USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. II > Part 55
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There is not space here for extracts, though a father might well be content that his "son's literary promise should rest upon the noble thoughts in this composition."
Young Pratt commenced the study of law, but after less than two months in his father's office, he put away his books and entered the army, enlisting for three years in the Nine- teenth Regiment of Regulars. He served in all, two years and nearly eight months,-four months as private in Indian- apolis, nine months as recruiting offiecr in New York, four months at Fort Independence, Boston, and fourteen months in the Army of the Potomac. His healthful spirit found amusement and interest in a private's life, but was impatient of the duties of the recruiting service; and he obeyed with alacrity a summons to the field, received in March, 1863. From this time to the end, with one little exception of a visit to his home, he knew only the camp, the march, the picket line and the battle-field,-an arduous life, but larger than they ever know who live in inglorious ease. It forecd the nature, which had hithertoo been but promise, into fruit, without robbing it of bloom. The young Lieutenant be- came the daring soldier and the considerate officer, but he remained the affectionate child, pleased with his father s praise and fondly dwelling on the thought of home; le plodded patiently through petty duties, yet he set the breezes and the waters of Virginia and the clash of battle to the poet's thoughts. Many stolid years were not worth this keen and vivid life of little more than one year.
Pratt went to the field in command of Company C, Sec- ond battalion, Eleventh infantry, Meade's corps, and remained in command of his company. April 28, before the battle of Chancellorsville, he writes to his father: "If this should, in the fortune of war, be my last letter, let the way my career ended be an excuse for my many shortcomings."
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HIS LAST DAYS.
Not long after the battle he writes: "I have to thank you earnestly for the unusually kind tone of your late letters, and for your commendation, which, coming from your pen, I value as it reads." Certainly commendation was seldom more deserved.
He writes to his sister: "I have been so long from my real home that I sometimes forget it as such, and get to thinking of the pleasant boyhood days spent there-all the cheerful and sad memories connected with its cozy sitting room, and especially the corner on the right of the fire-place, with its work-stand, and little black rocking-chair with a funny crunch-and the times I have knelt before the same little chair and its sainted occupant, and said prayers that must have been heard for the sake of the altar,-as the pleas- ant picture of some author, and not as my experience. This life, somehow, so tends to render everything past as far removed."
In the long march to Gettysburg, through oppressive heat and suffocating dust, and part of the time with bare and blistered feet, he carried himself so cheerfully that he was the pride and delight of his company. The smile in his gray eye lighted up not only his own sunburnt face; it was re- flected in the countenances of his men. On the field he drew pencil lines round "The Charge of the Light Brigade" in a little volume of Tennyson, which he carried in his pocket, marking especially :
"Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die."
What it means "to do and die" perhaps no man knows but him who learns it in the agony of conflict. On the margin of the same poem he wrote:
"FIELD OF GETTYSBURG, July 3, 1863.
"Second brigade of Regulars, nine hundred and fifty strong, charged the enemy July 2, 1863, and came back three hun- dred and nineteen strong. My company, four officers and fifty-seven men, came back from the charge with twenty-two men and onc officer-myself."
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
After crossing the Potomac on the return march toward the Rappahannock, he wrote to his father: "Just as we were leaving the Berlin camp yesterday, I received your let- ters. The mud was forgotten, and the swooping rain, while I read them.
"I enjoy campaigning life as much as ever. Of course there are gloomy times,-after the battle, and marching in a broiling sun, sometimes with a perpetual diarrhoea, making every step a pain, but the excitement and romance of the thing, the pleasurable feeling that you are thought of, and as a history-maker are of some importance in the eyes of your friends and your country, are more than compensations. To be nerved and cheered in trying times by words of commen- dation and incentive, as I am by you, I assure you, is the best tonic for low spirits and blistered feet.
"I am sitting by the roadside with the regiment, waiting for the trains to pass. Do you remember the picture of ' Vir- ginia in 1863,' in Harper's Weekly, lately? It must have been conceived on this very spot. 'The woods and moun- tains are noble, and the distant scenery is magnificent. War cannot affeet it. But elose by is a solitary chimney and a heap of stones, the only remnants of a home. The fences are torn down, out-houses burnt, and soaring in the air is a crew of buzzards, rendering the whole scene mournfully desolate." ·
During the winter, while guarding with his regiment the Orange and Alexandria railroad, Pratt was promoted to the adjutancy.
