USA > Massachusetts > History of the Second Mass. Regiment of Infantry, third paper > Part 17
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Plump in our midst came the friendly shells ; one exploding so nearly under my horse that I have never been able to tell whether it was to the right or left of a plumb-line through his belly. "Stop him ! Stop that d-d ass!" with expletives stronger than refined, greeted this ambitious artillerist, who seemed bent, like the Irishman at Donnybrook Fair, to hit the first head he saw : and he was stopped by one of Pope's stiff-officers before he had destroyed the commanding gen- eral of the Army of Virginia.
Hardly had the enemy opened with his battery when two Maine Batteries * of Rickett's Division sent their compli- ments in stich furious earnest and with such accurate aim, that the enemy retreated with a loss of nearly all his horses and many of his men. We found them where they fell when Jackson retreated.
While batteries were still passing farther to the rear, accom- panied by straggling regiments of infantry and cavalry, I dis- covered Gen Williams, commanding our division, by my side. I asked him whether, in view of the probable formation of a
* The second and Fifth Ma ne.
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new line of battle, I better move a little farther to the rear. To this he assented.
With the Second Massachusetts Regiment leading, followed by all that I could gather of my brigade, I had proceeded but a short distance when, out of the darkness of the night, I heard a voice scolding at the retreating troops which pre- ceded me. "Where are you going? Halt, I will report you! Halt, I say!" etc. etc., was uttered with an accent not English, and with a volubility quite foreign. In the midst of his vehement exclamations, whom should the speaker next encounter but Col. Andrews, at the head of the Second Massachusetts Regiment. Him, therefore, the voice ad- dressed with the same energy and almost in the same words used to others, ending with the threat of a report. Evidently the speaker fancied the whole army was going to the rear, and his duty it was to save it from disgrace. I doubt if Col. Andrews ever received such a blessing in a few moments in his life. It seemed to stagger him. I heard it, and rode for- ward, to find Andrews's march impeded by a little man, sur- rounded with a large staff. . It was near midnight, and too dark to distinguish the person or rank of the speaker.
" Who are you." I angrily exclaimed. " who uses such lan- guage to this regiment, or any oficer belonging to it ?"
" Who am I?" slowly and emphatically uttered the voice.
" Yes ! Who are you ? What is your name ?" " My name? " again spoke the voice, in measured tones.
" Yes ; your name, - if you have a name ! Who are you ?" " I am General Sigel!" was the reply, with an emphasis as crushing as could be extracted from these words.
" You are General Sigel, are you ? Well, General Sigel, you cannot address yourself to troops that I command, in this manner. This regiment is the Second Massachusetts, a regi- ment that never retreats until ordered. It is just out of the fight, has suffered a terrible loss in officers and men, and is now moving under orders to the rear to take up a new position."
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In an instant Sigel, with softened tones, made the amende honorable. He had seen, he said, so many going to the rear, that he thought all were moving without orders. With many apologies he moved forward with his corps of fresh troops, whose presence a few hours earlier would have saved our corps, perhaps given us the victory.
And here we may pause in our narrative to ask, -Why, when Jackson threw from 20,000 to 25,000 troops upon our corps, Sigel was not there to help us ?
Impressed by the furious cannonade with the belief that Banks might be about to fight alone the battle he intended to fight with the three corps of his army, we have narrated that Gen. Pope hurried, with McDowell's force, to the front. About the time Pope* left Culpepper, Gen. Sigel, with his staff, entered it to report to him. The troops of this command, said to be much jaded by the heat and fatigue, were not yet in town.
It will be remembered that on the Sth Sigel received orders from Pope to march immediately from Sperryville to Culpep- per, a distance of about twenty miles. Instead of obeying these orders, he sent a note (which the latter received after night on the 8th), dated at Sperryville at 6.30 P. M., asking by what road Fe should march to Culpepper Court House. This delay of Sigel's detained him until too late for the action, -- " delayed him," as Pope says, i "by the singular uncertainty of what road he ought to pursue." Nor was this all. At this vital hour, at four o'clock in the afternoon of the 9th of August, Sigel's Corps had not yet arrived at Culpepper, and worse than that, when it did arrive, the men were hungry as well as jaded, for they were without rations. "I had given notice," says Pope, "that the whole Army of Virginia should always be ready to move at the shortest notice, and should habitually keep two days' rations in their haversack"; and this Pope seems to have Pope's Report.
t Pope's Comf.ja! Rep .rt.
