USA > Massachusetts > Reminiscences of military service in the Forty-third regiment, Massachusetts infantry, during the great Civil war, 1862-63 > Part 5
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HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF NORTH CAROLINA, KINSTON, N.C., Dec. 14, 1862.
TO MAJOR-GEN. HALLECK, General in Chief.
I have the honor to inform you that I left Newbern for this place on the 11th inst. ; but owing to bad roads and the consequent delay to my trains, etc., I did not reach the South-west Creek, five miles from this town, until the afternoon of the 13th inst. The enemy were posted there ; but, by a heavy artillery-fire in front and a vigorous infantry-attack on either flank, I succeeded in forcing a passage, and without much loss.
This morning I advanced on the town, and found the enemy, strongly posted at a defile through a marsh, fording a creek. The position was so well chosen, that but little of the artillery could be brought in play.
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HISTORY OF THE FORTY-THIRD REGIMENT, M.V.M.
The main attack, therefore, was made by the infantry, assisted by a few guns pushed forward in the roads. After a five-hours' hard fight, we succeeded in driving the enemy from their position. We followed them rapidly to the river. The bridge over the Neuse at this point was prepared for firing, and was fired in six places ; but we were so close behind them, that we saved the bridge. The enemy retreated precipitately by the Goldsborough and Pikeville roads. Their force was about six thousand men, with twenty pieces of artillery.
The result is, we have taken Kinston, captured eleven pieces of artillery, and taken fiom four hundred to five hundred prisoners, and found a large amount of quartermaster and commissary stores. Our loss will not probably exceed two hundred killed and wounded. I am with great respeet,
Your obedient servant, JOHN G. FOSTER, Major-General commanding.
It seems to me, that, in preparing this record, it should be written in such a manner as to set forth truly and impres- sively the ravages of war and the sufferings it occasions both to victors and vanquished. In order to do this, I will address myself directly to my Chelsea friends and readers, and ask what they would think of the following proceedings. Sup- pose that ten thousand men of all arms should enter the streets of our quiet city late some sabbath afternoon, after having been four days in marching, as I judge about forty- five miles, and that during the last of these days many of them had fought a closely contested action of nearly three hours' duration in Revere or Everett, in which they have lost heavily. Eight men out of every ten are infantry, who have carried the weight of thirty-fire pounds, at the lowest esti- mate, on their persons. Their boots have been ground in sand and water until they are as leaky as sieves, and it is an open question with the wearers whether or not they are not more of a burden than a benefit to the feet they were de- signed to protect. Those same feet, it being understood, in many cases are as much worn and chafed as the boots.
These men, it should be stated, have marched, most of the way, at the top of their speed, with but brief opportunities
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THE GREAT MARCII. - KINSTON.
for rest, often double-quicking in order to close up gaps in the column, halting usually late in the evening. Many of them have performed extra labor during the nights, - of guard, fatigue, or pioneer duty. Their food has been of the plainest kind, - salt beef, hard tack, and coffee, varied some- what with sweet potatoes. The beef has become so monoto- nous and stale, that the stomach loathes it ; and the longing for soft and palatable food has set many of them, for the first time in their lives, into involuntary dreams during the day concerning what they shall eat and what they shall drink ; the visions which float pleasantly in airy fancies through their minds being of well-spread tables at which they used formerly to sit, but which are now so impossible of fulfilment as to tantalize them. Their beds have been so hard, their fatigue so extreme, and they so crowded for room as they have lain, that, after the first nap of an hour or two, a heavy, troubled doze is the nearest approach they can make to their usual quiet sleep at home. The days are hot; but the night air is so cold, that the ice must be broken by shaking their canteens before drinking. These conditions of the march are about an average experience, the most irksome and exhaustive of them all being the enormous burden carried. This I will itemize : 1st, the gun, eight pounds; 2d, one hundred rounds of ball-cartridges, another eight or ten pounds (I weighed them all at the time, but have not the exact figures now) ; then, in about the following order, the haversack, canteen, belts and plates, cap-box, and, slung over the shoulder, the rubber and woollen blankets. worse than all the rest, because so bulky. All these must be carried, besides extra socks, and any personal articles needed. A five-gallon can of kero- sene weighs about twenty-eight pounds ; so that nearly ten pounds in addition would be required to fill out the list I have given. All this, it should be kept in mind, must be carried over narrow roads rutted deeply by artillery, and in the midst of a crowding, hustling mob of weary soldiers, often surly to the men of any other regiment than their own, as you will soon learn, if, from any cause, you press on or lag behind.