In May, 1864, on his last mareh, he snatched every oppor- tunity to assure his father, his sister and little brother of his safety. His last words were written May 24, after crossing the North Anna, "Good bye, and God bless you all." In the face of death the soul swells and yearns toward the liv- ing beloved with a mighty power and longing.
Long before the sun had set on the twenty-ninth of May, his sun had gone down. He was carried back four miles, and, wrapped in his blanket, was buried under a lonely locust tree. There he lay unmoved by the thunders of Cold Har- bor. There he lay two months later, when fifty of his class-
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GOING HOME.
mates held at Yale the triennial meeting of the class of '61, and remembered the absent in foreign lands, in distant States, sailing on the sea, in camps, in trenches, in hospitals, in prisons, and in silent graves. The last regular toast of the evening: "The Memory of our Dead," was drunk in silence. Their dead had all fallen in the war. The last was Pratt. " We see him," said one responding to the toast, "on the af- ternoon of that fateful twenty-ninth of May, for one supreme, shining moment,-a gallant figure,-full of the calm valor of conscious heroism ;- his eyes flashing, his face inspired with a fierce glory caught from the storm of battle,-and the next he has fallen, dead, but triumphant."
The class marched over to the college library, there formed about an ivy it had planted three years before, and sang a song he had written for Presentation day. It begins:
"Sadly we say good-bye, mother ! Sadly and gladly, too; With a laugh and with a sigh, mother, We say farewell to you."
In November, 1865, his remains were taken from their Virginia resting-place. "Home we took him," writes Cap- tain Wright, an officer of the same regiment, and a native also of the same town, "first to his soldier's home-his regi- ment,-to those men who had seen his heart, brave and true, by the blare of a thousand cannon, and had known his fine, genial nature by the light of a hundred camp-fires. All day long, as we traveled back through woods, and hills, and val- leys, the thought came of the long hours in winter quarters, where his bright humor never failed us-of dreary marches through Virginia-of nights we have slept under the drench- ing rain-of days of hunger-days of battle, when his cour- age never faltered.
"On reaching the regiment, every honor was shown him that a soldier's love and pride could dictate. The next after- noon the coffin, wrapped in the old flag, was placed on a caisson, drawn by six white horses, preceded by the escort and band. With muffled drum the march into Richmond was made with all that was left of poor Pratt. Often the anticipation of this inarch had fired his soul, yet he must die
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
with the campaign unfinished, the cause unwon! The tri- umph and glory fall cold and unheeded on his coffin.
" We left him at sunset on the way to our old quiet home, where, with our brave young friend, (Captain Palmer Dunn,) he will sleep undisturbed near those they loved so well."
On the twelfth he was buried in Logansport, beside the noble and tender mother, who had lain in her grave two years, unconscious of her son's heroic career. The Rev. Mr. Post praised his brave and beautiful character, awarding him the meed of an illustrious life, though his days were few, and his end was in the wild, dark turmoil of bloody strife.
A beautiful military monument, with suitable devices and inscriptions of the battles in which he participated, has been erected over his grave.
,
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BETWEEN THE LINES.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE CAPTURE AND ESCAPE OF LIEUTENANT DAVIS, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF HUNTER'S RETREAT INTO WEST VIRGINIA.
While, on the sixth of May, the Wilderness was full of struggling combatants, the Indiana Seventh was retreating before a closely pursuing force, and its wounded were crying not to be deserted, Lieutenant Davis, of Company F, heard his own name uttered in a tone of entreaty. Looking round, he saw Charles Shephard on the ground, his left thigh broken. He ran to the wounded man, lifted him on a gum blanket, and with three others, who came to his assistance, endeavored to carry the burden to a place of safety. But a few steps had been taken when Davis was struck in the fleshy part of the right thigh by a musket ball. In an instant he was on the ground, the three other bearers were gone, and the Rebel line was passing over him. He grew blind with loss of blood, but exerted himself to check the flow by tying his handker- chief tight round the wound. The enemy swept back over him, and he lay three hours between the opposing lines, un- der a heavy musketry fire. A bullet struck his left thigh, a spent ball struck his hip, and a ball passed through his haver- sack within an inch of his face, but he was not sufficiently frightened nor hurt to lose consciousness. He made one at- tempt to crawl to the Union line, but both legs were numb, and he was so weak that he could drag himself not more than ten feet.
