USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. II > Part 57
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Warren met with better fortune. The Rebel troops being withdrawn, he gained the Weldon road without opposition. Repeated efforts were made to wrest it from him, and to drive him out of his intrenchments near Yellow House. August 21, after being operated on for an hour by thirty Rebel guns,
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FIGHT AT REAM'S STATION.
he was assaulted in front and threatened in flank; but he routed both columns of attack. The affair had the zest of nov- elty, as some of his regiments-the Nineteenth Indiana for one, though they had stormed many a fortification, had never be- fore received an assault. The Nineteenth, numbering now scarcely more than a hundred men, did not lose a single man. When the conflict was over it picked up on its imme- diate front some eighty muskets, and found the ground strewed with Rebel dead and wounded.
Hancock did not return to his old camp, but marched to the rear and left of Warren, and struck the railroad at Ream's Station. His troops were excessively fatigued, but were called into immediate action. They repulsed the enemy in three assaults, but were thrown into confusion by an artillery fire, which took them in reverse, and were broken through by a fourth impetuous storming column. Night enabled them to retreat, and favored also the withdrawal of the enemy.
More than a month now followed of such troubled rest as vigilant soldiers snatch in the face of a vigilant enemy. They lay in strained positions, in dangerous trenches, stood on ceaseless picket duty, or worked in never-ending fatigue parties.
" BEFORE PETERSBURG, "July 11, 1864.
"I suppose you wonder at our waiting so long before this place. I don't know why it is unless on account of the heat. I never knew what heat was before. I believe it would kill the army off to march or fight.
" The last march we made from Bermuda, although we made it at night, almost killed me. I could never have borne it in the day time. Even a slight wound in such weather as this would result fatally.
"As to my officers, I am very well contented with them. I am sorry that Captain Daniels was not willing to stay. Our commanding officer, the former Adjutant of the regi- ment, is as brave as he can be. He don't know what fear is. This is what we need. Besides this he does not drink, which, next to courage, is what is most desired in an officer. You can imagine how a soldier feels going into a fight believing
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
that his Colonel would desert him when most needed, and knowing him to be so full of whisky as to be unable to com- mand himself, not to speak of a regiment. I believe Zent is a member of the church.
"Saturday night I was detailed, with two others, to go out in the advance "Gopher holes," which Captain Zent had managed to dig unknown to the Rebels, within twenty yards of a very strong fort of theirs, and in such a way that they would rake their lines. We could only get into them after dark, and then by crawling through an open oat-field. Dur- ing the night the boys imagined they could see the Rebels crawling up on us through the oats, so we sent off for three more men, who staid with us till daybreak. The men on both sides then had a confab, and one of the Johnnies, a big, red-whiskered fellow, proposed, as it was Sunday, that there should be no firing on the lines. To this we willingly acceded, and so passed a quiet day.
"Since this campaign began we have not been beyond the reach of Rebel bullets twenty-four hours, except on our jour- ney to and from Cold Harbor. So every time the regiment stops with the expectation of staying twenty-four hours, wc go at once to work fortifying. I have got so used to this I believe if ever I get home I will run a line of breastworks around the yard. My messmate and I have built us a splen- did bomb-proof.
"Night before last I, with twenty others of the regiment, armed with our seven shooters, were sent out in our advanced lines to guard a sap which our men were running in rather dangerous proximity to Rebel lines. We were not to do any picket duty, but merely lie on our arms, ready to repel an attack, if the Johnnies should endeavor to charge. Climb- ing up on the bank in the rear of the breastworks, with my gun under my head as a pillow, I fixed myself and slept as soundly as if at home in a feather bed. Once in awhile, how- ever, when they would commence shelling livelier than com- mon, I would wake up, scramble down into the pits, and cover till they were tired, and then back and sleep again. Toward morning it grew bitter cold, so cold that I could not sleep, so I concluded to pass the time in conversing with the
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NEIGHBORLY PICKETS.
