USA > Massachusetts > Reminiscences of military service in the Forty-third regiment, Massachusetts infantry, during the great Civil war, 1862-63 > Part 12
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Major C. O. Rogers of Boston, who was on a visit to the regiment at the time of this march, accompanied by several friends also from home, rode out from camp with us, -I think in the morning, -stopping a mile or two out. We cheered them lustily as we marched past their buggy where it had halted. The incident was an uncommon and a very pleasant one. We were not usually cheered on in our marches
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by well-dressed civilians in carriages. We were reminded of home and the loyal millions of the North by their cordial manners. Out of the deep places of my inner being I had- an unexpected experience as I left them and pressed on with my comrades to the perils of the expected encounter. Dana has graphically described, in his "Two Years before the Mast," the supreme satisfaction he had, while aloft upon the yardarm of the ship, in looking down upon a seasick passen- ger on deck. A similar feeling of conscious power took pos- session of me, as I thought of the weak and almost imbecile appearance and situation of non-combatants amid warlike scenes. We were at home: they were not. Our individu- ality had been merged in each other until every man felt, in some respects, as though he had the strength of a thousand. One of the greatest mysteries of our being was forcing itself upon my attention by the trivial circumstance of two or three unarmed gentlemen taking themselves very discreetly out of harm's way.
I owe a word to the memory of this large-hearted and un- fortunate man. Lieut. Turner, our quartermaster, informs me that Major Rogers met him, on his return from Newbern in charge of the sick of the regiment, and inquired with great earnestness whether all had come. He further author- ized him, with the utmost frankness and good-will, to draw upon him for any amount that was needed to secure the immediate return to their homes of all the invalids of the regiment.
While we waited in our camp, during the alarm of the first day, we noticed that the national colors were set, for the first and only time during our stay, on the highest church- steeple in Newbern. It was understood that they were placed there by special orders from Foster, so that the rebel column across the Neuse might be assured that their friends whom we baffled on the Kinston road had not succeeded in taking the town.
. Gen. Foster served his country with zeal. I was reminded by his conduct, on many occasions, of a reminiscence of Davy Crockett, the Kentucky pioneer, who was represented, in
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some rude Western literature which tickled my untrained boyish fancy, as taking refuge for the night in the hollow of a fallen tree. While he lay in sound sleep in this helpless situation, one of his bitter enemies came by, and attempted to pay off some old scores by punching his head with a stick. Crockett was fearfully enraged, as well he might be, at this unfair advantage; but he could not resist until he got out of the tree, when he at once proceeded to business. It always seemed to me as if it would have been a good thing for the country, if the whole force which was confined in Sumter during that memorable winter of 1861 had been promoted to major-generals on their liberation, as Foster was.
We had a fortnight's respite after the events which have been related, when we were again put upon the alert by orders, on April 1, to be ready to march at a moment's notice; and on Saturday, April 4, we were reviewed by Gens. Palmer and Amory. I was struck with the searching scrutiny with which Gen. Palmer and his staff subjected us to examination. I don't think that they cared a copper in respect to the details of our dress or equipments. They appeared to look alto- gether at our faces, as they rode slowly by, looking with great earnestness at every individual. This surprised me, it was so different from the usual formal and external character of in- spections ; but we ascertained a few days after what it meant. We had not known much personally about Palmer as our division officer, and quite likely he knew as little about us. When we took, with our friends of the Seventeenth, the lead of a column of ten thousand men, a few days afterward, we knew at once what that searching inquiry into our morale meant.