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HISTORY OF THE FORTY-THIRD REGIMENT, M. V.M.
Do you doubt, or fail to realize, dear reader, what this means? If so, I wish that you would just take the aforesaid can, or some other article equally heavy, - say a large-sized full coal-hod, -leaving off all the rest, and start for Boston with it some fine morning, across the bridge: you can soon find out in this way what soldiering means. You will under- stand that you can change the can from one hand to the other, or set it on the ground and rest, but please observe that the soldier cannot do this. All his luggage must be fas- tened to his person : his arms and hands must be free to use his weapon at any moment. Theoretically, of course, his traps can be taken off as they were put on; but practically his situation is such that he can only readily relieve himself of his blankets. When once put on in the morning, his other equipments must remain on. Every soldier can recall the convulsive throb or jerk by which the sorely jaded men struggled for a moment's relief by throwing their equipments upwards, thus easing the shoulders for an instant.
I have been writing of the burdens of war as experienced by the soldiers of a conquering column, as ours was. They are terrible. I dare not speak of individual instances of suffering in our own company which I saw ; but I must gen- eralize.
I saw the men of the Forty-fifth, which was as fine a regi- ment as any in the service, fall out by the dozen on the ยท morning of the day before the battle of Kinston. The road on either side was lined with them ; and it did not require a second look to satisfy the observer that they were not shirks or cowards, for extreme suffering was marked upon every line of their faces. What a condition the wounded of their number must have been in to pass under the surgeon's hands the next day! If these were the trials of the victors, what must be the situation of the vanquished! And how are the communities treated who have the ill fortune to be ground between the upper and the nether millstones of contending armies ! I should state here, that the line-officers of an in- fantry regiment are, to a large extent, fellow-sufferers with their subordinates. They march on foot. as the soldiers do.
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THE GREAT MARCH. - KINSTON.
and they are, in addition, so burdened with mental responsi- bilities that their vital powers are heavily drawn upon. It is next to impossible for them to look sharply after all that is going on, and maintain strict or even reasonable discipline ; and much of the irregular proceedings of victorious troops when entering towns or cities originates from this cause.
I have supposed the entrance of such a column as this into Chelsea ; their faces so blackened by powder and camp-fires, and their clothing so grimed by mud, that the intimate friends of the members of Company HI would not have been able at once to recognize us. I saw during the march some of the most dashing line-officers of the regiment with their boots slung on their swords, and the sword on their shoulder, their legs being bare.
The artillery and cavalry halt in the squares and wider streets : the infantry occupy the narrow ones from one end to the other, - Division, Cherry, Poplar, and Ash, from Wil- liams Street to Washington Avenue. To make the illustra- tration compare as near as possible with the circumstances at Kinston, we will take it for granted that there are no dwell- ings on these streets, but that they are simply the back-yards of the houses on the wide streets.