Johnnies. I began, "Oh Johnny! wake up!" " Yes, we're awake," was called out in return. One of the boys told them that Ewell was in Baltimore. "Don't believe it," replied Johnny. " What's you uns fightin' we uns for, Yank ?" shouted one to me, after we had been talking awhile. "Sixteen dol- lars a month," I replied. "We used to get thirteen, but we get sixteen now. What do you get?" "Eighteen dollars I believe; I ain't certain." I suppose it had been so long since the poor fellow had been paid that he had forgotten what was coming to him.
"After talking awhile we agreed to cease firing along the line so as to hear better. Finally, just about daybreak, one of them proposed to exchange papers. I told him we had none, but would exchange anything else, asking him if he would give corn dodgers for hard tack. ' Yes,' he said, ' Come on;' I had no haversack, but took one from a Pennsylvania boy who was afraid to go. Their lines were about ten feet back in the woods and ours out in the oats field. It was just light enough to see a little bit. I got on top of the works in plain view of the Rebels, but of course could sce nothing of my man.
"Halloo, Johnny," says I, 'where are you?' thinking he was trying to play off on me, 'Here I am,' he replied, 'come on.' I started ahead, reassured by his voice, but went nearly fifteen feet before I saw him coming out at the edge of the woods. I met him about two-thirds of the way, and as it grew lighter I could see their works lined with men. I ex- changed hard tack for corn bread, and had quite a long talk with him. Asked him when the war would be over. He said when we were willing to go home and let them alone. I could see, though, that he wasn't very anxious for the war to continue. In the haversack was a tin cup and plate which he wanted. Went down into his pockets and said he would give me any thing for them. I told him they didn't belong to me, or he might have them, but I wish now I had given them to him and told the owner if he wanted his cup, to go and get it. Almost all the Rebels that I have seen arc a stout, healthy set of fellows, more so than our own men.
43
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
They are clever, honest-looking, and fight like the 'Old Harry.' There is no discount on Southern pluck as far as I have seen. After I had gone baek, and they saw it wasn't dangerous, they fairly crowded out on both sides, till the meadow swarmed with them. If our officers had not inter- fered, the whole lines would have been out in a few minutes."
Across the Jerusalem plank road the enemy's line was strongly intrenched in a commanding position which con- fronted Fort Sedgwick, or Fort Hell, as it had been nick- named, and was so near Mott's division of Hancock's corps, that the pickets could talk across without difficulty. On the morning of the tenth, General De Trobriand cautiously led his brigade, which consisted of the Twentieth Indiana, Ninety-Ninth Pennsylvania and the Second United States sharpshooters, toward the point, and with very little firing carried it, inflicting a loss of from one hundred to one hun- dred and fifty men, and suffering a loss about half as great. Lieutenant Colonel Meikel was killed after the main affair was over. The enemy made a vigorous effort to regain the position, then settled down in a new line and began a vin- dictive picket firing, which he kept up night and day. Col- onel Meikel was quite a young man, but he was a veteran in military service, having been in the Twentieth since the be- ginning of that regiment's career. He was the third of its commanders who had died upon the field. He was a mod- est, upright, pious man.
The last of September the storm of battle commenced again by the advance of Butler on the right and of Warren on the left. Warren pushed westward, and carrying two or three small works, threw up intrenchments which reached to his former position. Butler crossed the James in the night, the next day made a rapid and skirmishing advance, and as- saulted Fort Harrison and the long line of intrenchments be- low Chapin's farm, including the Heights of New Market. After gallant and sanguinary charges, the Eighteenth corps carried the Fort and the Sixth gained the Heights, bringing the line within six or seven miles of Richmond. The enemy made unavailing efforts to recapture Fort Harrison. Butler's next attempt was on Fort Gilmore, but it was a failure, as
675
ADVANCE TO HATCHER'S RUN.
was also an assault on some new works. Large bodies of troops had hurried over from Petersburg, and the enemy was now invulnerable at every point.
Again a pause occurred. It was broken after two weeks by an advance on the left toward Hateher's Run and the Boydton plank road, and by demonstrations in force on the extreme right against the Richmond defences on the Charles city and the Williamsburg roads. The one was made merely to attract and hold the enemy's attention during the prose- eution of the other, in which the entire army, excepting only men enough to hold the works, was engaged. The army marched out before dawn of October 27, with three days' ra- tions, no means to bring back wounded and unusual precau- tions as to silence and concealment. The position of the corps on their march may be compared to a wheel, the Ninth corps being the hub, the Second corps and the cavalry the tire. Hancock was to march swiftly and far out to the left toward the Lynchburg railroad, while his coadjutors were to hold the enemy's front and flank, intrenched on the east bank of Hatcher's Run, whose course is southeasterly. The whole line was then to swing forward across the works which had so long held it off, and form new intrenehments elose to Petersburg.