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thought sufficient to assure, beyond peradventure, the arri- val of Sigel at Culpepper with food at all events on the day of the battle of Cedar Mountain. But not so Sigel. His corps had not a cracker nor a ration of pork ; and his men could not march without them. So provisions were procured from McDowell's command and cooked at Culpepper Court House. While Sigel's Corps, between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, were getting their dinners to be in readi- ness to move forward between five and seven miles to aid in fighting the battle Pope intended to fight with his whole army, the principal events which I have recorded were trans- piring. "It was intended," testities McDowell, in the Court of Inquiry, where Sigel brought charges against him for not supporting Banks, -- " it was intended that Sigel should follow and support Banks, and Sigel did not do so because of unnec- essary delay in marching to Culpepper." But at last Sigel had found his road, and we had found Sigel. Had he moved when ordered, there would have been a very different history of the fight of Cedar Mountain. It is not probable that Banks would have assaulted Jackson's army at all, at least not single-handed and alone.
We left Pope, McDowell, aud Banks, their staffs and escorts, making rapid time to the rear, while, from the woods where I was ordered to take up a position, the enemy poured into us a heavy fire of musketry. After my interview with Sigel, I halted my command about where I supposed a new line of battle would be formed by fresh troops and the remnant of Banks's Corps, when Pope suddenly came upon us.
"General, you live mistaken your position," he said.
"I have not taken the one you designated, because the enemy in large force occupy it," I replied.
" You are mistaken," said Pope : " those are our own troops."
" No, sir," I urged, "I was there but just now, and we were fired at, by infantry, from the woods where you ordered me."
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Again insisted Pope, " It is not so."
" Of course, then," I replied, " I will move there now, of as near there as I can, if you wish it."
" Do so," was the order.
Facing about, I moved my diminutive column, that some how or other had dwindled to less than two hundred men, over the ground from whence the whole of Banks's Corps had retreated. On my right, our troops, under Gen. Tower, still held their strong point at Brown's cottage, and held it through the night, as I had maintained it through the day, unmolested ; but on my left and front I was alone. When within a reason- able distance of the woods I halted. Pope, with Banks, Mc- Dowell, and Sigel, had followed me, and now dismounted, were sitting under a tree by the road-side. It was after twelve at night.
An examination at the front convinced me of the truth of more than I had asserted to Pope, and I went to him to report that, save my small guard, there was nothing between him and the whole of Jackson's army.
"Not so," replied Pope. "Generals Green and Prince are there with their commands."
I denied it, affirming that they had fallen far back to the rear long before.
But Pope was persistent, and woukl not believe that I, alone of all Banks's Corps, was in his front. Soon, however, many members of the Seventh Virginia Cavalry, groping about in the dark, began to make inquiries at my principal picket sta- tion whether we could inform them where their regiment was. Some dozen or so of them were thus silently taken into our arms, and immediately sent back to Pope.
Then again I sought the general commanding, and urged as confirming proof of my statement that we were alone, the fact that the enemy, unmolested, were wan lering around in our front.
"But Col. Clark [ Banks's detective aid[ says Green and Prince are there on our left," urged Pope.
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" Won't you send him out to find them ?" I replied. .
" Yes," replied Pope. "Give him an escort and let him go."
Clark, whose information was generally in the inverse ratio of his assumption, went doubtingly forth with a large escort; but he had not proceeded fifty yards across the pike towards my left, when he was met by a sharp musketry fire from the enemy's skirmish line. Tumultuously Clark returned, followed by the troops. The bullets pattered with such effect against the trees and fence-rails beneath which Pope and his generals were reposing, that a second time the whole body of officers and followers moved in an incredibly short time to the rear. It was rather a long chase before I could catch Pope, but when I did, I asked him if he was now satisfied of the truth of my assertions.
" Remove your men to the rear," replied Pope, who then with McDowell addressed himself to the work of forming a new line of battle (which about daylight was effected with fresh troops) for a resumption of our fight, which did not take place.
