USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. II > Part 65
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"The war is playing out fast. There can be no doubt of that now. Sherman and Grant will prove too heavy for Lee; and the Rebel plan of arming 'niggers' will only give us so many more of that sort of soldiers. 'Tis folly in them, but so was the Rebellion an insane piece of folly. 'Deus vult perdere prius dementat.'
" HARRY LEAMING."
The total Union loss in the battle of Franklin was two thousand three hundred and twenty-six. The Rebel loss was six thousand two hundred and fifty-two, ineluding Major General Cleburne and four Brigadier Generals killed.
In Milroy's fight on the Wilkerson turnpike the Rebels lost four hundred and twelve men and two guns, while the Union loss was small.
In the two days battle of Nashville, Thomas took four thousand four hundred and sixty-two men, fifty-three guns, and nearly all the small arms of the Rebel army.
In addition to the Indiana cavalry already mentioned, twenty-one infantry regiments and seven batteries were en- gaged in the campaign, although some of these organizations were mere fragments. Lieutenant Baker, a very gallant sol-
FORCES LEAVE TENNESSEE FOR SOUTHERN ALABAMA. 767
dier of the Eighth cavalry, was killed, and Lieutenant Left- wich, of the Tenth, was mortally wounded at Pulaski. Lieu- tenant Cole was mortally wounded at Columbia. Captain Dunn, of the Fifty-Seventh, was killed, and Lieutenant Groen- endyke, of the One Hundred and Twenty-Fourth, was mor- tally wounded at Franklin. The Twelfth, and half of the Thirteenth cavalry, were in the engagements on Overall's creek and Wilkerson's turnpike. Captain Leslie was killed. At Nashville, Captain Schell, of the Eighty-First, fell in the van of an assault on a hill east of Hillsborough turnpike, sac- rifieing a young and noble life to the country he devotedly loved. Captain Heckathorn and Lieutenant Rees, of the Eleventh cavalry, were killed, and Lieutenant Secrest, of the Hundred and Twenty-Third, was mortally wounded at Nashville. The Ninth cavalry lost at Franklin, in the pur- suit, twenty-six, including Captain Hobson and Lieutenants Burroughs, Watts and Bristow, who were all killed.
Jacob Hoops, a private of the Thirty-First, one of those men who seem dogged yet never are daunted by misfortune, was severely wounded. He received a severe scalp wound in the siege of Fort Donelson. At Shiloh his leg was frac- tured, in consequence of which he was discharged. In less than three months he returned to his regiment, as a recruit. He went through the battles of Stone river and Chickamauga without hurt, except that in the last his old wound in the leg broke out in consequence of fatigue. He was in the pest house with small-pox during the Atlanta campaign. He was supposed to be mortally wounded at Nashville, but in less than three months he was on his feet again and with his regi- ment. Winter quarters were broken up long before the open- ing of spring, by the necessity of sending forces south toward Mobile and northeast to the Atlantic coast.
The defences of the bay of Mobile were captured by Ad- miral Farragut, seconded by General Granger with the Thir- teenth corps, in August, 1864. In the following December, a demonstration was made against the city, Granger moving from Pascagoula with infantry, Davidson from Baton Rouge, and Grierson from Memphis with cavalry, but it was a mere demonstration, nothing being effected but destruction of Con-
768
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
federate stores and roads, by Grierson. No determined ad- vance was attempted until the last of February, 1865. On the eighteenth of March, heavy rains having delayed the crossing of the Tennessee until that date, nearly fifteen thou- sand of Thomas' cavalry, under the command of General Wilson, set out from Eastport, Mississippi, on an extended raid, which was to serve as a diversion during an advance made by General Canby upon what was now almost the last Confederate seaport. At one time traveling in a compact body, at another with a widely extended and scattered front, Wilson's force rode rapidly through northern and entered central Alabama. At Montevallo, on the thirty-first, he met and routed Roddy and Crossland. Further on he met and routed them again. The next day he encountered Forrest with five thousand men, strongly posted near Ebenezer Church, with Boyle's creek on his right and a wooded ridge on his left. Long's division of Wilson's force arrived first, dismounted, and assaulted the Rebel left, breaking the line. Lieutenant Colonel Frank White, with four companies of the Seventeenth Indiana, then made a charge on the guns, capturing one gun and one hundred men, with a loss of twenty-six men, among them Captain Taylor, killed. Upton's division assailing the enemy's right, completed his defeat. April 2, Wilson met Forrest with seventeen thousand men strongly intrenched in front of Selma. Long assaulted on the right, going straight over the Rebel defences, while Up- ton had equal success on the left. Of the Seventeenth Indi- ana, twelve were killed and eighty were wounded at Selma. Colonel Miller, of the Seventy-Second, was severely wounded.