Dense and dark woods, fallen trees, corn fields and cotton fields, swamps, perplexing roads, of which inaccurate maps gave no satisfactory intelligence, and pickets, who, however, were easily driven in, were the principal obstacles encoun- tered in the forenoon, and until four in the afternoon. At that time, and while Hancock was endeavoring to connect with Warren's left, which, though not distant, was out of sight and out of reach, beyond a maze of thickets and woods, a volley of musketry announced the approach of the enemy. It was followed by an unexpected charge on Hancock's front and on his flank and rear, which were guarded by Gregg's cavalry. A confused battle followed in which a singular dis- parity of spirit was shown. Hancock's right brigade, which received the first-blow, was scattered. De Trobriand's brig- ade next in line, stood its ground, and with Egan's division
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
drove the enemy from the field. The next day, Hancock withdrew, abandoning his dead and wounded.
The active operations of 1864 ended with the withdrawal from Hatcher's Run. Since the advance in May, the Army of the Potomac had lost one hundred thousand men.
Nearly everybody who reads of the war, follows in thought through the tangled, crimson web, the thread of some individ- ual life. To names and dates and numbers cling associa- tions which never will and never can be told. There are no more letters from James Fisher, Frank Good and Samuel List. Their thread of life was snapped. Their weary feet had found rest. They all died of wounds; List, July 2, Fisher, July 3, at Washington, expressing trust in the Savior who had hitherto led them, and Good, on the sixteenth of July, at Alexandria. Lieutenant Williams, also of the Sev- enthi, was killed the nineteenth of June. Lieutenant Holmes was killed in the assault of June 18. He was within sixty yards of the Rebel works, when a shell tore his heart from his body. His company, of which he was in command, did not hear of his death until after midnight. "His body shall not be left lying on the ground," exclaimed private 'Trout. "Af- ter the battle of Port Republie he swam the Shenandoah twice and saved me from capture, perhaps death in prison. I for one will try to get his body." Sergeant Hardin an- swered for another. The two started out, but finding the enemy in force at the point, they deferred the attempt. The next night, while both armies slept on their arms, Trout and Hardin set out a second time on their dangerous adventure. The skirmishers allowed them to pass. Creeping within fifteen feet of the Rebel pickets, they found the remains. They then crept back on their hands and knees, dragging the lifeless body with them. At the skirmish line they made a litter of their muskets and a tent cloth, and on it carried their burden with more ease. The next day, young Holmes was buried with the honors of war, and a board bearing his name was put up at the head of his grave.
On the eighteenth of August, Trout, with four others, was captured on picket. His term of service was within eighteen days of its expiration, and the thought of imprisonment was
677
SENT TO NEW YORK.
intolerable. Accordingly, Trout, with one of his comrades, Norton, while the company was passing through a swamp, slipped from the linc. They hid in the water, while the rest marched on to serve seven months in Belle Isle and Salis- bury. When it was dark they crept out stealthily, and found their way in safety to the regiment.
Lieutenant M'Cray, of the Thirteenth, was killed on the sixteenth of August. Captain Bell, of the Twentieth, was killed the ninth of July.
Although no important movements were undertaken be- fore the close of the year, the army was kept actively and often severely engaged, "still thumping at the gates of Pe- tersburg." In November a force was sent to New York to restrain the riotous rabble of that city. During the journey northward the Thirteenth was not in the same boat with its rations, a separation which the regiment felt and resented .. Fortunately for the officer who commits blunders, the private is never able to discover him. On the return, the Thirteenth was included in seven hundred and fifty passengers of one small vessel. "Maybe I wasn't sick," says a hardy young- ster, who had endured everything else, "but at the time I thought I was."
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE IMPRISONMENT OF JOHN C. RANSDALL, OF COMPANY F, SEVENTHI INDIANA VOLUNTEERS.
