USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. II > Part 56
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"Twenty-sixth. We went into park at two, and slept till sunrise. For breakfast, had coffee and bread, not enough to keep soul and body together long, but more than thousands. have who are walking. There is no grass for the mules.
"Twenty-seventh. Started at daylight, and crossed Big Sewell Mountain. My wounds are improving, so that I now walk up all the mountain slopes. The mules and horses are so poor they can scarcely get along at all. Men have nothing to cat. Some gnaw birch bark as they walk along, some make mush of wheat-bran while resting, some boil wheat. Three men are said to have died of hunger yesterday; their last words were a cry for bread. I think hundreds creep in the bushes and perish from fatigue and hunger. The wagons are all loaded with played-out, sick and wounded.
659
HUNTER'S RETREAT.
"At seven in the morning the supply train came in from Loop creek, on the Kanawha, guarded by details from the One Hundred and Sixty-Seventh Regiment Ohio National Guards. There is not a full day's ration for the men, who scem desperate. Some threaten to rally on the commissary, but are kept back by the guards, who give all their bread to the starved ones, and go away hungry. At dusk, the cav- alry passed to the front; nearly half are dismounted, and the horses of the others are skeletons.
"Twenty-eighth. The train pulled out at five. The roads are very muddy, but more level. At ten in the morning parked for an hour. We passed Sullivan's division at noon, in camp near a supply train. We supposed we would stop soon and get some rations, but we did not. At two in the afternoon we came to some crackers in a field, guarded by one man. The men went out and broke open the boxes, and took what they wanted. A whole box was brought to the wagon in which I was riding. We filled haversacks and pockets, and set it out for others. I ate crackers until I had cholera morbus. We passed Lover's Leap and Hawk's Nest, both nearly a thousand feet perpendicularly above the river.
"Twenty-ninth. We ferried over the Gauley, and went into camp. I went in a wagon to Loop Creek Landing, to Hunter's headquarters.
" Thirtieth. Took breakfast with the staff. Hunter is sick in an ambulance. The roads are good, and we went fifteen miles to Camp Pratt.
"July 1. The train started last night at dark. At Charles- ton I obtained an order for transportation to hospital in In- dianapolis, for treatment. I arrived at Gallipolis in the evening.
"Second. Left Gallipolis last night, in an ambulance, for Portland, where I took railroad for Cincinnati. My cloth- ing is 'so soiled and threadbare, not having had a change since the first of May, that I am ashamed to be seen. The passengers took dinner at Chillicothe. Having but seven cents, I did not get out. A gentleman who left his carpet bag in my care brought me my dinner. Yesterday on the
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
boat a wounded Captain of Ohio cavalry paid for my dinner and supper. Thus, since leaving Lynchburg, June 19, I have met a friend at every time of need.
Third. Arrived in Indianapolis and stayed all day in Soldiers' Home. I am so poorly dressed that I am ashamed to be seen on the streets.
" Fourth. I reported at the City Hospital, and received permission to go home-where I arrived at dusk. I was not expected. After the battle of the Wilderness, they supposed me killed, until they received my letter of May 19. Had I been at home, or inside the Federal lines, money would not have tempted me to walk five miles. Nothing could have induced me but the intolerable thieves and fear of death from starvation and mistreatment.
" WILLIAM DAVIS,
Second Lieutenant, Company F, Seventh Regiment."
661
GRANT AND LEE SOUTH OF THE JAMES.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
BEFORE PETERSBURG.
On General Smith's return to Bermuda Hundreds from the Chickahominy, he was hurried against Petersburg, toward which the van of Lee's army was already marching. Peters- burg, twenty-two miles south of Richmond, was a railroad centre, commanding all the lines of supply for an army cov- cring the Capital, nevertheless it was defended by but a mea- gre force in the forenoon of June 15, when Smith approached, and though he deferred assault until near sundown, was still so ill-manned as to be unable to hold its main north-east de- fenees, with which it lost three hundred prisoners and sixteen guns. Smith was reinforced by Hancock, but he contented himself with relieving his own troops by posting Birney's division in the captured trenches. Before morning, by the arrival of Lee's advance, the fall of Petersburg, but now so imminent, was indefinitely postponed.