From where Gen. Jackson rested after his movement for- ward upon Banks's line, to where he halted again in doubt, the distance was one mile and a half. It was the intention of the enemy " to reach Culpepper that night"; but the vigorous attack upon his battery," the report of his " most reliable scout that the enemy was but a few hundred yards in advance," and the additional fact that Col. " Jones, of the Seventh Vir- ginia Cavalry, reported that he had learned from some prisoners he had taken, that Federal reinforcements had arrived," induced Jackson to think it " prudent to halt."i
It was not until morning that Jackson added to this prudent resolve yet another, which was, not to fight Pope again on that ground. He gives as his reason " that he was convinced
The enemy admit in Oficial Reports that the battery which opened upanis at midnight was silenced, causing Capt. Pegram: severe loss and compelling him to withdraw.
t Jackson's Report.
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that Pope would have 60,000 men before he could resume." * When we consider that the whole force Pope could have had on the morning of the roth was all on the ground before twelve at midnight of the 9th ; that this was sufficient to make Jack- son doubt and waver ; and that with the addition of only King's Division of McDowell's Corps, it was sufficient to make Jackson retreat across the Rapidan on the night of the 11th, who can repress their indignation that this force was not united against Jackson on the 9th? There is not a shadow of a doubt that it might have been. Why was Banks's Corps of 6,000 or 7,000 men allowed to stand mangled and bleeding in a useless assault against Jackson's entire army of at least 20,oco able-bodied and fresh troops ?
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Pope answers, " Banks was not ordered to fight that battle, was not expected to fight it, until I could bring up the force which Jackson admits would have been too strong for him to have encountered." Banks answers with a denial of Pope's statements. I will endeavor to show, before I close, which of these conflicting statements is the truc one.
When the sun rose on the morning of the roth of August, our army held a new line of battle almost two miles in rear of the woods into which the enemy had passed during the night. Sigel, his corps strongly posted in the woods, with a wide space of open ground in its front, was on the left, while Rick- etts, withdrawn from our old position to a corner of timber, and behind ridges, held the right of the line. The whole effec- tive force thus in line is officially stated at 20,000 artillery and infantry, and about 2,000 cavalry .; This is exclusive of Bank's Corps which had been sent by Pope about two miles farther to the rear. with orders to Gen. Williams, who had succeeded to the command, to put it rapidly in condition for service. The day was intensely hot ; hour after hour passed, and the silence continued unbroken, while, in compact lines, our troops remained in constant readiness.
t Pope's Off'ed Report.
* Davas.
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Early in the day or during the night of the 9th Jackson had withdrawn his lines back towards Cedar Mountain. The Ioth passed ; our dead were unburied, and our wounded were lying where they fell, all through the wheat and the corn field and in the surrounding forest.
Jackson did not attack Pope, and we have his reason : he was afraid of his numbers. Pope did not attack Jackson, and we have his reason : his " troops were too much fatigued to renew the action "* But Pope's true reason for delay was that King might come up with the other division of McDowell's Corps. King arrived on the evening of the 11th, and Pope "made up his mind, though his force barely equalled Jack- son's, to fall upon the enemy on the 12th."f Many such resolutions have been frustrated by the enemy not waiting to be fallen upon. So Jackson. He fled on the evening of the 11th, leaving many of his dead and wounded on the field and along the road from Cedar Mountain to Orange Court House.#
On the morning of that day, Pope sent, by flag of truce, for permission to recover the wounded and bury the dead. This was granted; and thus we were permitted, by those over whom, according to Halleck's despatch!| to Pope, we had won a hard-earned and brifffant success, to succor our wounded, to recover our dead. All day of the 11th, the rank and file of the two armies met and talked, between hostile lines, without passion or resentment. On our left the corn-field was only sprinkled with dead, but on the wheat-field, and in the woods into which our regiments charged and by the fence
* Pope's Oficial Report.
t Pope's Official Report.
# " When' Jackson wert tumbling across the Rapidan, under cover of night, abandoning many wounded ant stragglers by the way, and burek siving his bag- gage ; calling for remtercements, and thanking the Lord for the victory in the same breath ; we are at a loss to imagine the grounds for his pious gratitude." ---
Halleck's order to Pope, War Department, Anga I, Ii.