The next thing that will follow is this: the instant that the soldiers are dismissed from the ranks, all the fences and out-buildings are levelled to the ground, and roaring fires are kindled with the material. The next step is to enter the houses, asking for cooking-utensils, and taking them if they are not voluntarily yielded. Then, after eating supper, boards are placed upon the earth, the houses are entered again, and all the bedding is brought out and laid upon the boards for the use of the most footsore and exhausted. All desirable conveniences come with them as a matter of course, -stuffed chairs, washing-utensils. mirrors, and other things too numer- ous to mention. In one case that I know of, a party entered a house in this way, and found themselves in the niek of time to sit down to a hearty meal prepared for the inmates, who stood by and saw it rapidly disappear without remonstrance. The houses are ransacked from cellar to gar-
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HISTORY OF THE FORTY-THIRD REGIMENT, M.V.M.
ret : articles of no possible use to the takers, such as ladies' silk dresses, are appropriated, to be thrown away the next day. In one sense, a reign of terror exists. Yet I should leave the reader with a wrong impression, if I did not further state that there was little or no violence used. Most of the residents had left, and this fact largely accounts for these proceedings. Those who remained had the sense to see that we were not ugly, and, where they used fair speech, they escaped the worst of the license of the soldiery.
There was a large fire in the town during the night, and some plundering of tobacco warehouses ; but of these things as an eye-witness I cannot make any report. Some time in the evening I lay down alone on the sidewalk ; and the last thing that I remember hearing above the din and confusion was the sweet notes of the band of the Forty-fifth, which lulled me to sleep. The night was warm, the only comforta- ble one we had on the march, and I slept soundly till morn- ing, - the first and last full night's rest during the march.
In making the comparison between the two localities, I should have stated that I reckon Kinston to have been, at that time, a place of perhaps two thousand inhabitants, and about the dimensions of Chelsea before it included Caryville. You may judge, Mr. Editor, what a fine column of local items "The Kinston Pioneer" for the next week must have had. If I have not succeeded in impressing upon my readers the fearful havoc of war, as seen in some of the least of its evils, all that I could further do, as a last desper- ate resource, would be to improvise something in the same vein as Dibdin's famous sea-song, " Ye gentlemen of England who live at home at ease," set it to musie for the piano, and during its rehearsal in the pleasant homes of Chestnut and other Chelsea streets. I should suggest perambulating the household, taking an inventory of personal goods and chat- tels, with an occasional look at the back-yards and fences.
I think I hear some one inquiring, " If you Massachusetts men, just from home, 'cut up' in this manner, pray tell us what the rebels would have done here?" The answer is at hand. In the autumn of 1862, to quote from Carleton's " Four Years of Fighting," -
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THE GREAT MARCH. - KINSTON.
"The centre column of the rebels moved upon Frankfort, Ky., gathering up cattle, horses, goods of all kinds, cloths, clothes, boots, shoes, grain, and every thing which could minister to their comfort as they came. At Frankfort they invited the merchants to open their stores, made princely purchases of goods, paying liberally in the legal currency of the Confederacy, sending off long lines of wagons toward the South, laden with supplies."
This, be it understood, was the way they dealt with their friends. If they had come into Chelsea, every store would have been gutted at once without the pretence of payment, the private residences treated far worse than we did those of Kinston, and in addition the city would have been mulcted in a fine of money as large as could be squeezed out of us. For proof of what I am saying, the inquirer is referred to the conduct of the rebel army in Pennsylvania just before the battle of Gettysburg.
In an allusion a short distance above, I have set the dis- tance we had marched at about forty-five miles. By a direct line it is but thirty ; but we had made a long detour to the westward for strategic purposes. " Harper's Review," for December, 1864, contains an article entitled " Heroic Deeds of Heroic Men," from the pen of J. S. C. Abbott, giving a history of military movements in North Carolina up to that date. It has a map which locates our camp on Saturday night far to the north-west of Trenton, -too far, in my opinion, for accuracy, as we could not have reached, from that point, the battle-field at Kinston so early on sabbath morning as we did. There is no doubt, however, that our route was very circuitous.
On Monday morning, Dec. 15, we were up bright and early, and on the road, retracing our steps. We passed again over the bridge, which was burned some time during the forenoon, after all of the troops had recrossed the river. This brought us directly upon the battle-field. The first thing that we noticed was a church, - a forlorn, unpainted, barn-like structure, standing directly in the line of our fire. Its appearance may be imagined. It had escaped the most ruinous effects of shell ; but its weather-worn and shrivelled
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HISTORY OF THE FORTY-THIRD REGIMENT, M.V.M.
