark, ill-ventilated rooms, while large airy apartments were unoc- cupied. The new-comers, with water and soap, and good sense, soon affected an almost magical change.
Dr. Bullard, speaking in that gentle, flexible voice, and touching the sufferer with that tender hand, which those who have been his patients love to remember, went from bed to bed, from room to room, and from house to house. The other physicians were not less attentive.
On the 17th the train, with all the wounded and sick who could bear removal, returned to Lexington where several hundred ladies, assembled at the hospital, contributed gener- ously all that they could command, to soften the hard jour- ney. As the wagons with their melancholy freight passed slowly through the streets, Union flags from windows and
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
doors, still further expressed the sympathy and courage of women. Confederate officers, grouped on the corners, scowled in silence. More than two hundred men were brought away, while one hundred and seventy, who could not bear transpor- tation, were left behind.
Under the direction of the Confederate authorities the re- turn was through Maysville, and consequently was long and tedious.
While newly enlisted volunteers were sent to the assistance of Ohio and Kentucky on the threatened approach of Kirby Smith, the Home Legion was summoned to the protection of the Indiana border; also all who were subject to military ex- ercise in the river counties were required to assemble, with whatever arms they could command, to organize into com- panies, and be instructed in military tactics. The Legion diligently guarded all the points of the Ohio from Dearborn to Posey, and several regiments made several reconnoissances into Kentucky. The Spencer county regiments, on short and hurried notice, marched twenty miles to the relief of a force defending Owensboro against a much larger force, and find- ing that the Rebels had retired after a successful engagement in which the Union commander was killed, followed cight miles to Panther creek. Here, in a severe encounter, the Le- gion gained a decided victory, inflicting heavy loss and suf- fering comparatively little,-three killed and thirty-five wounded.
The Vanderburg county Legion went several times to the relief of Owensboro, and performed other service in Ken- tucky, especially in protecting the locks of Green river, but the chief object of its care was Evansville.
The Seventy-Eighth regiment, organized under Colonel Warren for sixty days service, performed guard duty at Evansville, and pieket duty along the river, and frequently made expeditions into Kentucky. In a fight with guerrillas on the 1st of September at Uniontown, Captain Tighlman A. Howard was mortally wounded. He was twenty-two years old. He had served with distinction as Lieutenant and Captain in the Fourteenth, through the campaign in West Virginia.
17
COLONEL LINK.
An independent company from Terre Haute and two hun- dred citizens from Lafayette reported at Evansville. The Crescent city of Indiana was so well protected that the ene- my, either in bands of guerillas or in larger force, at no time ventured an attack. No serious effort was made to invade Indiana at any point.
The ten regiments which were captured and paroled at Munfordsville and Richmond, returned to Indianapolis in September, and were allowed short furloughs to visit their homes. They were then reorganized, chiefly in Indianapo- lis; were occupied in military exercises and subjected to strict discipline. Their taste of war had not increased their military spirit, especially in the case of the five regiments which came in contact with Kirby Smith. They had, indeed, swallowed the dregs of the cup as soon as their lips had touched the brim.
The Twelfth and Seventy-First, which had been deprived of their commanding officers, seemed quite disheartened. The Twelfth, composed as it was largely of troops who had learned to love Colonel Link while under his command in Virginia, was like a bereaved family.
" Many of our companies," wrote Lieutenant Aveline from Indianapolis, "seem to have lost all desire to excel in discip- line and drill, as they are no longer cheered by their beloved Colonel Link."
Colonel Link died on the 20th of September, in Rich- mond, where he had been affectionately tended by Captain Baldwin. His body was brought home and buried on the 24th, a larger concourse attending his funeral than was ever before seen in Fort Wayne. As the little orphan children pressed close to the cold coffin, and tears at the sight of them were in every eye, many recalled the words of the dead man, spoken with modest earnestness a few weeks before, during the reorganization of the Twelfth: "I have three little motherless children that need me every hour, but I feel that they can better do without their father than without a home in a free and blessed nation."
Late in the fall the paroled troops were exchanged. In
2
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
November and December they were returned to the field. The Twelfth, under Colonel Williams, the Sixteenth, Six- tieth, Sixty-Seventh, Sixty-Ninth and Eighty-Ninth were sent to Memphis. The Seventy-First, Colonel Biddle, was sent to Kentucky. The Sixty-Sixth went to Corinth; the Fiftiethi to Jackson, Tennessee, and the Sixty-Eighth to Murfreesboro. The two companies of the Seventy-Fourth, captured at Munfordsville, joined their regiment at Castilian Springs, Tennessee.