During the sixteenth the hosts of both Lee and Grant came up, and once more made ready for a death grapple. It was the fifth time since the advance from Culpepper that Lee's army had thrown itself across the path of the Army of the Potomac. Four times it had been dislodged, not onee con- quered, and in this new position of unequalled strength it was as haughty and defiant as ever. A battle-night followed, beginning at dusk and ending at dawn. It was a death grapple to many hundred men, but the two armies outlived it. Birney and Burnside stormed the out-works in their front, but other commanders made no progress. On the night of the seventeenth the enemy retook from Burnside all his hard-won gains. On the morning of the eighteenth Grant's army moved forward to a general assault, but find- ing that the enemy had withdrawn to a new and stronger
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
line, it delayed until afternoon, when it was repulsed with heavy loss.
The wounded were taken to City Point, where the Chris- tian and Sanitary Commissions, and the State Military Agencies had just selected a location for the post hospital. Not a single article of sanitary stores had been unloaded when, at sundown, seven hundred wounded were lifted out of ambulances and laid on the ground; yet by cleven o'clock the boats were unloaded, tents were up, beds were in the tents, and the wounded were laid on the beds. Mrs. New, who had followed her husband, the surgeon of the Seventh, from the beginning, always finding employment for her ready and skillful hands in the hospitals, was now at City Point. She went to her tent, about eleven, to change her dress, as she had lifted the wounded until it was covered with blood. A German woman, one of Miss Dix's nurses, followed her to say that a wounded man in a distant tent had addressed her as Mrs. New, and had been disappointed on discovering his mistake. Mrs. New set out at once to visit the man. He was in a tent with twenty, and was one of seven, who had each lost a leg. His face was so white and his voice was so weak that she scarcely recognized him as Gillett Stevenson, of the Seventh. He had lost a great quantity of blood both before and during the amputation, (cases re- quiring immediate amputation were usually attended to on the field, and his was one of that class,) but he had kept up his courage until he was within two miles of City Point. He then grew so weak that he thought he must die. "I cer- tainly shall die," he added, "if you can't get me something to eat." "My poor friend," said Mrs. New, "I don't believe I have a crumb." She found, however, two slices of bread and a pickle, and two bottles of wine, and with this small store she refreshed Mr. Stevenson and his six fellow sufferers.
It was not long before caldrons were put up all over the ground, and fires were kindled. The most exhausted received soup before light, and by morning an ample breakfast was ready for all. The next day the city of tents was put in or- der, the space being enlarged, streets laid out and bowers made; the rough wheat-field was made smooth and hard, and
663
ATTEMPTS TO TURN THE ENEMY'S RIGHT.
was swept as clean as a floor. The magic of love never per- formed such wonders as in the rear of our advancing army. Every luxury which could be desired was provided. The nurses and surgeons, and the commissions and State agen- cies were indefatigable. As far as was within human power their labors were commensurate with the requirements of the summer.
The Thirteenth Indiana, having fought until the last day of its term of service, turned its face homeward on the nine- teenth, leaving behind a battalion of three companies of vet- erans and volunteers, under the command of Captain Zent, who, from the soldier, distinguished in West Virginia for shrewdness and daring as a scout, had become an officer of unusual ability.
In the latter part of June the Nineteenth and Twentieth ended their terms of service. Three hundred of the Nine- teenth remained. The battalions of the Fourteenth and Twentieth were consolidated. By the middle of summer not a thousand Indianians remained in the army.
Hope of storming the front of Petersburg was for a long time relinquished, and the Fifth and Ninth corps intrenched themselves within three hundred yards of the Rebel fortifica- tions, while the Second and Sixth corps undertook to turn the enemy's right, and to sever his southern railroad commu- nications. They moved slowly and disconnectedly, in dust and heat, through a difficult country, and directly under the eye of General A. P. Hill, who, at an unfortunate moment, outflanked the Second corps, forcing Mott's, (formerly Bir- ney's,) division to retreat with loss, and capturing several whole regiments of Gibbon's division. The Weldon rail- road, however, was reached on the twenty-third of June, and operations for its destruction were commenced. They were only commenced. Hill again made a successful attack, and established his force strongly on the disputed road.