1
walls and roof were so perforated by musket-balls and small fragments of shell, that scarcely a hand-breadth of uninjured surface remained. As we marched on over the dark and bloody grounds so recently the scene of deadly strife, we passed occasionally the corpse of a Union soldier, the limbs composed in the decencies of death, and the cap drawn over the face, concealing the features as they had taken their last look at the King of Terrors, and received the impression of his awful visage. At our left, a short distance, the greater portion of our fallen heroes lay, enranked in death as they had marched and fought in life; the sad sight being some- what alleviated to the outward sense by the thick under- growth which covered the ground, partially enveloping their bodies, as if Nature herself yearned to take them tenderly to her bosom. Marching rapidly on, with many a sorrowful remark to each other, we came upon the ground which inter- vened between the contending forces; and here one of the most impressive of sights met our view. It was, as already stated, thickly wooded with trees of all sizes, from an inch up to a foot or more in diameter. The bark was literally all of it scraped from the trunks up as high in the air as thirty feet. Some of the largest-sized trees were cut completely off by the explosion of shells at the instant they struck : great branches were torn from them, and, generally speaking, the view was one of horrid desolation.
I saw no earthworks which might have sheltered the ene- my ; and it is almost inconceivable to me how five thousand men could have resisted, so long as they did, such a fire as we directed against them, or how our own forces, engaged at such short range, could have escaped without even heavier loss than occurred. The enemy were commanded by Gen. Evans of Ball's Bluff fame. We captured six hundred men and several cannon. It is said that many were killed, and their corpses thrown into the river to conceal their loss.
I judge that every soldier of intelligence and character comes out of his first battle with an internal experience which tells upon all of his future military life. It was so at least with me; for I passed on with a buoyant step as we
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THE GREAT MARCHI. - KINSTON.
countermarched over the very ground upon which, only twenty-four hours before, I had been heavily burdened from a moral cause. Among the sharp corners which I had to turn as I passed the anxious hour before entering the recruit- ing-tent in Winnisimmet Square, the most acute angle pre- sented itself in the shape of a large .personal development of that remarkable growth of modern times called "humani- tarianism," which I define sufficiently clearly for present purposes as the indisposition or moral inability to inflict or even to witness pain. Obliged by the nature of my calling to be an occasional observer of shocking accidents from machinery, falling from aloft, etc., I confess I was compelled to ask myself some very pointed questions on this subject. If your sympathies are so strong that you cannot witness, without extreme suffering, these exposures of civil life, are you not mistaken in the idea that you are called to perform a soldier's duty? The question was not answercd to my satisfaction until I had passed through the scenes of Kinston : there the burden was lifted from my mind. Singularly enough, although I had little in this respect to test me on that field, I came off from it thoroughly assured that I need not carry any weight from that cause in future, and my experience afterward confirmed the correctness of my con- clusion.
Our ambulance corps was well organized; and the condi- tions of the fight at Kinston enabled them to care immedi- ately for the wounded, bringing them off the field in closed vehicles. Although but a short distance from them, we were not near enough to hear their moans. The few dead that I saw as we pressed forward, were covered with blankets; so that I do not recall a single instance of the repulsive sight of wounds and blood, deathly faces, or agonizing groans such as I afterwards witnessed and heard at Whitehall, and later on, in the spring of 1863, at Blount's Creek. Yet, as I have said, I passed through an internal experience which gave me confidence in myself. Much to my surprise, the heavy discharges of artillery elevated my mental and moral energies, instead of depressing them. If I had realized in
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HISTORY OF THE FORTY-THIRD REGIMENT, M.V.M.
