USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. II > Part 27
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It was about nine in the morning, and while his skirmish- ers were engaged with the enemy's pickets, that Hovey formed his line, McGinniss on his right, Slack on his left. The skirmishers gradually drew together; their firing, from being warm at intervals, became incessant. It was necessa- rily supported by the masses on either side. Against Hovey were two or three times his number, yet he persisted in crossing two cornfields, and in ascending an open slope, and he succeeded in pushing the rebels from their first line of protecting woods. He was nobly seconded by liis subordi- nate officers, as they were by their men. Seldom, perhaps never, was a battle more earnestly fought. Vicksburg, so long striven for, was understood to hang in the balance of this day, as it was the garrison of the city which contested the field. Three batteries were captured,-the Eleventh In- diana, and the Twenty-ninth Wisconsin, with a desperate struggle taking one, and the Forty-Sixth assisting in the capture of one.
McPherson, shortly after the opening of the contest, reached the ground. He advanced one brigade after an-
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other of Crocker's division to Hovey's support, while with Logan's division he fell upon the enemy's left and threatened his rear. If Carr, Osterhaus and Blair had come up on the right, according to orders, Hovey would not have found the pressure on his front more than he was able to bear. Even without them he stood and withstood, bravely advancing and skillfully retreating, until the sun, in the east when the battle was joined, declined toward the western horizon.
Lieutenant Colonel Swain, of the 'Thirty-Fourth Indiana, fell mortally wounded, and with Colonel Macauley, who was dangerously wounded, was carried from the field.
Lieutenant Colonel Barter of the Twenty-Fourth, seizing the falling colors of his regiment, was shot in his right arm.
Lieutenant Perry, of the Forty-Seventh, with his com- pany in the hottest fire in a position he was ordered to hold, was advised by a comrade to avail himself of shelter imme- diately in his rear, "No, sir," said the Lieutenant, "the Forty- Seventh never gives back an inch." The words were scarcely out of his month, when he was shot through the heart. Men arc said to be incapable of grief in the whirl of battle, yet two were seen to weep bitterly over Perry. Lieutenant Cole sprang to the front to rally the company, but sank al- most immediately beside his predecessor, fatally wounded.
David Hill, the color-bearer of the Eleventh, stood with his staff planted in the thickest of the fight, while five of his guard fell-Brown, Shell and Hollis dead, Hollingsworth and Matthews dangerously wounded.
Joseph Fitch, of the same regiment, wrenched a Rebel flag from its bearer.
Sergeant Ford, of the Fifty-Ninth, captured the colors of the Forty-Sixth Alabama.
Captain Schaubel and Lieutenant Baldwin, of the Forty- Eighth, were severely wounded and were borne away, regret- ting only that they could not continue in the conflict. It is said of the Forty-Eighth regiment, that "Colonel Eddy's bearing added to the native heroism of the men under his command, and that officers and men throughout seemed to vie with each other in the manifestation of the soldier's shining virtue,-bravery in battle."
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VICTORY OF CHAMPION HILL.
Surgeon Williamson, of the Twenty-Fourth, was mortally wounded while in the faithful performance of his duty.
When out of ammunition, the men of several regiments in Slack's and McGinnis' brigades supplied themselves from the cartridge boxes of their dead and wounded comrades.
It is impossible to enumerate the brave deeds which were done, or the brave men who fell. Men and officers all, and equally, did their duty.
Hovey's troops swayed, rising and falling like a sea lashing the shore; receding at last, though temporarily, before over- powering force, and leaving the captured guns spiked behind. Hovey turned his backward movement to the best account, to triumph, indeed, by massing his artillery on high ground at his right, and raining on the rushing Rebels an enfilading fire. The advancing host was checked. One more charge was made upon it. Exultant cheers proclaimed the success of that last desperate onset, and the proud delight of the vie- tors. Then they were withdrawn. Hovey rode along their thinned and broken ranks as they rested. He stopped in front of his old regiment, the Twenty-Fourth, missing many a familiar face. " Where are the rest of my boys?" "They are lying over there," replied the men to whom he spoke, pointing to the hollow across which the division had rushed forth and back according as it drove or was driven, and had at last made the decisive charge. General Hovey turned his horse and rode away weeping.