During the week that ensued after the first of the month, we were in a state of expectation connected with events which were transpiring about Little Washington. The ground actu- ally trembled under us, as we lay in our tents, from the firing of heavy artillery, at a distance of twenty-six miles, during the siege which had begun at that place. The following extract from the report of the Massachusetts Twenty-seventh Infantry gives a detail of the circumstances of the invest- ment : -
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"The duty at Washington was unmarked by any incidents of interest until the latter part of March. The many rumors and threats of an attack, that had been heard for some weeks, finally - culminated on the 30th of March by the driving-in of our advance pickets. Gen. Foster, being then in Washington on a visit, took command of the garrison, at that time consisting of the Twenty- seventh Massachusetts Infantry, eight companies : Forty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry, eight companies ; First North-Carolina Infantry, two companies ; Third New-York Cavalry, one company ; Third New-York Artillery, one battery ; having in all, on land and gunboats, twenty-eight pieces of artillery, heavy and light.
" The enemy's force was commanded by Major-Gen. D. H. Hill, and consisted of Daniel's Brigade of Infantry, five regiments ; Garnett's Brigade of Infantry, six regiments ; Pettigrew's Brigade of Infantry, six regiments ; Robertson's Brigade of Cavalry, three regiments ; which force, with forty picces of artillery, and some independent battalions not brigaded, brought up the enemy's force to about fifteen thousand." - Adjutant-General's Report of 1863.
The following extracts from letters indicate the course of affairs which immediately followed :-
CAMP ROGERS, April 3, 1863.
We are being disquieted again this week, having received orders on Monday noon to be ready to march at a moment's notice, - orders which have not as yet been countermanded. We have been hearing heavy distant firing at intervals, sometimes all day, ever since then ; and the statements are, that Gen. Foster with the Twenty-seventh and Forty-fourth is shut in at Little Washing- ton, some distance north of herc, by the occupation of an earthi- work, on the river below them, by the rebels. We suppose that the firing is from the heavy guns of our vessels endeavoring to dislodge them. The statement also is, that re-enforcements have been sent for from Fortress Monroe, and that a considerable num- ber have been drawn out of Newbern.
It is said that Gen. Amory, our brigadier, is in command at Newbern. Such orders as we received on Monday are issued, it is said, to all the regiments, so as to keep all in a state of watch- fulness, and preparation for whatever may happen. I notice, by a " New-York Herald " of the 27th ult., that the rebels attempted recently a similar game at Plymouth, and that help came from Suffolk, driving them out.
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CAMP ROGERS, April 7, 1863, Ten o'clock P.M.
I had, as I supposed, finished up for the night, and had lain down to sleep, when the long roll was beaten, word was passed to " fall in," and we must be off. It is said that we go on transports to Little Washington. I had supposed that business was settled up ; but it seems not. This is all that I have time to write. I hope it will not be long before you hear good news again.
The " transports " on which we were to go proved to be small stern-wheel gunboats, on which we embarked, and were carried across the Neuse. Here we lay all night and all the next after- noon, when we started, about ten thousand men of all arms having come across during the night and forenoon. The Seventeenth took the advance ; and we followed, marching until nine P.M., going perhaps, eleven miles. I got a good night's rest, having slept but little on the previous night. We supposed the whole column was in camp with us, but found in the morning that all but three regiments and some cavalry and artillery had halted some miles baek, while, as a feint to deceive the enemy by our camp-fires, we had advaneed by a different road from the ultimate design of our commander. After marching some four miles back in the morning of the 9th, we rejoined our forces, and turned into a road leading toward Washington, but more to the eastward, and kept on, still in the advance. About noon we begun to hear firing from our cavalry vedettes and the skirmishers of the Seventeenth, which continued at intervals until four r.M., when a heavy volley of musketry, fol- lowed by the shouts of the rebels, admonished us of the proximity of the enemy. We were near enough to distinguish individual voiees in the cheer we heard ; but the road was circuitous, and it took us some minutes to come up. We found two pieces of our artillery engaged with the enemy across a narrow creek, the mus- ketry on both sides having ceased. The men of the Seventeenth had lain down in line on the right side of the road, and as we came up we did the same, the two cannon being abreast of us. The enemy had a better knowledge of the ground than we. They killed several of our horses at the outset, (?) and badly wounded Capt. Belger of the battery in the thigh. Part of the artillerists were new recruits, and some of the younger of them behaved badly. After three-quarters of an hour of vigorous firing on both sides, our guns stopped, and we supposed we were to be ordered across the bridge ; but, instead of this, we were about faced, and
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to our great surprise we marched, and marched back on our tracks until half-past nine r.dr.