" If any person had told me, before I experienced it, that men could live on what we had to do with, and wear the clothes and lie in the mud and water as we did, I certainly would have thought that he was insane.
"I, with over three thousand others, was taken prisoner on the eighteenth of August, 1864, near Yellow House, on the Weldon railroad, about four miles from Petersburg.
"We spent the first night in Petersburg, some of us in jail and some in a muddy pen. The next morning we were taken to another pen in squads of six or eight, and searched by the Provost Marshal of Petersburg. The next day we went to Libby prison, where we were stripped to the hide and searched again. By this time we had been robbed of nearly everything. At sundown, Sunday, August 21, we were taken over to Belle Isle to pass the night out of doors, without bed or shelter. We lay on the naked ground and spread our blouses over us, to keep a little of the dew off. In the daytime we were there on the bare sand without shade from the scorching sun, at night without shelter to hide us from the storm. The days were hot, the nights were chilly. We lay there in this way three weeks; we then got some condemned tents that were no better than none when it rained, but they afforded shelter from the sun and dew.
"We had nothing to 'carry water in, and were obliged to go to the river any time we wanted a drink. They had a narrow lane from the prison to the river for us to go after water, from sundown to sun-up. Not more than eight or ten men were allowed to go to the river at once-and so few going at a time, out of six thousand, there would soon get a
679
RATIONS IN SALISBURY PRISON.
large crowd at the mouth of the lane, and some one would get crowded too near the dead line and be shot. There was some one killed this way nearly every night.
"On the fifth of October, five hundred were marched over to Manchester. I was along. After three days travel on freight cars, we arrived at Salisbury, which was a dismal looking place. It was a field of about seven acres, with a stockade of two-inch plank about twelve feet high, with a double row of posts all around. Eight feet inside the stock- ade was the dead line. This was a ditch six feet wide and six feet deep. On the outside of the stockade, three feet from the top, was a platform all around, for the guard to stand on.
" The first three weeks we got one pint of flour or meal, two table-spoonsful of molasses, or one sixth of a pound of fresh beef, without salt, and half pint of rice soup, to the man, for a day's rations. After we had been there a week or ten days, they baked our flour for us, and gave us the amount in bread. A Lieutenant Colonel had command of us the first three weeks, and I guess gave us all that the government gave him for us. The rest of the time, Major Gee had conmand of us. When he pretended to give us wheat bread, it was the dust and dirt swept off the mill floor, ground up with sugar cane secd, and not bolted-but most of the time we got corn bread. I suppose that the meal had been ground on a corn crusher-the same as we grind cow feed, for it was shuck, corn and cob all together. Our meat came only about three or four times a month, and molasses the same. The meat was only the heads, hearts, fect, lights, livers and paunches of cattle. The eye-ball of a cow was a big ration of meat; and when we drew molasses, we only got two table-spoonsful.
"Rats and mice were plenty, and eight or ten cats and three dogs ran around the cook house and hospital when we went there. They were all killed and eaten. Every old bone and piece of leather in camp was burnt and eaten. Water was very scarce; we had not more than half enough to drink all fall and the fore part of the winter. We rarely washed our hands and faces, and never once washed our
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
clothes. We got no tents until the first of November; then it was a Sibley tent, and only one for a hundred men. Not half of the prisoners could get in. They had to make go- pher holes. They would dig down two or three feet in the ground, and then dig back, far enough to lie straight, and wide enough to accommodate three or four men to a hole,- nothing under or over them. Our wood was what two or three men could carry-for one hundred men to last twenty- four hours. This would not make more than one good fire. With this wood and the poor clothes we had to wear, we could not help suffering a great deal.
"I have been on hard-fought battle fields, such as Bull Run, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, in Grant's campaign from the Rapidan through the Wilderness, and on to Peters- burg, and have seen men torn and mangled, groaning and dying; but the most painful, horrible and heart-rending sight I ever saw by far, was in that dismal hell-Salisbury Prison- of a cold, snowy morning, men lying on the naked ground, in the mud, water and snow, with nothing in the world to keep them warm, but worn-out pants and shirts, groaning, and dying, and wishing that they could have as good a place to lie on as the eattle and horses had at home, and that they could have to eat what was thrown in the swill tub!