The Rebel retreat was hastened into flight by the timely though hard won success of McPherson, who, charging through ravines and over hills, gained the road in the rear of Pemberton's left, and threatened to eut him off from Vicks- burg. As it was, he separated General Loring's command from the main force and sent it on a wide mareh round the Union army to Jackson.
Carr's and Osterhaus' divisions of McClernand's corps, newly arrived and waiting on the Raymond road for orders, advanced as soon as the Confederates turned to retreat, and chased them as fast as the men could run until after dark.
The battle of Champion Hill was the hardest fought bat-
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tle of the campaign, and the most important, as it definitely and forever separated the forces of Pemberton and Johnston.
Hovey's division bore the brunt of the fighting, and suf- fered nearly half the entire loss, losing twelve hundred and two men, or one from every three, and fifty-nine officers. The same division captured seven hundred men and three batteries.
The Indiana loss was as follows :
The Eleventh, one hundred and sixty-seven, twenty-eight of whom were killed; Twenty-Fourth, two hundred and two; several companies in the Eleventh and Twenty-Fourth lost more than half; Thirty-Fourth, seventy-nine; Forty- Seventh, one hundred and forty-two; Forty-Eighth, thirty- three; Fifty-Ninth, eight; Twenty-Third, eighteen. The Forty-Sixth took into action but three hundred and fifty men, of whom it lost eighty-four in killed and wounded. The flag of this regiment was riddled with balls.
Several of the Sixteenth and Sixty-Ninth were wounded in the pursuit.
Lieutenant Colonel Darnall had command of the Eleventh after Macauley was carried from the field. Spicely, Came- ron, Bringhurst and McLaughlin were all unhurt, although under the hottest of the fire from three to five hours.
Grant had about fifteen thousand men engaged in the bat- tle, and Pemberton had nearly twenty-five thousand.
In the flight Pemberton's troops were scattered and de- moralized, and Grant's pursuing force was superior in num- ber as well as in spirit. MePherson's corps and Carr's and Osterhaus' divisions pushed on until eight o'clock in the evening.
Hovey's tired heroes slept on the bloody field.
Shortly after daylight the next morning, the seventeenth, the enemy was found posted for resistance, his main force west of the Big Black, on a high bluff, and a brigade on the east, behind earthworks along a semi-circular bayou, which flows into the river shortly after flowing out. Carr's division led McClernand's corps, Benton's brigade was in advance of Carr, and the Eighth Indiana was at the head of the brigade. There were no ravines to give shelter to sharpshooters, but thick groves, of which the Rebels took advantage, falling
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BATTLE OF BLACK RIVER BRIDGE.
back, however, behind their bayou and steadily awaiting an onset there. It came sooner than they could have expected, and with irresistible impetus. While Carr's front kept up a regular fire, artillery pouring in rapid volleys, his right brig- ade, Lawler's, one hundred and fifty of its men falling by the way without checking its sweep, reached the bayou, plunged into the stagnant water, went at the Rebels with fixed bayonets, and forced them to surrender or fly. The Rebel officers ordered, exhorted and threatened to no purpose.
"Bigger guns than that back there!" roared a Rebel soldier to a staff officer who presented his pistol.
The panie-stricken fugitives, who first gained a footing on the further side, fired the railroad bridge, and a hastily con- strueted bridge of steamboats. Officers and men, less fortu- nate, sprang pell mell into the stream, large numbers sinking to rise no more. A whole brigade surrendered in the trenches. In all fifteen hundred men surrendered, with eighteen guns, and several thousand stand of arms.
General Grant's entire loss in the Black river bridge fight was two hundred and seventy-one.
From Bruinsburg to Black river General Hovey's division lost more men and took more prisoners and material of war than any other division. Its captures almost equaled those of all the rest of the army, as did also its losses.
To ascertain whether the river was passable four bold fel- lows from the Eighth plunged in, and swam across under a shower of bullets. The fire of their comrades protected their return.
Floating bridges were built during the night. McCler- nand and MePherson pushed on the next day, meeting no resistance, finding constant proofs of the demoralization of the enemy, and hoping to enter Vicksburg with him, or close after him.
Meantime Sherman, having struck out to the right, crossed the Big Black at Bridgeport on a pontoon, and marched toward the Yazoo. At noon he stood on the very bluff which had so terribly repulsed him six months before, and seeing, for the first time, the wisdom of General Grant's plan,
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acknowledged it. "This is a campaign," he declared, "this is a success if we never take the town."