After an uncomfortable night, it being extremely damp and chilly, we marched to Newbern. I had a most intensely interest- ing experience as we lay under fire. All the wounded men passed me ; and I was near enough to the highest officers to hear much that was said. Our present impression is, that Gen. Spinola, who was in command, made a botch of the affair ; that he should not have attacked so violently without meaning to sustain us. We have marched and countermarched about fifty miles in three days, toward, but not to, Little Washington, and have returned home apparently as wise as we went. We supposed we were to help Gen. Foster out of his limbo ; but, instead of that, we very unex- pectedly returned to Newbern, and Washington seems as far from relief as ever.
These allusions to the interesting incidents of the artillery duel at Blount's Creek, as they came directly under my own observation, call for further remarks. Such occur- rences were happening every day at some point on our extended lines between the Atlantic and the Mississippi. They might have been numbered, undoubtedly, by thou- sands, during the four years of fighting; but they were so insignificant in comparison with the greater events which were transpiring, that they are usually dismissed with a line in the military reports and histories. After the novelty of fighting had worn off, the press gave them scant notice ; and domestic letters, from the participants in them, to the home-circle, were, for obvious reasons, guarded and vague in their statements of repulsive details. Many of these petty fights, however, tested the stamina of officers and men quite as effectively as if they had been parts of an action miles in extent, destined to pass into history, and to be transmitted to posterity with an honored name.
Having these conditions in my mind, I shall endeavor to transfer to paper some very vivid recollections, which may serve to give more prominence to the feelings. of individuals who were present than is usual in adventures of this sort. In doing this, I recall the fact, that our regiment was ani-
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mated, as we approached the enemy, by a strong personal motive, - a feeling of which we had not been conscious during any of the previous engagements. We had acquired an in- terest in Gen. Foster, which went deeper than respect. Our sympathetic emotions were in full activity, and we heartily co-operated with our officers in the effort to rescue him. There were also strong personal ties of friendship between many of us and our friends in the Forty-fourth, which quick- ened our interest in them; but their Newbern camp was remote, and they were in a different brigade, so that we had not made acquaintance with them as a regiment.
Our surgeon halted at a suitable place to pitch the field- hospital tent, - a short distance to the rear of the spot where the fight occurred. He was a man of few but well-chosen words ; and he was not disposed to flatter. As we went by him almost on the double-quick, in our eagerness to be at work, he remarked that "he did not believe that there was a coward in the regiment."
We were so near the enemy, that the artillerists whom we supported were more than usually solicitous in respect to their protectors. Spinola was from New York; but he had some very inefficient drafted men under ·his command, from the poorest material which Pennsylvania sent to the war. We heard the men of the battery inquiring what regiment was with them ; and, when the answer was made that it was the Forty-third Massachusetts, it was to our supreme satis- faction that the comment followed at once, without the least hesitation, " All right. We are satisfied."
We had been driving the enemy's pickets before us for a mile. Whenever there was an opening, the skirmishers of the Seventeenth were in plain sight in the field. The natural language of the cautionary faculties was vividly impressed upon their bearing. One of the Confederates dropped his cap, and was in too much of a hurry to stop to pick it up. It was taken in charge by our leading .company, and passed from hand to hand to the rear along the column, after making many a vault through the aireas it was thrown to outstretched arms. It was neat and jaunty in a marked degree, with hori-
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zontal visor, and stylish appearance, contrasting strangely with the usual squalid outfit of the rebel rank and file as we had observed them.