A cavalry expedition, which started out at the same time, June 22, went further and fared worse. It was under the command of Wilson, and consisted of Wilson's and Kautz's divisions. Marching by way of Ream's Station and Din- widdie Court House, the advance met with no opposition,
664
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
while the rear, Chapman's brigade, was compelled to take up one position after another along the route of march, in order to repel the enemy, who kept up a close pursuit from Ream's Station until night. The command resumed the march an hour before light the next day, proceeding westward. Kautz's division, in advance, moving rapidly, Wilson's division tear- ing up the south side railroad track. About one in the after- noon, near Nottoway Court House, Chapman was attacked by W. H. F. Lee's division of cavalry, part of which had pur- sued him the day before. A severe action followed, main- tained chiefly by dismounted men, on account of the wooded character of the country. Lee was bent on dislodging Chapman from the railroad, and continued the struggle un- til night, but he failed, and was erippled to such an extent that he gave little trouble afterward. Chapman's brigade remained in line of battle all night. The next day it followed the route of march to the Danville railroad, where the two divisions formed a junction. Proceeding southward, the com- mand destroyed the track and bridges as far as Keysville, where at night it bivouacked.
On the twenty-fifth, still destroying the track, the force proceeded to Staunton river, the bridge over which Kautz endeavored to destroy, while Chapman, in the rear, engaged Lee's cavalry, which was again in pursuit. The bridge was well defended, and Kautz was unsuccessful. At two the next morning the raiding column began its return march. The weather continued dry and extremely hot, the roads were dusty, and the long marches, which it was necessary to make day by day, were exhausting to men and horses. Late in the afternoon of the twenty-eighth the force found the enemy, Hampton's cavalry division and about a thousand infantry, across the line of march, strongly posted, and covered by a dense forest. Wilson endeavored to push his way through, fighting until long after dark, but though not driven baek, he was unable to advance. The engagement took place about two miles from the crossing of the Weldon railroad over Stony creek, and in woods which compelled the men to dismount.
665
CHAPMAN TRIES TO HOLD THE ENEMY.
Before daylight on the morning of the twenty-ninth, Gen- eral Wilson decided to cross over to the 'old stage road' with his command, thus flanking on the west, or right, the position held by the enemy on Stony creek, and endeavor to force a crossing of the Weldon railroad at Ream's Station. Chap- man was ordered to move a hundred yards in rear of the po- sition held during the night, and to stand until notified that the rest of the command was under way. He took up the new line, and hastily constructed rude breastworks of logs and rails. The line of battle was formed dismounted. Just at daylight the enemy made a heavy attack in front, and on both flanks, and penetrating between the men and the led- horses, compelled an abandonment of the line. The brigade fell back hastily and in disorder, and gained the horses with no little difficulty. Of quite a number who failed to reach their horses, some were captured, and some worked their way on foot into the lines of the Army of the Potomac, after being out several days, and undergoing severe fatigue and privations. About three hundred, together with Colonel Chapman, being cut off from the road by which the main body of the column had moved, were compelled to make a detour of ten or twelve miles, and did not succeed in rejoin- ing the column until they were near Ream's Station, where they found it engaged with a division of Rebel infantry and two divisions of cavalry, and in a very critical position. Only immediate retreat could prevent the capture of the en- tire force. Accordingly the wagons were burned, the ambu- lances containing the wounded were abandoned, and though an attempt was made to carry it off, the artillery, too, was finally left behind. Kautz's division struck off into a thick forest and made its way to the Army of the Potomac with- out much difficulty.
Wilson's division held to the road, and marching all night, recrossed the Nottoway river at the Double Bridges, and passed the Weldon railroad soon after daylight on the thir- tieth. It forded the Nottoway about noon and halted on the north bank several hours. At six in the evening, it resumed the march, and at midnight reached the Blackwater. The bridge was destroyed, as were all the bridges on the route,
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
and the river was not fordable. The troops constructed a bridge, and the entire command crossed to the north side soon after sunrise on the morning of the first of July. Hastening on, it reached Cabin point, where, being at last out of dan- ger, it encamped. The force was exhausted by the march, and had suffered severely in the engagement of the twenty- ninth, but the raid had effected good results, as it had seri- ously damaged the railroads by which Lee's army received its supplies.