General Grant, who was at his side, made no reply, as free from elation now as he was from despondency in the dreary months of the past.
A fine though somewhat cynical observer of human nature asserts, through one of the characters of his imagination, a soldier of the time of Queen Anne, that, "One of the great- est of a great man's qualities is success; 'tis the result of all the others; 'tis a latent power in him which compels the favor of the gods, and subjugates fortune." From the brain of him who, above all others in the army, was "patient of toil, serene amidst alarms," now came forth this latent power.
"Thou, only thou, didst wring from churlish fate The prize at which thy comrades vainly caught; Stood in the field when all the fight was fought, Alone, unpeered, self-balanced, modest, great !"
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FIRST ASSAULT ON VICKSBURG.
CHAPTER XIV.
VICKSBURG AND JACKSON.
"Till we called Both field and city ours, we never stood To case our breasts with panting."-Coriolanus.
The army was not able to press into Vicksburg on the heels of the retiring enemy; but by the nineteenth of May it as nearly invested the city as its strength would permit, Sherman's corps lying on the right, McPherson's in the centre and McClernand's on the left.
Allowing no time for the recuperation of Pemberton, or for the advance of Johnston, who, with large reinforcements, was close at hand, General Grant, at two o'clock in the after- noon, moved to a general assault. His left and centre suc- ceeded simply in getting good positions nearer the works with little loss. Sherman engaged in severe battle, Blair's division struggled under fire through rugged ravines, which were choked with standing and felled timber, and three of his regiments, one of which was the Eighty-Third Indiana, gained the exterior slope of the Rebel earthworks only to be withdrawn at night.
During twenty days, the troops had but five days rations, and the gleanings of the country. They now received sup- plies which Admiral Porter brought up the Yazoo and landed near Haines' bluff.
Neither General Grant nor his army was willing to sit down to the regular and tedious approaches of a siege, until another assault had been attempted. His soldiers, it is said, "felt as if they could march straight through Vicksburg and up to their waists in the Mississippi without resistance." Accord- ingly, roads were constructed, cannon were planted and all necessary preparations were rapidly made. The hour was
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
set at ten in the forenoon of Friday, the twenty-second. Or- ders were given for columns of attack to advance with fixed bayonets, and without firing a gun till they had stormed the outer works.
During Thursday night and until nearly noon of Friday, Admiral Porter kept six mortars firing into the city, and much of the time engaged the batteries along the river with his gunboats. At three o'clock in the morning all the batteries of the besiegers opened, and a tremendous cannonade began. Fire girdled and lashed the city. Smoke hovered over and dropped down upon it. Unbroken, overwhelming roars shook it to its centre, and rocked hills and waters.
At ten the cannonade ceased; a sixty-four pounder pealed forth a signal; the troops on right, left and centre moved with stern faces and swift steps from under cover toward redoubts, bastions, pits and forts in which the Rebels were well sheltered and were keenly on the alert. Steele, on Sherman's right and resting upon the Mississippi, rose over hills and plunged into gullies, advancing with desperate fight- ing. Sharpshooters skirmished in front of Blair's division, which was a half mile to the left of Steele's; a storming party,-a forlorn hope,-carried rails to bridge the ditch; Ewing's brigade, Giles Smith's and Kilby Smith's followed, and for a little while, under the partial shelter of the road and the protection of five batteries, which concentrated their fire on a bastion commanding the approach, made rapid pro- gress. Suddenly the head of the column came under a ter- rifie fire and was fairly beaten down. But Ewing's brigade pressed on, crossed the ditch, climbed the outer slope of a bastion which commanded the approach, and set its colors on the outside of the parapet. Giles Smith's brigade swerved to the left, and finding or making cover, formed line three hundred yards to the left of the bastion. Kilby Smith also found a good position and fired on every head peering above the parapet. Giles Smith, with Ransom, of McPherson's corps, attempted at last to storm the parapet. They were repulsed with fearful loss.
Of MePherson's corps, Ransom had the right, in ravines, Logan was in the centre, on the main Jackson road, and
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317
SECOND ASSAULT ON VICKSBURG.
Quimby had the left, also in ravines. Their assault was not less daring, nor bloody, nor vain.
A. J. Smith was on Quimby's left. Carr joined Smith's left. Osterhaus was next, Hovey was still further to the left, Mc Clernand's advance was comparatively steady and con- tinuous, but not the less was it also a bloody failure.