The remaining new troops organized and put in the field before the close of the year, consisted of two companies of the Fifth cavalry, thrown forward into Kentucky early in the fall; ten companies of the Fifth, stationed in December in the southern border of Indiana; the Eighty-Third, Colonel Spooner; the Ninety-Seventh, Colonel Catterson; Ninety- Third, Colonel Thomas; Ninety-Ninth, Colonel Fowler, and One Hundredth, Colonel Stoughton, dispatched to Memphis, and the Twentieth battery, under Lieutenant Ludwig, sent to Henderson, thence to Nashville. The Twenty-Third and Twenty-Fourth batteries were organized in November, and the Twenty-Second in December, but they were retained for service in Indiana.
Although in 1862 Indiana sent thirty-three regiments and seven batteries to the field, the course of her patriotism did not by any means run smooth. The opponents of the Ad- ministration got their heads above water, and succeeded in making their dolorous voices heard before the close of 1861; and they were fairly afloat by the next midsummer, grasping at every untoward event to turn it to account, and painting in false colors the face of every truth which was unfavorable to them. What was the nation's bane was their meat. To say nothing of MeClellan's and Pope's great and unfortu- nate campaigns, in which Indiana had comparatively but small individual share; the surrender at Munfordsville; the blunder at Perryville; the disaster at Richmond; the return of captured regiments, many of them torn to pieces by the severity of their few days service; the harshness, or the inca- pacity, or the lawlessness of several prominent officers; tax- ation, high prices, a depreciated currency, aversion to con-
19
WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?
scription, with countless smaller occasions they used to such purpose that they gained the State elections.
In 1860 Indiana gave one hundred and thirty-nine thousand and thirty-three votes for Lincoln to one hundred and thirty- three thousand one hundred and ten against him. In 1862 she gave one hundred and eighteen thousand five hundred and seventeen for the administration, to one hundred and twen- ty-eight thousand one hundred and sixty votes for the oppo- sition.
Before such a demonstration of the strength of the powers of darkness, the stanchest hearts trembled.
"Nothing but success," said the Governor, the Auditor, and the Secretary of State, and Congressman Dunn, address- ing President Lincoln, on the 21st of October, "Nothing but success, speedy and decided will save our cause from utter destruction in the Northwest. Distrust and despair are seizing upon the hearts of the people."
The angel of success held aloof. Darkness crept over the land. Croakers lifted up their voices and croaked. Hear one. And no ignoble nor disloyal man was he:
" If there were signs of any amendment, we could have patience, though disaster marked the hours and blood dripped the seconds! But there is none."
There was none. No cock crowed. No harbinger of coming day appeared. The darkness deepened with the slowly flitting months. The midnight of the year was the midnight of hope. The wild Christmas bells rang out to the wild sky, but they gave to the ear of faith alone a prom- ise of recovery to the apparently dying Nation.
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
-
CHAPTER II.
NORTH OF THE POTOMAC.
Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand,
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
Round about the orchards sweep, Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
Fair as the garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished Rebel horde,
On that pleasant morn of the early fall, When Lee marched over the garden wall .- Whittier.
" I have heard of being knocked into the middle of next week," said President Lincoln, when on the 2nd of Septem- ber 1862, the armies of McClelland and Pope came crowd- ing round Washington after the second disastrous battle of Bull Run, "but never before of being knocked into the mid- dle of last year!"
To all appearance the retrogression was even further back than the middle of the preceding year. The gloom which spread over the whole country, the confusion, if not disaster, which seemed to prevail wherever the national armies exten- ded, were deepest and most prevailing at the centre of the Government. Virginia fugitives pressed into Washington as to a city of refuge, while citizens hastened out of it as from the city of destruction. Rumbling of wheels, clatter of cavalry, tramp of infantry, the murmur of masses of mov- ing men filled night as well as day. Most dire sound of all was the rolling thunder of the enemy's guns. Most grievous sight was the despondency of the exhausted troops. Long marching, hard fighting, want of food, want of sleep, defeat, retreat, disappointment and loss seemed to have deadened their very hearts.
In the Army of Virginia the exhausted Seventh, reduced
21
WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?
to one hundred and forty men, who had been twenty-four days without blankets and without a change of clothing; in the Army of the Potomac the weary Fourteenth, numbering one hundred and fifty, with clothes ragged, unwashed, and, since the 10th of August, unchanged, represented the condi- tion of the Indiana regiments, except perhaps the Twenty- Seventh, which had been somewhat less exposed. So over- wearied were the men that, whenever there was opportunity, they sank to the ground, and, stretched on the pavements of the city, or curled up in the fence corners of the suburbs, lost themselves in sleep.
General Kimball had not seen the inside of a tent for nearly two weeks. He had shared with his soldiers in bat- tle, in bivouac and on the march.