In two weeks which had now elapsed, the only permanent advantage acquired by the army was an extension of the line on both flanks. Hancock had position on the left, not more than three miles east of the Weldon railroad, and Brigadier General Foster, with a brigade of the Fourth corps, which was now under command of General Birney, held an in- trenched camp on the extreme right, at Deep Bottom, only ten miles from Richmond, and very near its defences at How- lett's. A pontoon bridge connected Deep Bottom with But- ler's stronghold at Bermuda Hundreds. Earthworks on this long line were constructed and armed, with the interruption of frequent skirmishing and several assaults from the enemy.
Efforts to push up the intrenchment lines closer to Peters- burg, to connect and strengthen the works, and to crect new works, with picket duty, employed the troops day and night. Whenever working parties went out, especially at night, they were fired on, and a brisk exchange of shots, or, if bat- teries covered the fatigue parties, a general cannonade sprang up. Butler's and Burnside's corps, which were on the right and right centre, seemed to be especially obnoxious to the enemy's attacks. The summer was exceedingly dry and in- tensely hot; the earth was parched and the sky was brazen.
Happily the Sanitary Commission came to the relief of the sufferers, as they may well be called, in the trenches, placing tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and other anti-scorbu- tics, as well as clean clothes, directly in their hands.
July 19, the first thorough rain since the encampment at Spottsylvania, fell. It began early in the morning and con- tinued into the night.
Hing aby G E Ferme & CO MI
12 5. FI STEL, LFEV. MAITT
667
BURNSIDE'S MINE.
Preparatory to a grand assault, which was to occur on the thirtieth of July, Hancock, with the Second corps, marched rapidly to the extreme right, crossed the James at Deep Bot- tom, and, reinforced by Foster, carried the Rebel outpost, capturing four guns and endeavored to approach Chapin's bluff opposite Fort Darling. Unsuccessful in the last effort, he assumed and held a defensive attitude until Lee had drawn more than half his army to the north of the James, when he secretly withdrew to the lines of Petersburg.
A fort, projecting from the enemy's front toward Burn- side's position, had been undermined, and was to be blown up, both as the signal and the opening for the assault. At the set time, before day had yet dawned, a storming column consisting of the Ninth corps, supported by the Eighteenth, with the Second in reserve on its right, and the Fifth on its left, closely massed, awaited the signal, of the nature of which the men were, of course, ignorant. Suddenly the fort, with its sleeping garrison of three hundred men, rose trembling two hundred feet in the air, and hanging a few seconds, fell back in fragments into a yawning chasm, while a sullen cloud of smoke floated off. Artillery opened all along the front on the paralyzed enemy. Burnside's ad- vanced division, with orders to press through the breach and up Cemetery Hill, a commanding crest in its rear, hesitated, and began its march in a tame and spiritless manner. En- tering the huge crater, it stopped, horror-struck and be- numbed, among the dead and the buried alive. Portions of two other divisions also became confused and entangled in the mine, or escaped from it only to seek shelter behind the breastworks, which the enemy on the right and left had abandoned.
The Twenty-Eighth colored regiment, which was in Thomas' brigade of Ferrero's division, here made itself "the theme of honor's tongue."
About ten o'clock the previous night, Colonel Russell re- ceived an order to move his regiment toward the front, and prepare for an attack at break of day. He marched at once quietly and under cover of darkness. About eight o'clock in the morning, after the explosion, and while the earth
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
quaked under the roar of two hundred cannon, the regiment moved to the covered way, a broad ditch or cut six or eight feet deep, and a mile long. Passing Burnside, the black men heard him exclaim, "Who says that negroes won't fight!" Passing Ferrero, they saw him clasp his hands, and pray God to bless them. They entered the covered way and moved through it slowly. Perhaps if they had now gone faster, they would have come back in less haste, but they moved according to orders, or the want of orders, for somewhere in their transmission orders seemed to meet with a check. At the moment they emerged from the passage, and saw, suddenly and fully revealed, the terrible service re- quired of them, there came floating from a distant band the plaintive notes, as clear as words formed upon lips, " Who will care for mother now!" Musicians never made a greater blunder. But they corrected it instantly, pouring out a val- orous, inspiring strain. If their blood ran cold and their hearts fainted within them, the men were far from betraying their weakness. With their officers on foot beside them, they marched to the demolished fort, strcamed into the cra- ter, and halted for orders. Under them and around them were mangled men,-legs, arms, heads protruding from the broken earth,-while upon them stormed a concentrated fire of musketry and artillery. There they crouched. No orders came. It was scarcely possible for a staff officer to reach them. Minute by minute, fifteen minutes passed, when a messenger, racing through fire, came with the command to storm Cemetery Hill, a mile in the front. It was too late. Not even Colonel Russell, in whose face and manner was not a trace of agitation, could form line of battle. After five or ten minutes spent in the attempt, the whole force,- white and black, men and officers, generals not the slowest, moved toward the rear. Russell walked deliberately, with his hat in his hand, and a burning spot on the top of his bald head, where a bullet had struck. The flag of the Twenty-Eighth, the only flag which had been borne into the crater was gone, and with it its two bearers, one killed, the right arm of the other shot off. A hole through Secrest's hat, and the battered sheath out of which his sword, unno-
669
OPINION OF THE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE.