Wilson crossed the Alabama on the sixth, and building bridges and driving the enemy as he went, pushed on east- ward through Montgomery. He gained Columbus and West Point after sharp fighting. Major Hill, of the Second Indi- ana, lost a leg while leading a charge at West Point.
On the twenty-first, Wilson received the surrender of Ma- con with three thousand prisoners.
General Canby's movements were not so rapid and sweep- ing, but in the end were also completely successful. His ad- vance was made toward the eastern side of Mobile. Rain
769
THE DEFENCES OF MOBILE CAPTURED.
falling in torrents added to the difficulties of the low region which his troops were compelled to traverse. Steele, with two brigades of the Thirteenthi corps, two batteries, Hawkins' black division, and Lucas' cavalry brigade, made his laboring and devious way from Pensacola through Florida swamps to Blakely, pushing back bodies of the enemy the latter part of the route. Granger, with the Thirteenth corps, toiled through quicksand and swamp at the rate of two or three miles a day from Mobile Point, round Bon Secours bay to the mouth of Fish river, thence with A. J. Smith's corps, clearing the road of skirmishers and torpedoes, to Spanish Fort. The fleet moved up the bay parallel with the army. Torpedoes planted thickly in the river and on the land gave every move- ment a peculiar danger.
The siege of Spanish Fort opened on the twenty-seventh of March, the first artillery shot being fired that day by Morse's battery, about eight hundred yards from the works. It was pressed vigorously and steadily until the eighth of April, when a concentric fire from gunboats, from siege guns and field pieces in battery, and from skirmishers and sharp- shooters, lasting from close of day until midnight, brouglit the stronghold to terms.
Forts Traey and Huger fell as a consequence; and the gunboats, after picking up thirty-five torpedoes, were able to complete the investment round Blakely, before which Steele bad lain four days. At half-past five the evening of the ninth, Garrard on the left, and a little later Smith in the centre, and Hawkins, with the blaek division, on the right, moved out to storm the works, which were immensely strong and manned by a foree of three thousand. They struggled through abatis, scrambled over palisades, leaped a deep, wide ditch, and gained the defences, all under a tempest of fire. At seven the assault was ended, and the Union flag was flying over the works.
Mobile was evacuated the next day. Veatch's division ' was first to enter the city. The operations against Mobile required the exercise of every soldierly quality. The troops
49
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
acquitted themselves nobly. In the assault on Blakely, after they were once under headway, their ardor was irrestrainable.
The Twenty-First Indiana, or First heavy artillery, was engaged with its usual efficiency. Jacoby's and Ginn's, as well as Morse's batteries, were also prominent. The Twenty- Fourth, which included the Sixty-Seventh; the Twenty- Sixth, Forty-Seventh, Fiftieth, Fifty-Second, Sixty-Ninth, Eighty-Ninth and Ninety-Third infantry, and the Tenth, Twelfth and Thirteenth cavalry, endured the toil of the march, engaged in the fighting, and had each an honorable share in the victory.
Canby and Hawkins are Indianians, as well as Benton, Veatch and a long string of other noble names, which are written among the victors of Mobile.
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SHERMAN ISOLATED IN THE HOSTILE TERRITORY.
CHAPTER XLIV.
SHERMAN'S GREAT MARCHI.
I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps; I have read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on .- J. W. Howe.
Sherman, on his return from escorting Hood to the borders of Tennessee, halted his troops at Kingston and Rome, while he prepared to cut off his dependence upon and connection with the North. He sent back to Chattanooga wagons, ar- tillery, provisions, forage, stores, machinery, and all his sick and wounded.
On the twelfth of November, when the last train was gone, and the last message was sent, he cut the telegraph wire, and began such a work of destruction as no Union army had yet attempted, ripping the rails from the sleepers, and twisting them by the application of heat and wrenches, so that even a rolling machine could not have straightened them, and burn- ing every building and every structure which was not private property. When the troops looked back, after crossing the Chattahoochie, the very river seemed on fire, pillars of smoke and flame from countless bridges and mills, marking its winding course as far as the eye could reach. . The numer- ous and immense store-houses, machine-shops and depot- buildings of Atlanta were kindled on the night of the fifteenth, and having been previously undermined, were consumed with an unexampled fury, the sullen howl of flames drowning every sound but the roar of exploding shells and magazines.