Lawler's and Landrum's brigades, at the first rush carried ditch, slope and bastion, a dozen men even gaining the inte- rior of one of the forts.
Burbridge wound along a hollow, up a ridge, crossed the ditch and climbed the slope of a strong earthwork, planting his colors on the left and standing side by side with Benton.
General Benton, on the extreme right of McClernand's corps, and on the right of the Jackson railroad, marched to the attack with steady tread and compressed lips.
His regiments, the Eighteenth in reserve, moved by the flank along a hollow, which ran directly to the fort. When about half way up they turned and passed over the ridge on the left, receiving a killing fire of musketry and cannister. "Come on, my brave Thirty-Third, I will lead you!" shouted Colonel Shunk, as he saw the field officers of the Thirty- Third Illinois had fallen and that the regiment was without a leader. At the word the faltering Thirty-Third sprang for- ward, and with the Eighth came within fifty yards of the fort.
Scarcely ten minutes from the moment of starting had elapsed when the Eighteenth was ordered in advance. The men pressed forward with bounding steps, turning neither to the right nor left, and proudly bearing the battle-flag from height to height. The gallant Washburn led directly to the fort, from whose embrasures torrents of death poured, and over whose ramparts a serried line of bayonets glittered. Fifty men on the right of the regiment rushed into the deep, wide ditch, while the remainder crowded up to its edge, Ser- geant Francis M. Voss planting the colors there. Over the ramparts and into the embrasures they poured an incessant fire. The fort was silenced.
Meanwhile, the fifty men in the ditch found they could get out on neither side, and wrote a line to that effect, wrapping the paper round a lump of earth and throwing it over to
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
their comrades. An answer was written on the same paper and thrown back, while a trench into the ditch was com- menced as soon as the tools eould be obtained. A third line was added by the men in the ditch, with the intelligence that they were making steps with their bayonets, by which they could effect an escape, and again the paper was thrown up. It fell at the feet of a man who was unaware of the previous communication. Supposing it to be a taunt from the fort, he instantly hurled it over to the Rebels. Soon round shells with lighted fuses, rolled from the top of the fort into the ditch, announced that the Rebels had read the dispatches. But fortunately the bayonet steps were completed, and the men were already clambering out.
To the joy of Benton and Burbridge, Crocker, with two brigades, came to their relief shortly before dark, marching directly in the face and fire of the enemy and over multi- tudes of dead and dying. But the Rebels, relieved at other points, had massed their forees here, and all that could be done was to guard against a charge by digging a rifle-pit across the road, running round the right of the fort; by keeping up an ineessant fire till darkness would give an op- portunity to retire. A piece of artillery was dragged up the hollow by a long rope, and planted within a few yards of the large embrasure in the corner of the fort, into which it hurled shell after shell. The Rebels, much annoyed, rolled a bale of cotton into the embrasure. The Eighteenth set the cotton on fire, by sending with each ball a wad of tow, with which almost every man had provided himself from the artillery cartridge boxes for the purpose of wiping out his gun. The bale was rolled away, and the interior of the fort again ex- posed.
Meantime, in a renewed assault made by the centre and right to distract the forces concentrating on M'Clernard, Steele was severely repulsed, although not driven from the hillside beneath the Rebel parapet; Tuttle succeeded in placing his colors on the works in a line with Blair, and MePherson could make no progress. On the extreme left, Osterhaus and Hovey assaulted, and were repulsed.
Never was night, and never were clouds and rain more
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BROTHERS IN ARMS.
welcome. Under their friendly cover and coolness, the as- sailants slowly withdrew, leaving nearly three thousand wounded and dead, who could not be carried from the field.
The Eighth Indiana lost one hundred and seventeen. Among its slain were three Captains-O'Daniels, Wysong and Vandevender. Corporal John Swafford, who was slightly wounded at Port Gibson, while carrying the flag, was here mortally wounded. As he fell, Sergeant Samuel Webb grasped the colors and planted them on the ramparts of the fort.
Major John C. Jencks, of the Eighteenth, acting as chief of Benton's staff, while waving his sword and eheering his comrades onward, received a rifle-shot in the thigh, from the effects of which he died a few days afterward, regretted by all for his excellence as an officer and a man.