In the afternoon, the Union troops being out of sight, and three Rebel lines having swept over, for a time the fallen had possession of the field. Suddenly, to the horror of the living, fire was seen creeping over the ground, fed by dry leaves, which were thick. All who could move tried to get beyond the plank road, which the fire could not cross. Some were
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
overtaken by the flames when they had crawled but a few feet, and some when they had almost reached the road. The ground, which had been strown with dead and wounded, was, in a few hours, blackened and ashy, with no distinguishable figure upon it. The young Lieutenant, on the safe side of the road, witnessed the horrible spectacle, alike unable to shut it out, or to give assistance.
A band of plunderers searched the wounded and stripped the dead who escaped the fire. Later a detail of Rebel sol- diers bestowed humane attentions where they were needed, although some of these visitants were a little troublesome in their anxiety for trophies, one carrying off Davis' hat to "re- member him by."
On the seventh Davis and Shephard were taken two miles to a field hospital in the woods. They were laid on blankets on the ground, and left without shelter. On the twelfth it rained nearly all night, and the next day Shephard died. He had borne his sufferings, which were increased by a second wound, received after the battle, with great patience, thinking he would recover, until the day before he died; but he was resigned to death.
The first of June Davis, with nineteen others, was taken to a convalescent hospital, a mile from Lynchburg. On the ninth, alarmed by a report that, on account of the approach of General Hunter, they were to be sent to Americus, Geor- gia, where prisoners died at the rate of a hundred a day, Davis and Sergeant Griffin, of a Pennsylvania regiment, de- termined to escape. Davis was scarcely able to walk, even with the assistance of crutches, and Griffin was also very lame from a wound in his left hip. It was not likely that two such candidates for liberty would meet with success, but the race is not always to the swift.
Davis may tell the remainder of the story:
"June 10. Philander Chick, a prisoner from Mainc, will help us get out. He is wounded in the liver, and whatever he drinks is afterwards caught in a sponge as it runs from his wound. Chick is to occupy the attention of one of the guards in the early part of the night, thus giving us our chance. I put my rations and other things in my haversack,
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TWO LAME MEN RUN AWAY.
put on my socks and boots, and folded my blanket, dressed my wounds, tied a bandage round my body, then fastened strips to that and to the bandage on my wound, to keep them from working down.
"Eleventh. At half past ten last night, Chick took the guard away from the front of the tent, and Griffin and I walked out. We met with no difficulty. At daybreak we came to an opening near the railroad, and were obliged to hide ourselves in a ravine until dark.
"Twelfth. Started at dark last night, but were not able to cross the railroad unobserved until eleven. At five we kindled a fire in a deep hollow, in a dense wood, and made some tea from a little I had kept since I was captured, and ate all the food we had brought with us.
"Griffin has a quart cup, but we have no knife. For sup- per we steeped the tea leaves of this morning's tea, and after we started found some strawberries.
"Thirteenth. We traveled nearly two miles on a public road last night, without meeting any one. Near a farm house I tried to milk some cows, but they kicked furiously. We made some tea for breakfast, although we had no bread.
" We climbed a hill by hard work and asked at a house for something to eat. A woman who opened the door surveyed us from head to foot,-then asked what company we be- longed to. I replied, "General Grant's." She stared at us, then drew back as if intending to shut the door, but stopped to ask what we were doing there. We told her all the truth, and again asked for something to eat. She said, " You know that I ought not to let you have anything, but my son was a prisoner in the North, and was well treated by soldiers and citizens, so I'll do the best I can for you." Our meal was zoon ready. We asked the old lady to bake us some bread for the next day, but she refused on account of the price of flour, which she said was five hundred dollars a barrel. She had no coffee nor sugar, and only a few pounds of salt. She had not seen green tea for two years. She allowed us to take five biscuits and some milk. We paid two Confederate elollars.