Thus, while his sometime antagonist, far beyond the 'T'en- nessee, was promising Kentucky to his followers, the intrepid Sherman, in the heart of the hostile territory, cut himself off from tidings, from return, and from giving or receiving help.
772
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
Cortez, with his ships stranded on the Mexican coast, was not more isolated.
" We may safely predict that Sherman's march will lead him to the 'Paradise of Fools,' and that his magnificent scheme will hereafter be reckoned with all the grand deeds that never were done," sneered the Richmond Enquirer.
The London Herald said: "The name of the captor of Atlanta, if he fails now, will become the scoff of mankind, and the humiliation of the United States for all time. If he succeeds, it will be written on the tablet of fame side by side with that of Napoleon and Hannibal."
The London Times was tempted to admire: "Since the great Duke of Marlborough turned his back upon the Dutch, and plunged heroically into Germany, military history has recorded no stranger marvel than the mysterious expedition of General Sherman, on an unknown route, against an un- discoverable enemy."
The Twentieth corps folded the tents which had whitened the beautiful hills about the Gate City during six autumnal weeks, and joining the Fourteenth corps, formed the left wing of Sherman's army. The Fifteenth and the Seven- teenth, between which were divided two divisions of the Six- teenth corps, composed, under General Howard, the right wing. The army numbered fifty thousand picked men, newly clothed, thoroughly armed, and as nearly unencum- bered as it is possible for soldiers, in any circumstances, to be. Not a doubtful nor suspicious horse was in artillery or cavalry.
While the smoke of Atlanta darkened the sky, Sherman moved out toward the east and south of east, gradually di- verging until his front spread over fifty miles, then sweeping on, slowly, steadily and destructively, his cavalry now on the extreme right, now on the extreme left, now covering the wings, the front and rear, until, within a week, Slocum's wing concentrated at Milledgeville, and Howard drew up at Gor- don. The former had encountered but few and small bodies of cavalry.
Howard had met with considerable opposition, the troopers on his front and flank having skirmished with Wheeler from
773
SHERMAN MARCHES TOWARD THE SEA.
the hour they left Atlanta. At Lovejoy's, at Bear creek and at Barnesville, they put him to rout. They held him at Ma- con to enable the infantry to cross the Ocmulgee.
Howard's rear, however, under Wolcott, was attacked at Griswoldsville by a foree of five thousand. A sharp action ensued, in which the Twelfth, Ninety-Seventh and One Hundredth Indiana participated. Wolcott being wounded, Colonel Catterson assumed command. The Rebels were repeatedly repulsed, and the rear succeeded in crossing.
During a halt at Milledgeville two or three regiments were detailed to destroy public property. They found scarcely any but prisoners of war in the penitentiary, the Governor of Georgia having lately released a hundred criminals to put them in the Rebel army.
Resuming the march, the troops continued to destroy all property that appertained to the Confederate Government, that conduced to the advantage of the Rebel army, or that was apparently abandoned. They tore to pieces unoccu- pied houses in order to make fires to boil their coffee or cook their chickens. A brigade would demolish a big house in ten minutes. They lived on the milk and honey with which the land flowed. When they dug for potatoes they sometimes found gold, and silver, and silk, which they appro- priated as lawful spoils, and which they then made the chief object of their search. Joyful negroes invited them into barn and cellar, and betrayed hidden stores.
Cattle trains were no encumbrance, as the wagons packed with provender served for the day, and inviting cornfields of a hundred or a thousand acres furnished both food and inclo- sure for the night. Mud-holes and swamps, of which there were not a few, were corduroyed by pioneer regiments, (of which our Fifty-Eighth was one,) often at the rate of a quar- ter of a mile in a quarter of an hour.
The cavalry had frequent skirmishes, chiefly on the left, Kilpatrick moving in force toward the northeast, and threat- ening Augusta. Near Waynesboro the engagements were severe. On the twenty-ninth, with his staff, the Eighth In- diana and Ninth Michigan, Kilpatrick was nearly surrounded apart from his main force, but was extricated from his dan-
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
gerous situation by the gallantry of the two regiments. Wheeler shortly after made an attack in force, but found, to his disappointment and loss, that Kilpatrick was also in full force and behind earthworks. During several days, Baird's division supported the cavalry, and the latter continued to make demonstrations toward Augusta, partly in the hope of deceiving the enemy into a neglect of the prison pen at Mil- len, and partly in order to concentrate and retain his forces at the important point threatened.