The Sixty-Ninth lost nineteen. Major John H. Finley and Lieutenant Henry Stratton were mortally wounded.
The Sixty-Seventh lost fifty-two.
The Fifty-Ninth, which was attached to Boomer's brigade until Crocker moved to the relief of Burbridge and Benton, lost one hundred and thirteen.
On Sunday afternoon following the assault, the enemy, by flag of truce, having agreed to the burial of the dead, a burial party found on the field two privates of the Eight- eenth Indiana-one, with a wounded arm, tending the other with a shattered leg. The former might have escaped, but he would not leave his helpless comrade, whom he provided with food from the haversacks, and drink from the canteens of the dead. They were immediately carried to a hospital, where it was found necessary to cut off both the wounded limbs.
An incident which occurred during the assault also illus- trates the strength of the tic between comrades. Two privates of the Sixty-Seventh, having worked their way to the embra- sures of one of the forts, were reconnoitring, when they re- ceived a volley from the enemy. One was hit and disabled. He was immediately taken on the back of the other and car- ried safely into camp, although the exertion was so great as to render the bearer unfit for duty for sometime afterwards.
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
The following story is told of Peter Apple, a private in the Eleventh Indiana: He was a recruit, and comparatively unfamiliar with drill, consequently when the army recoiled under the Rebel fire, he dashed on, looking neither this side nor that until he reached a Rebel gun, when, catching a gun- ner by the collar, he retreated, dragging his prisoner with him. Almost breathless when he reached the Federal lines, he was yet able to say, "Boys, why didn't you come on? Every fellow might have got one!"
The following letter is from A. E. Lemmon, a private in the Thirty-Fourth :
"I am still able for rations, but if we havn't gone through some liard knocks since I wrote you, I am no judge. Our division, General Carr's, has been in five successive engage- ments. Since the first of May, we met the enemy posted in very strong positions-Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, and at Black river bridge. We have driven him from one position to another, until we have taken up our present position in rear of Vicksburg, and we are here knocking as if we intended to enter. I suppose you have heard that we made an assault upon their works, and that our division lost, in killed and wounded, about two hundred. We did succeed in planting the 'Stars and Stripes' upon one of their forts, but were forced to retire. This thing of charging upon a second Gib- raltar is no fun. 'I won't take any more, if you please,' neither, I think, will our generals.
" Yesterday we buried our dead under a flag of truce. The Rebs met us half way, and we had a social chat."
Whatever might have been the feeling if no assault had been attempted, both General Grant and his army were now satisfied to work and worm their way by regular siege.
General Grant had been under a misapprehension in regard to the number and spirit of Pemberton's force, occasioned by the rapidity and disorder of its retreat from Black river. That force was now most formidable. Falling back through the fortifications of Vicksburg, and taking position behind them, it had been comforted and inspirited by the extraordi- nary aspect of strength displayed both by the natural and artificial defences. Reinforced also by eight thousand fresh
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PREPARATIONS FOR THE SIEGE.
troops who had remained in the city, it now amounted to upward of thirty thousand, slightly outnumbering the army which attempted the assault.
Grant's troops were the better satisfied to make slow and cautious advances, as the situation was not unhealthy, and not, by any means, the most disagreeable of their experience.
Sparkling springs, pleasant breezes and the cool shades of the forest refreshed all the camps.
The corps retained their relative positions, McPherson in the centre, on either hand Sherman and McClernand. In the course of the siege McClernand was superseded by Gen- eral Ord. The Rebel centre was commanded by Forney, its right by Stevenson, and its left by Bowen. Pemberton was ill prepared for a siege. He had rations for not more than thirty days, one meal a day, and but a small amount of am- munition. Nevertheless he declared that he would hold out until the last pound of beef, bacon and flour, the last grain of corn, the last cow, and hog, and horse, and dog should be consumed, and the last man should perish in the trenches. Moreover he was powerfully supported by his superior officer, General Johnston, who soon had a force of twenty thousand or twenty-five thousand at Canton and Jackson, and still received reinforcements.
Thus General Grant, lying between two large hostile armies, required immediate and strong reinforcements. He never suffered for lack of men if men could be obtained, and he now pressed into his investing line, or formed into a re- serve to watch the movements of Johnston, not only all the troops which could be drawn from other points in his depart- ment, but all that his necessity could wring out of the depart- ments of other commanders.
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