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where my brigade fought in line of battle, there were ghastly piles of dead, with here and there a living sufferer, who had drawn his painful breath through more than thirty-six hours of exposure. The severest loss fell to the Second. The mortality among the officers was unusually heavy. One writer attributes this to their conspicuous dress, making them a mark for the enemy's sharp-shooters ; but it can be better and more satisfactorily accounted for by the habit which our regiment had acquired of standing steadily where and when it was ordered, despite all attacks made upon it, even though, as at Cedar Mountain, it was overwhelmed on its front, flank, and rear.
Our total loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners in the Sec- ond Regiment was one hundred and seventy-four,-thirty-five per cent of all engaged. Out of the whole loss, but fifteen were prisoners unwounded. Twelve officers and one hun- dred and forty-seven non-commissioned officers and privates were killed and wounded out of the Second alone. and of this number, six of the officers and fifty-two of the non-commis- sioned officers and privates were instantly killed or mortally wounded .* Surrounded by many of their men killed in the action, I saw dead upon the field, Captains Cary, Goodwin, Abbott, Williams, an! Lieut. Perkins; Major Savage had been removed, to die at Charlottesville.
Never in the entire history of the Second Massachusetts Regiment, has its percentage of loss been so great. Not at Winchester, Antietam, Chancellorsville, not at Gettysburg, Resacca, the Atlanta campaign, or in the march to the sea, was the sacrifice so large. In my whole brigade, number-
* I can add nothing to Col. Andrews's letter, written after the battle, in which he said, " Tell do friends of the regiment that it has fully sustained its rep l'a- tion, hissing for the travely and with great danes with fried bach by the overwhelming numbers of the every, losing of all it carried into action two thirds of its officers and more than one third of its non-commissioned officers and privees." Es comple Ment all the wo unded und gute mers, ate Quat's Record of Selon ! Marie sette Regiment.
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ing less than 1,500 men, the loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners was four hundred and sixty-six, -- over thirty in every hundred of my command.
Jackson had won a complete victory. How, indeed, could it be otherwise ? Place the figures of the force I have given for Banks's Corps against the twelve brigades of Jackson's three divisions, against the 25,000 men of all arms which met the charge of our 7,500 men," and can there be a doubt how such a contest would terminate? Even Dabney, Jackson's Boswell, admits in his history of this action that Jackson had 20,000 mien engaged, but he puts our force at 32,000 " engaged in the battle."f Claims for Jackson's prowess, based upon such figures, are grounded on air. Jackson admits a loss in killed and wounded of 1, 314, and claims to have caused us a loss of twice that number.#
"Jackson thought," says Dabney, " that Cedar Mountain was his most successful battle." Had Jackson known that he was fighting none other than Banks's Corps, would he have thought this battle so successful ? Who shall say ? Jackson was fallible, and oftertimes too stubborn to know or admit the truth. In his Official Report, he feels obliged to defend himself for not attacking, on the toth, the army he thought he had whipped on the off, by assuming that Pope had received reinforcements, which, Dabney says, Jackson
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* The force under Jackson, according to our most authentic information, was 27,000 men of all arms and sixty guns, of which about 25.000 men were present in the action. Banks's tores is officially stated at 6,28, men, with thirty guns and a brigade of cavalry. total, 7,500 men of all arms. See Strother's Recollections of Virginia Campal_n.
1 Dabney's Life of Ja. Ison.
# " We captured four hundred prisoners, 5,302 small arms, one twelve-pounder Napoleon and its caisson, with two other caissons and a limber." - Jackson's Rchert.
S " This field was remarkable for the narrowres- of its front : a mile in width embracing the whole ground upon which centre and left wing had wrestled for half a day as dust 33,200 men, a number which wereld m ke a line of battle six miles long." - D: ney.
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placed as high as 60,000. Jackson himself says that he fled on the IIth " to avoid being attacked by vastly superior forces in front."
The evidence we have given is conclusive that although Jackson shrank from an encounter with Pope when the two armies were evenly matched, his historians, clamorous in their falsehoods of the numbers overpowered, demanded that Cedar Mountain should be emblazoned on Jackson's shield. But the mills of Time at last grind out the truth, and before Dab- ney had exhausted even his endless vocabulary in coining loud-sounding words of praise, he felt obliged to defend Jack- son, not only for retreating, but even for fighting where he. did.