ticed by him, had leaped, told how narrow was his escape. Captain Hackheiser, a noble soldier, was dead, shot through the heart. Three other officers were killed. Seven out of eleven officers were gone, and nearly half the men.
While the troops were still in the mine, a portion of the Eighteenth corps endeavored to gain the breach, but it was baffled; Hancock and Warren also advanced, but were re- called before sufficient time had elapsed to effect an extrica- tion from the death hole.
The Thirteenth was engaged, fought with its usual spirit, and lost heavily. Major Zent, who is said to have been the very last man of his corps to leave the field, saw Clifton, "the bravest man in the regiment," kneeling on one knee on the slope of a breastwork, and firing within. He ordered him to retire, but Clifton found himself compelled to enter the enemy's lines, whence he made his next march to a Southern prison.
Our loss, in killed, wounded and captured, was four thou- sand four hundred, of whom, all but five hundred and fifty belonged to Burnside's corps. The dead and wounded lay festering on the plain thirty-six hours, before the enemy would allow them to be removed. About two thousand five hundred bodies were buried in the crater. The immense excavation is now nearly closed to the surface, and in the summer time is gay with melon vines and peach trees.
Lieutenant Colonel Russell's deportment, at the head of the Twenty-Eighth Colored, made him a Colonel. Young Secrest, though more fiery, was not less gallant.
The failure of the Petersburgh mine is explained by the fact that, at the last moment, Burnside's plans were rear- ranged by General Meade. The Committee on the Conduct of the War, after an investigation, affirmed: "The cause of the disastrous result of the assault of the thirtieth of July, is mainly attributable to the fact that the plans and sugges- tions of the general who had devoted his attention for so long a time to the subject, who had carried out to successful completion the project of mining the enemy's works, and who had carefully selected and drilled his troops for the pur- pose of securing whatever advantages might be attainable
.
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
from the explosion of the mine, should be so entirely disre- garded by a general who had evinced no faith in the success- ful prosecution of that work, had aided it by no countenance or open approval, and had assumed the entire direction and control only when it was completed, and the time had come for reaping any advantage that might be derived from it."
After the mine affair the number of patients in the post hospital rose to twenty thousand. An order was given to send to the field, within thirty days, all who were able to bear muskets, and to send to northern hospitals all others. A second order shortened the intermission to three days. These orders, however, were remanded, and things went on in their usual way.
The second week in August active operations were re- sumed, by Hancock on the right, against the Rebel force facing Deep Bottom, and by Warren on the left, to gain the Weldon railroad. The former was a direet threat against Richmond, the latter against one of that eity's chief routes of supply. Hancock removed his force on transports to Deep Bottom, but as the tide was running out he suffered such delay in effecting a landing that Lee, as usual, was fore- warned and forearmed. The only advantage of importance was gained in the beginning of the movement, on the even- ing of Sunday, the fourteenth, when Foster's brigade charged the enemy's outer works, which were about a mile from the pontoon bridge, carried them after a sharp engagement, and captured a number of prisoners and four howitzers. Han- cock sent a transport fleet from City Point to Deep Bottom and back, to give the impression that his troops were return- ing to the south of the James, thus to induce Lee to come out of his works and make an attack. The old fox was too wary. He kept himself well under cover, and came out only after he had seen Hancock recross the James with the loss of five thousand men.
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