" When we first went there, the men that died were put in coffins, and taken out, and received, as we supposed, a sort of human burial; but the coffins that were brought in and taken out, looked so much alike that it soon raised sus- picion. So Sergeant Orion Donnell, of company G, Seventh regiment, marked one of the coffins with a pencil-and sure enough the same coffin eame back every time. This was soon known throughout the camp, and when the Rebels found out that we knew it, they ceased to bring a coffin in. They took the dead body by the head and feet, and threw it into the wagon-the same as we would dead hogs. They took them out a mile from camp, dug a trench, and threw all the men in it that they could haul in a day. At night, they would throw a little dirt over them. The aver- age number of deaths a day was forty-two. We were there one hundred and thirty-seven days. In that time, out of.
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INHUMANITY OF THE REBEL GUARD.
nine thousand eight hundred men, five thousand seven hun- dred and eighty-eight men were buried; and I suppose that at least one thousand men died on their way home.
" In November, the prisoners saw that it was death to stay there-so they determined to break out. In less than five minutes after the attempt was made, the platform on which the guard stood had two lines of battle on it,-the guards armed with muskets, and the citizens armed with shot guns and squirrel rifles, were firing into us. They had also two pieces of artillery with which they poured the canister into us. There was a misunderstanding among the prisoners as to the time the break was to be made, and only about one- eighth were prepared for it-so we had not force enough to accomplish anything. About a hundred of our men were killed and wounded. Every man that had a wound in a limb, even if it was ever so slight, the limb was taken off.
" We would go out of a morning, and could turn our eyes no way without seeing some of our comrades lying in the mud and water, waiting for the dead-wagon to come out and take them from our sight to their last resting place.
" We were not allowed to go out of our tents or holes at all at night. 'As soon as the sun was down, the guards would begin to halloo at us, 'Git into yer hole, da you- Yank,' and, if we did not hide ourselves immediately, they would shoot at us.
"One of the coldest nights, some more prisoners were brought in. They had been robbed of everything, and had no tents or gopher holes to crawl into, so they gave them wood enough to build a very good fire. They had just got the fire built, and were crowding round, when the guard be- gan to holla, 'Git into yer holes da, you blue devils!' Those around the fire did not suppose that they were hallooing at them to leave the fire. But the guards soon informed them by firing a musket at them. They then told the guard how it was, that they were nearly frozen, and begged to be let stay by the fire and warm. But a dozen guns were instantly leveled at them, and the order given to scatter out. They had to leave the fire, and go and lie around some old build- ings that were in the prison pen. It rained and froze all
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
night. I never saw a heavier sleet than fell that night. Some of the strangers chilled to death, almost all froze their fect, and some so badly that all the flesh came off.
"At this time we were guarded by the Sixty-Eighth North Carolina. They were all boys, and dearly loved to shoot a helpless Yankee. The last two months we were there we were guarded by North Carolina militia, at least one-half of them Union men. While they guarded us we could run round after night, and there was never a word said. We remained in this prison until the twenty-second of Feb- ruary.
"They then started us to Greensborough, fifty-two miles distant, with an escort of about two hundred armed Rebels.
"Out of nine thousand eight hundred men that, during the last four months, went into Salisbury-well, stout and hearty, I think there were not more than three thousand able to walk out of prison, and they were nearly naked, black, dirty and starved-so badly starved that they reeled as they walked. They marched along the railroad, and as they gave out they were put on top of freight cars. In two days of the hardest marching I ever did, I only walked nine miles. I then got on the train. Of the three thousand that left Salis- bury, I think that not more than five hundred were able to march the fifty-two miles. Many died on the road, for it rained day and night.
"We marched to Goldsborough, and at midnight took the train for our lines near Wilmington, where we arrived the twenty-eighth of February. The happiest day of my life was that twenty-eighth of February, 1865.
" These are my experiences in prison. There is not a word but truth, and to every word I am willing to swear. But as the whole truth is not here, for pen cannot describe nor tongue tell of our sufferings while in prison, I feel that from this one can get but a faint idea of the sufferings of Union prisoners of war."
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