The reinforcements which caused Jackson to retreat were not present with Pope's army on the 10th, when the former refused to renew the fight ; and when they came up, on the 11th, they gave us, as we have shown (King's Division only), a force no larger than Jackson's. Yet this made him retreat. Of the fight at Cedar Mountain, Dabney says, "Jackson meant to have fought at Culpepper Court House on the Sth. Had he done so, his victory would have been so much more complete as to silence every charge of fruitlessness ; for we have seen that the supports which saved Pope from destruction only arrived at nightfall on the 9th."
To silence such criticism, to show what would have happened had something not interposed of which we are not informed, it is sufficient to refer to what we have said of Pope's dis- positions on the 8th. Had Jackson marched to Culpepper Court House of that day, he would not only have saved Pope much time in concentration, but he would have met, in addi- tion to Banks's Corps, the whole of Rickett's Division, and we may believe Sigel would have found a road upon which he could have arrived in time.
Jackson's battle of Cedar Mountain cannot be defended. It accomplished no parpose, it established no desirable end.
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In three days from the time the last gun was fired our cavalry pickets were re-established upon the Rapidan.
In conclu ling this chapter, it seems proper to offer the fol- lowing criticism upon the plan of this battle, and the causes which led to the peculiar efforts put forth In Banks's testi- mony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, he attempts to exculpate himself for attacking the enemy, by try- ing to make it appear that the enemy were coming down to attack him. He had seen the movement of Ewell's remaining regiments to the mountain-side, and the brigade of Thomas, of Hill's Division, reinforcing Early ; and, in his own language, he " had gone down to the front with some officers, and been impressed with the idea that while they were moving on the other side (the left), they were coming down on the right," that is, across the wheat-field and through the woods, behind which all of Williams's Division were concealed. If Jackson ever thought of turning our right, it was not while Crawford and Banks were peering through the woods and trying to guess what was behind them.
The enemy could not have crossed that wheat-field and attacked Crawford without exposing their flank and rear to an attack from my whole brigade of infantry and batteries, nor could they have attemptedl it, without full warning to me from my skimishers, who filled the woods in front of Crawford's right.
"Turning our right !" It would not have been attempted at that stage of the battle ; or if it had, to swing his whole line backward on my position, as on a pivot, and cover bis left by the woods on the ride, on the northern side of Cedar Creek, where Crawford was the evening before, when we were sent out to establish ourselves at Crawford's position, would have been Banks's true movement to rovel such an attack. As proof. of this, I may refer to the fact that the remnantof Banks's Corps fell back behind a line of battle thus posted, when Pope came up, and with new troops established a new line, the right
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of which was at the position I had occupied until I was ordered forward to the stubble-field .*
Our right never was attacked, it was too strong ; but alas ! it was too evident that Banks did not know where the right of his line was. With all these facts (which cannot be disputed) before us, I read, with the same amazement that fills me when- ever I investigate any of Banks's military efforts, that " the enemy had massed his forces on our right, and was moving forward and begun an attack upon us. My force encountered him about five o'clock, which is the usual time for them to make an attack. They made a desperate attack on our right : of course we had to strengthen that with all our force."} Now every one but Banks and Crawford knows that the enemy made, at this time (five o'clock), no attack at all on our right, the right of our line. If Banks had not sent four regiments over the wheat-field to attack Jackson, and then sent me from the right over half a mile to the front, after the enemy had used up these regiments, then this whole force would have been saved to meet Jackson's attack, if he had made one ; and had it been upon the right, we could have held the enemy at bay until night or McDowell and Sigel had come. There is no room for controversy here: the weak and unhappy confer- ence with Crawford is marked with blunders, which would be comedies if they were not crimes.
Bearing in mind that Banks moved his line forward at least four hundred yards from where Roberts stationed him, before he " sent Crawford a brigade"; that Crawford's regi- ments advanced six hundred yards in crossing the stubble- field before they entered the woods, and then that they totally surprised the enemy, driving him back some hundreds of
* This was the position I surrendered after dark to Gen. Tower, of Rickett's Division.
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