On the last night of the retreat he snatched the Four- teenth from the grasp of the enemy. It was one of the darkest of nights, the army was marching rapidly, and his brigade was in the rear, when he discovered the absence of his Indiana regiment, and learned that by the neglect of an officer appointed to the service, it had been left on the picket lines, uninformed of the general withdrawal. Instantly Gen- eral Kimball with his staff, wheeled about and hastened back. IIe went four miles through a strange country, and with the enemy on all sides, and brought the regiment off just as day was breaking.
The beginning of reorganization,-filling the places of Kearney, and of thousands of other dead who were as bright and brave as "the gallant General with the empty sleeve," of Pope, who was banished to the far North-West, and of McDowell, who was suspected by the country and was sub- jected to a court of inquiry ; uniting the two broken armies, and giving the command again to McClellan,-opened the very depths to the general eye.
The scene of the summer's operations was equally dis- heartening. The James was deserted by United States gun- boats; the Rapidan, the Rappahannock, and the Shenandoah, almost to its mouth, were in Rebel hands; while along the Potomac small detachments watched for the coming of Lee, without the force to withstand him. The only points re-
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
maining to the Government were Harper's Ferry in the north- west corner and Fortress Monroe in the south-east.
The rebel army on the other hand was high in hope and triumph. Perhaps it lost a little time in ambiguous demon- strations, but it soon moved in definite and defiant march, with light knapsacks and empty wagons, from the desolated plains of Virginia towards the verdant valleys of Maryland. Scouts and spies appeared north of the Potomac as early as the 3d of September. On the 4th and 5th the main army boldly struck the river, Jackson's corps in advance. Paus- ing in the midst of the stream, the Rebel leader took off his cap and stood, while his troops and regimental bands united in the beautiful Rebel song, My Maryland. The rocks echoed and the waters carried afar the exulting strain:
"She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb ! Huzza ! she spurns the northern scum ! She breathes! she burns ! she'll come ! she'll come ! My Maryland! My Maryland !"
The army of Lee was bent on turning the tide of war from the south to the north, and in saving Virginia soil from future battles. In spite, however, of its proud resolution, its patience and deathless courage, it presented a mean and poverty-stricken aspect. Hesitating Marylanders hung their heads or turned their backs when they perceived the hungry jaws, the grey rags, the dirt, lice and odor of the southern heroes. The young men who had come forward with the in- tention of volunteering, slunk to their homes. Maryland turned the cold shoulder to the Rebel army. She was deaf and dumb.
The new theatre of action extended from the Monocacy on the east, beyond the Antietam on the west, embracing the three mountain ranges of the Catoctin, the South, and the Elk. The Catoctin is a low and lovely ridge, branching south-east from South Mountain and terminating on the Po- tomac in Point-of-Rocks. South Mountain, longer, higher, and ruggeder, is severed from the Blue Ridge by the Poto- mac. Elk Ridge is divided by the same impetuous river, its rifted rock forming the lofty heights of Maryland and Lou- don. The chief towns in this region are Frederick, a little,
23
THE NEW THEATRE OF ACTION.
though beautiful and wealthy city; Middletown, a pretty, pastoral village, in the Catoetin valley, twelve miles west of Frederick; Hagerstown, thirteen miles northwest of Mid- dletown, in the Chambersburg valley, which is a continua- tion of the valley of the Shenandoah; and Harper's Ferry, on the Potomac. Beside these towns, the events of the campaign brought into notice the hitherto insignificant vil- lages, Boonsboro' and Sharpsburg, the former situated at the western foot of South Mountain, the latter south-west, near the Potomac and on Antietam creek.
The old National road, leaving Frederick, runs to Hagers- town, crossing the Catoctin mountains and Catoctin valley, and passing through Boonsboro' Gap, a noble gateway in South Mountain, between peaks a thousand feet high. On the eastern side of South Mountain the old Sharpsburg road branches out of the turnpike to the left, and climbing the crest, bends off further to the left. From the same point the old Hagerstown road branches to the right, and passing up a ravine about a mile from the turnpike turns and rejoins it near the summit of the pass. The Antietam flows almost the whole breadth of Maryland and unites with the Potomac at the western base of Elk Ridge. It is a clear, deep, and crooked stream. "Poor Antietam creek! I've crossed it many a time!" sighed one who had lived long in the West, when she heard of the battle of Antietam; and the tears stood in her eyes, as with a sort of waywardness she pitied the innocent, rippling waters and the fair landscape familiar to her youth.
The whole region was as fair as the garden of the Lord to the eyes of the famished Rebel horde. Full granaries, loaded orchards, undisturbed acres of corn, sweet fields of clover, smooth lawns, unbroken fences, haystacks, and bee- hives made a picture of comfort to which Southern soldiers had long been strangers.
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