Meantime, infantry and artillery quietly pursued their way, passing from fertile farms into comparatively sterile, but ma- jestic savannahs. Between the lofty pines, whose straight trunks are eighty or ninety feet without a branch, wagons and troops moved easily in double lines.
Could the haughty Hood, now before Franklin, lavishing upon his army golden promises, have cast his eye backward five hundred miles, to Sherman's winding columns; or to his spreading encampments, lighted up by pitch-pine fires; or to the night crossing of the Ogeechee, where each soldier, as if in a triumphal procession, bore a flaring torch, his heart. / would have died within him.
Eight days after leaving Milledgeville, the army, except the cavalry, concentrated at Millen, to find, with deep and uni- versal grief, that the prison pen was empty, and to see, with futile indignation, proofs of the inhumanity to which the pris- oners had been subjected.
December 2, the march was continued, and directed to- ward the southeast, between broad rivers, which, serving as a defence for the flanks, rendered cavalry unnecessary except in front and rear. On the seventh, the Fifteenth corps crossed to the east bank of the Ogeechee, near Eden. The next day Corse's division pushed on to the canal which con- nects the Ogeechee with the Savannah, and after bridging the canal, intrenched on the south side. On the ninth, a detach- ment moved forward to the Savannah and Gulf railroad, cap- tured a train of eighteen cars with many prisoners, and, destroying the track, cut off all communication between Sa- vannah and the South. The Fourteenth, Twentieth and Seventeenth corps meantime moved through forests which
775
SHERMAN APPROACHES SAVANNAH.
were intersected by swollen creeks, swamps and quicksands. They made miles and miles of corduroy road, the labor in- creasing as the woods gave place to a naked country, where swamps were relieved only by low rice fields.
One day, General Davis was obliged to wait for a bridge, the construction of which was supervised by a slender, pale- faced young Captain. The General became exceedingly im- patient, and at length, with curses on his laziness, ordered the superintendent to pull off his coat and fall to work with his men. The young Captain, looking in the face of his commanding officer, said slowly: "I have known a Major General shot for using such language to a subordinate." Davis' eye, an eye which knows little of fear, quailed. He turned his horse and waited at a distance for the completion of the work.
The left wing struck the Savannah and Charleston railroad where it crosses the Savannah river, and destroyed the track from that point southward. The Fourteenth and Seven- teenth corps sustained some loss in skirmishing, and by the bursting of shells and torpedoes concealed in the road. De- cember 12, the army formed a semi-circle from the Savannah river to the Savannah and Gulf railroad, about ten miles long. The Twentieth corps, on the left, was three miles from the city; the Fifteenth corps, on the right, rested on the railroad, eleven miles off.
Savannah was defended by a strong line of earthworks, by four forts, and by wide stretches of flooded swamps and rice fields. Fort Mc Allister, the strongest point on the line, and situated on the right bank of the Great Ogeechee, about six miles from Ossabaw Sound, commanded every approach. Along its front extended a diteh forty feet wide, of great depth, and driven full of palisades. Outside the ditch was a formidable line of abatis. Beyond the abatis the ground was thickly planted with torpedoes. Two hundred and fifty men held the fort. The whole force in Savannah was fifteen thousand, and was under the command of General Hardee. At daylight of the thirteenth, Hazen's division crossed the Great Ogeechee, on a bridge eighteen hundred feet long, which had been built during the night, and invested
776
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
Fort McAllister. It advanced to assault in single line over an open space of six hundred yards, the greater part of which was a rice swamp. Regardless of torpedoes at their feet, and artillery in their faces, the assailants surmounted the abatis, cleared the ditch, swarmed over the parapet, shot or bayonetted the gunners who refused to surrender, and planted their colors on the rampart, without a waver from first to last. They lost one hundred men. The Rebels lost a little more than forty. The Eighty-Third and Ninety- Ninth Indiana were in the assault.
· Sherman immediately went down the Ogeechee in a row- boat to the fleet in Ossabaw Sound, and concerted measures for the co-operation of the fleet with the army; but before these were completed, on the sixteenth, he demanded the surrender of the city. Hardec refused, declaring that he could stand a siege; but when a substantial corduroy road traversed the swamps and rice-fields between King's bridge and the city; when heavy siege guns were in position, and the causeway which crossed the swamp between Savannah, and Charleston was threatened; when the Ogeechee, the Sa- vannah and the sea swarmed with armed vessels; he changed his mind, and taking advantage of a dark night and a roar- ing wind, to which he added the clamorous fire of two iron- clads, he transported his troops by boats to the causeway, whence he hurried them to Charleston.