" We walked on in the woods until noon, when we hid in
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a laurel thicket. Crows came into the trees near us and cawed so noisily that we were afraid they would betay us. Yesterday and the day before they did the same thing. It is the habit of the crow to make a great noise over any strange object near his nest.
"At sundown we started, but we came to a public road which we did not dare to cross until dark. Meantime we visited an onion patch and took several dozen onions.
"Fourteenth. Were up at four looking for a way out of the laurel. At sun up we emerged and found ourselves again at a farm house with a public road at the farther side. Three days and four nights were now gone and only fourteen miles passed over. We crossed over ridges and hollows which be- came higher and deeper until the hills were mountains. From a slave, at work in a field, we learned that all able-bodied men had been conscripted. After passing over a mountain, we came to a hill-side farm, which consisted of two fields of grain, a small meadow, and a thrifty young apple orchard, with a neat log cabin and small out-buildings near. The whole was enclosed by lofty mountains, through which there was but one outlet, and formed a beautiful picture. Seeing no men about, we resolved to ask for dinner. The woman who met us at the door seemed frightened, and was very pale. She at first said she had nothing for us, but after we told her who we were, she offered to bake us some bread and set us some dinner. We rested in the house while she went into the kitchen. The puncheon floor and clapboard loft, white-washed walls, home-made furniture, and gun rack over the door, reminded me of descriptions I had read of a moun- taineer's cabin. Everything was neat. While we were eat- ing, Mrs. Glass, our hostess, told us that her husband was loyal, that he had kept out of the army until two weeks before, when he was taken away by a squad of soldiers to guard bridges. She said there were only a few white men in the country, but enough to make it dangerous for escaped prisoners. She looked forward anxiously to the time when the blue coats would oceupy Bedford county. She would stay at home and give what information she could. She. hoped Lincoln's proclamation would free every slave in the
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A LOYAL VIRGINIAN.
South, that he would be re-elected and that Southern lead- érs would be treated as traitors should be. She did not know what would become of her growing crops, nor did she know where the next pound of flour and the next side of bacon were to come from, nor how her five little children and herself were to be clothed, but she insisted on our taking with us all that was left on the table, with six loaves of bread which she baked for us while we were there. She re- fused to take pay, saying that her husband had told her never to turn off a Union soldier, nor charge him for what he ate, and that she was glad to be able to do something for her country. As we had no knife, she gave us one from her table. Feeling that we were taking from the truly loyal, who would themselves soon be in need, we left seven dollars on the table.
"Our route is rugged and circuitous, on account of laurel thickets which are impassable.
"Fifteenth. We woke at four and started on our journey, rejoicing that the world went as well with us as it did. We are not at all disheartened, although our wounds are very sore, my ankles are both sprained, one hand is blistered, and we are weak and obliged to rest often.
"At ten we came to a large opening, with several houses in view; we could find no way to flank them and were obliged to cross the fields, and pursue the open road for a half mile before we could reach a wood. A citizen met us and ques- tioned us so closely that our fears were excited; and when we saw him a short time afterward in company with another man, and each carrying a gun, we crept into some thick ivy bushes, and cutting some of them out of the way, spread a blanket and lay down to await events. Several men armed with rifles passed near us repeatedly, noticing and talking over our tracks, and at last one pushed the bushes aside and looked in. I saw every feature of his face, and might have told the color of his eye. I stopped breathing, and had it been possible, would have stopped my heart, lest he should hear its thump, thump. But he turned and went away as if he did not see us.
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"Sixteenth. We still wandered on our weary way, climb- ing up, up, up hills that seemed to have no top, then going down, down, down hills that seemed to have no bottom, all the time clinging to bushes and rocks to keep from falling a hundred feet or more. Sometimes we slipped to the hips among loose stones. Griffin has sprained both wrists falling.