When within a short distance of the point where we finally halted, we found two of the skirmishers of the Seventeenth -- fine, intelligent men, both of them -standing by the side of the road, endeavoring as best they might to answer the questions which our men were putting to them as we came along. They were so out of breath from the scare they had had, and from being obliged to repeat their story so often, that it was with difficulty that they could talk at all ; but they pointed down the road a short distance, and said, "Just there - where the road curves - we received the fire - of a whole regiment - as we crept round the sweep. The air was alive with balls, -but we escaped." Passing one or two hundred feet farther on, we found the Seventeenth lying on the ground, as near the curve as they could go without being in sight of the enemy ; and we piled in in the same manner, our two guns unlimbering at the same time, and beginning their fire diagonally over toward the right or northerly side of the road. Nothing was visible ; and I have the impression that they were guided in their aim entirely by the sound of the enemy's artillery, which was by this time wide awake. The ground upon which we lay rose several feet above the road, and it was thickly covered by trees and undergrowth. As we ranged ourselves, we left two openings or gaps in our line, through which the cannoneers delivered their fire ; so that the impressive spectacle was presented of a sort of living parapet, composed of our bodies ; while the openings represented the embrasures of the fortification, through which the jets of flame momentarily darted from the guns.
The next occurrences which I recall are in connection with the flesh-wound of Capt. Belger of the battery. It was on one of his legs, well up toward the body, and bled freely. His clothes were badly torn around the wound, and he was evidently a fit subject to go to the hospital. But he had no: idea of any such thing. Something had occurred at the head of the column, which had greatly disturbed his serenity of
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mind. His talk was any thing but pious. When I first saw him, he was on foot in the road, close by us; but he ordered his horse, and, although he was too weak to mount unaided, he insisted on being helped into the saddle, and rode to the rear to bring up more artillery, as I heard him say. His officers quietly expostulated with him, but to no effect. That was the last I saw of him; and I doubt very much whether he got any farther to the rear than the field-hospital. I incline to the opinion that the pain of his wound caused him to lose control of his temper. I have never learned with certainty what really took place to throw him off his balance. It was currently reported among us at the time, that one of his guns was carried so far along the road, that some of its horses were killed, and the men were driven from the piece ; but I am not able to state this as a fact.
We soon became conscious, from our own observation and the passage up the road of wounded men from the Seven- teenth, that the rebels had our range. The first one that was brought up was a large, fleshy private, on a stretcher. He was apparently dead, in fact was thought to be so; but, though wounded in the breast, he afterwards recovered. He lay upon his back, grasping his gun firmly, with his arms around it, his features, as nearly as we could see about ten feet off, being fixed and deathly. He was so heavy, that the bearers walked with an unsteady step, causing his body to roll or vibrate from side to side, reminding me, by an incon- gruous and very unpleasant association, of sights I had seen about market-places, or at the autumnal killing in the coun- try.
The next victim that passed up was a fine-appearing ser- geant, who walked composedly to the rear, with one of his arms dangling useless by his side from a wound above the elbow. I have the impression that the surgeons treated him so skilfully that the arm was saved.
The Seventeenth reports eight wounded during the half or three quarters of an hour we were under fire. The artil- lerists added enough to the number to keep our attention and sympathies active as they passed by us. Two of these last
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cases deeply excited my own interest. A caisson had halted in the road a few feet from where Company H was lying; and two boys were running back and forth to supply the guns, the nearest of which was about fifty feet from the cais- son, with ammunition. I call them " boys ; " for I think they must have been under the military age, which was eighteen. They would take a twelve-pound rifled shell in their hands, pressing it against the stomach or chest, and carry it in this manner to the guns. On his return to the caisson, one of them held out his hand towards us, and said that it had just been scraped by a flying fragment. I was not near enough to verify the statement; but his manner indicated truthful- ness. Shortly after, another lad, close to me in the road, pointed to the bridge of his nose, just between the eyes, and I saw the flesh bleeding from the loss of a part of its sub- stance. I had, in short, demonstrable evidence that he had escaped the loss of both his eyes, or his life even, by a hair's breadth. I endeavored to make his case known to my com- rades ; but the noise and the incessant occurrence of exciting incidents prevented me, and I have the impression that I was nearly alone in my observation of the occurrence.