On the twenty-first, Sherman sent a dispatch to the Presi- dent, " I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." A later and more careful computation showed that he underestimated his captures.
While Sherman's stalwart army was entering the city by the sea, followed by all the laborers of the region, nearly three hundred miles in extent, through which it had passed, the troops of Hood, having come to grief at the hands of Thomas, were fugitives in the mountains, dismayed, forlorn, and scattered, never again to be united.
The sun of the Confederacy was fast sinking into ever- lasting night.
777
"DIES IRAE."
"CAMP SEVENTIETH, FOUR MILES FROM SAVANNAH, December 15, 1864.
"A month ago to-day, we pushed out from Atlanta into the enemy's country, entirely ignorant of our destination. Our night-long journey was gloomily enlivened by the flames of burning houses, and the distant explosions beneath the ruined city in our rear. Nothing I have ever seen, but this terrible night, is worthy of being compared to that
"Day of Wrath, eventful day, When heaven and earth shall pass away."
"Dies iræ! Dies irae!" filled the air, and fell upon the hearts of the inhabitants of doomed Georgia. As we had only three days' rations, our subsistence had to be taken en- tirely from the country; and as the region through which we passed was a wealthy one, we obtained meal, flour, pork, beef, chickens, turkeys, honey, preserved fruits, sweet pota- toes, rice, and indeed everything you can think of.
"I think I have eaten more fowls and honey in this trip than in all my life before, and sweet potatoes-well, I've al- most had enough.
"As we passed along the road near Madison, the men found an outhouse containing several casks of molasses. Hungry stragglers swarmed round like bees, swearing and pushing and overturning the barrels. A beautiful black- eyed boy of four years sat on the gate-post, calling out, 'Come out of there, you old mean Yanks, you! Oh goody! goody! you can't get the chickens, for they're under the house!'
" While we were entering Milledgeville an old black wo- man cried, 'God bless you! You've come at last. We've been waitin' for you all for more'n four years!'
"The usual invitation of our boys, 'Come on, Sambo!' 'Come on, Dinah!' was responded to in one case by an ebony female rushing into the ranks with a, 'Yes, I'se gwine, but some of you uns must marry me.'
"A fat old fellow stood by his lady on the fence. As his eye caught me, he cried out, 'Oh, dar's de Capting!' winding up with a locomotive yell, and a backward tumble from the fence.
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
"A woman greeted us with, 'Lawsee, Massas! I can't larf enough, I'se so glad to see you!'
"It was very touching to see the vast numbers of colored women following after us with babies in their arms, and little ones, like our Anna, clinging to their tattered skirts. One poor creature, while nobody was looking, hid two boys, five years old, in a wagon, intending, I suppose, that they should see the land of freedom, if she couldn't.
"Babies tumbled from the backs of mules, to which they had been told to cling, and were drowned in the swamps, while mothers stood by the roadside, crying for their lost children, and doubting whether to continue longer with the advancing army.
"The houses of the wealthy in our route were pillaged, their clothes and beds torn to pieces, their barns and gins given to the flames.
"An old planter was walking back and forth, wringing his hands, and exclaiming over and over, 'Oh, I'm a ruined man! I'm a ruined man!' when one of the soldiers, weary of his noise, consoled him with, ' Who in - said you wasn't?'
" It was melancholy to watch the books disappear from the shelves of the State library, recalling the Vandalism of the Arabs in Egypt. Ghost of Hannah More! Think of my stealing Cælebs in search of a Wife!
"In many of the houses the ladies sat amid the ruins of their furniture, and the tattered contents of their drawers and trunks, smiling as if they took all things joyfully. Yet now and then an old lady would have to be reproved by her calmer daughter, 'Please Mamma, don't rar so!'
"A General Harrison was accosted by one of the men: ' Well, old man, they're handling you rather roughly! 'Yes,' was the reply, 'they have done about all they can.' 'No,' said the other angrily, 'we'll burn your house for you, and make a desert of your plantation!' The discovery of blood- hounds, which always exasperates the men, and the fact that his son had charge of a prison pen, occasioned special vin- dictiveness.
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