"At last we came to a house in a hollow, the first we had seen since yesterday evening. It looked poverty-stricken, and the occupants said they had not a dust of meal or flour, had no meat and would starve soon. Further down the val- ley, an old man, hoeing corn, recognized us as Yankees, smiled and said that he always told the old woman the Yall- kees would come some day. Dropping his hoe when he heard our story, he invited us into his house and said he had but little, but we should have a part of that. He called his daughter, who was also at work in the field, to come and see the Yankees and get them some dinner. His house was a very old log cabin, with a fire-place about eight feet wide. The old woman was 'up in the loft,' but came down. The old people believed that the Yankees were coming with their families to settle aud ' Yankeeize' (civilize) Virginia. Think- ing that if 'ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise,' I did not tell them that a Yankee would not live in such a place.
"Eighteenth. Started at half past four, walked nearly five miles, trying at every house to get breakfast, and got ouly two small biscuits and one small piece of corn bread. Stop- ped at several houses for dinner before we found one where there was anything, and here there was only a chicken which a woman had killed for her children. She insisted that we should take it all. We ate some, but we could not think of taking the last bite from her innocent ones. She is strong Union, and considers slavery the cause of the war. We gave her a five dollar greenback.
"Near the village of New London, we were halted by a man in gray, who, with a musket pointed at us, ordered us to surrender. Having no arms, we did as we were bid, and our captor led us into an old shop, where, taking out a heavy revolver, he ordered us to deliver our money and the other valuables we possessed. We again did as ordered. Leaving
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HUNTER'S RETREAT.
seven cents (Southerners are above using cents) in my purse, he handed it to me again, keeping a five dollar bill, which was all I had.
"In the evening, we met Hunter's pontoon train, and were taken up by an ambulance. The army is retreating, and we hear heavy firing.
"Nineteenth. Went early this morning to General Sulli- van, now commanding the First division of the Army of the Shenandoah. He welcomed us, gave me an order for trans- portation in the division train, also an order for two days' rations for each of us. The army is short of ammunition and rations. Growing crops serve for pasture, cavalry scour and forage through the country, several miles on each side of the road.
"Twenty-first. At daybreak we reached Salem, sixty iniles from Lynchburg. There must be nearly a thousand negroes following, male and female, old and young, all aiming to get their liberty. Will earn it by hardship and starvation, but let them, it's their choice. A great many refugees follow the army.
"A dash was made this morning by about two hundred Rebels, on our train. The carriages of six pieces of artillery were destroyed, and the horses captured. We crossed Fort Lewis and Catawba Mountains, on the road to New Castle. The first was blockaded by fallen timber. The wagons are heavily laden with sick, wounded and worn-out. All who could had to walk up the mountain. The team drawing the omnibus gave out before reaching the top of the Catawba mountain. I received permission to ride in an ammunition wagon. We went into camp on Catawba creek. There again dressed my wounds, which are no better than when I left Lynchburg.
"Twenty-second. The train and head of column started out early this morning in a north-west direction, found the road blockaded by falling timber. We came back to a road leading north; it is so stony I cannot ride with any ease. I walked about five miles up North Mountain, from the top of which the road follows down Gap branch, a small, rapid
42
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
and crooked stream, to Craig's creek, which it crosses three times, thence over Craig Mountains to New Castle, where we arrived at eight in the evening. The valley, at the widest place, is not five miles wide. I am with some of the boys of the First West Virginia regiment, with which we were brigaded during the spring and summer of 1862. They treat me like a brother, sharing their scanty rations with me.
"Twenty-fifth. Our rations are about gone. I had trou- ble to find among all my friends enough for my breakfast and dinner. Sinee leaving Lynchburg, the army has had no rations, except what was gathered from the country. Since leaving Salem, there has been nothing in the country, and about four hundred horses and mules have been shot. Two hundred horses and mules were left by the train on Middle Mountain, to be shot by the vanguard, and twenty-five wa- gons to be burned.
"Men, from fatigue and hunger, begin to drop out of ranks, and lie down at the side of the road. If not taken and put into wagons, they would die there. Many are with- out shoes, and stain the sharp stones and the roads over which they drag themselves, with their blood. I sometimes think it is a little doubtful about getting out of the moun- tains. Left White Sulphur Springs this afternoon, and moved on.
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