That there were other details happening of which I did not myself become conscious, I am certain, from the fact that I have been recently told, by one in whom I have the fullest confidence, that the caisson itself, not ten feet off from us, was hit about this time.
The "boys" were pretty well frightened. They ceased work, and came and lay down with us. The lieutenant in charge of the guns soon missed them, and came to the caisson. At first he could not find them, as we did not like to expose them ; but the red facing to their uniforms soon revealed them to his searching gaze, and he called them out, with some emphatic remarks concerning their conduct.
The lieutenant remained some time near the caisson, en- gaged in cutting fuzes, which he timed, as near as I can recollect, at less than a second. If the reader has any idea how far a twelve-pound Parrot shell can move in that time, he will know how far distant the rebels were from us, in the judgment of the officers.
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The field-officers had all dismounted, and their horses were in charge of the grooms, a short distance to the rear. These men had as much as they could attend to. The horses were excessively frightened at the artillery discharges. I could see a nervous palpitation or vibration pervading their whole system at every explosion. They were held side by side with each other, with their heads to the front; and the exquisite sensibility of the noble animals would manifest itself first at the nostrils, and pass by a perceptible wave or shock along the whole body. It seemed as though they wanted to say, or to have some one say it for them, " What cruel wretches you are to drag us into your bloody quarrels !"
Col. Fellows was much under my observation as he passed back and forth. He appeared to be perfectly cool, but deeply moved with solicitude for his men. I recall his language, temperately expressed, yet with sufficient definiteness to assure me that the situation did not meet his approval. Our colonel was not with us, and our major was detailed to some special service just before we went into action; so that the care of the regiment devolved upon Lieut .- Col. Whiton. He remained nearly the whole time at the place of greatest danger, beyond the artillery, with the right-flank companies. I judged by his manner, as he passed occasionally along our line, that he felt the same dissatisfaction that we all did. .
With regard to junior officers, it will show how closely we were pressed by the rebel fire to say, that in more than one instance, and without the least discredit to their courage, young men of spirit crept along the road past us, as we lay, on their hands and knees.
It should be said, in justice to Gen. Spinola, that the honor which was so suddenly thrust upon him by Foster's deten- tion in Little Washington would probably have embarrassed all his associate major-generals. It was no small responsi- bility to step into the shoes of so able and experienced a man as our leader, commanding, as he did, our unlimited confi- dence. He probably felt obliged to do something, however, and so he "marched out with twice five thousand men, and then marched back again."
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We judged afterwards that he did not mean any thing more than a feint. The main column was held back so far to the rear as to show that he did not intend to use them in coming on to the enemy's flank. When we got into Pamlico Sound afterwards, two of our number, Corporal C. T. Adams and private Benjamin Rackliff, made a reconnoissance of six or seven miles, after the rebel troops had left, over to the place where we were engaged. They ascertained, to their satisfaction, from the residents, that our opponents were much demoralized by our persistent fire. The rebels were veterans, and well qualified to judge of military probabilities, and they apparently inferred from our determined efforts, that we meant to hold their attention until they could be flanked by the main column, and taken prisoners. Our friends also learned the precise position of the rebel guns, and found that our fire had done no damage, except to tear up the trees in an inac- cessible swamp.
The duel finally came to a close by orders to withdraw. Col. Fellows's men were so hard pressed, that he did not deem it best to attempt to form them where they were, but ordered them to disperse, and to form in the road in the rear of our regiment. The first knowledge that we had of the retreat was from the men of the Seventeenth, who came drifting over the slight elevation through the trees in front of us. Their faces showed plainly the stress of endurance which had been upon them. They had met it manfully, however.
Col. Whiton gave the order to us to form in the road ; but the rebel guns were still active, though our own had ceased. Capt. Hanover observed this, and called out to him, in a pleasantly suggestive tone, to form line by companies, as being much more expedient and safer than to form by battalion. Col. Whiton assented, and we were taken hastily away from the scene of our afternoon's vivid experience.
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