Chelsea under what conditions of extreme exhaustion I should go into battle, I should have said at once, " I can never withstand these moral weaknesses with such depression of the physical energies." To my great astonishment, I was taken up into the realm of profound emotion : a solemn awe possessed my soul as the momentous conditions of life and death under which we are living in our earthly relations moved upon me. I do not say that I was entirely freed from apprehension or mental suffering ; but I was delivered from the dread anticipation, which had haunted me for months, of loss of self-control.
We marched on rapidly all that day. The course of the column might have been traced by the tobacco that was thrown away by the boys, after lugging it until they were tired of the extra burden. There was much suffering from sore feet and fatigue ; but we had received a new impulse, to which our spirits rose. At the outset we had swept so far to the westward, that our anticipations had begun to look toward Wilmington as our destination : this was dissipated as we turned in the direction of Kinston when we neared that point. The gossip of the column then took the course of an advance of our base from Newbern to Kinston ; the gunboats, as we supposed, being on the move with ourselves to open the navigation of the Neuse. These theories had all disap- peared with our onward march to the west and the burning of the bridge at Kinston. Truly something " was up," as the veterans said at starting. We knew so little of the country and of the situation, that there was ample room for imagi- native exercise of our wits. Some would have it that we were bound to Goldsborough, that is, to stay there: others were not satisfied with any thing short of Raleigh.
.
We were reckoning without our host. On Saturday night before the fight at Kinston, after three days of unsuccessful struggle around Fredericksburg, Burnside's army ccased their efforts. On Tuesday night they retreated across the Rappa- hannock; and Gen. Lce was free, if he had thought us worth the pains, to put enough men into North Carolina to capture the whole of our force. That this was not done is due, as I
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THE GREAT MARCHI. - KINSTON.
suppose, to the extraordinary celerity of our movements, the good judgment of Gen. Foster, and the success that attended all our efforts. We were much less annoyed by guerillas than we had been on the other side of Kinston. The country was more elevated, and there were fewer houses; but those that we saw were larger. One of these plantations, where we halted for the night, was large enough for a township. We went into camp near its centre; and our cavalry, who skir- mished around its outer limits, appeared like pygmies, the weeds were so high, and they were so distant. It had an immense tree centrally located, with seats under it for sum- mer recreation. These large properties, with their conspicu- ous cotton-press with extended arms, their negro-quarters, - log-houses almost under the eaves of the grand old-fashi- ioned mansion of the proprietors, - were something differ- ent from any thing we had ever seen. Every thing about them savored of aristocratic power. These men are charged with having carried the State out of the Union against the wishes of the upper counties. On one occasion we were welcomed in a most enthusiastic manner by a considerable body of colored people. I shall not attempt to delineate the emotiveness of the African as we heard it at this time: we laughed until the tears came in our eyes.
We had a sad reminder of the nature of our journey in au occasional grave by the roadside. Our ambulances gave up their dead as the poor wounded men within them ceased from suffering. The circumstances of the march did not admit of sending back to Newbern after the first night out ; so that the wounded of all the engagements were carried to Goldsborough, some of the worst cases, however, remaining at Kinston ; and from there, on the return march, they were placed on vessels which came up the Neuse as far as it was open : it was closed at a certain point by torpedoes. Chap- lain Manning, writing from Camp Rogers, gives us a glimpse of what was passing in these mournful appendages to our column, in the following letter to "The Boston Journal," sent soon after our return : -
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HISTORY OF THE FORTY-THIRD REGIMENT, M.V.M.
CAMP ROGERS, Jan. 6, 1863.
It was a singular yet to me a most affecting funeral. Fol- lowing that plain coffin through the rain, every thing about us so lonely and bleak, I could but think of the afternoon when its occu- pant, Fuller Morton, was brought to us wounded at Spring Bank, of the patience with which he bore the pain of surgical operation, and of that long, sad train of ambulances with us on our return from Goldsborough, full of the suffering and dying, and in one of which, brought back only to die, was this young and buoyant sol- dier. And we thank thee, O Father, that the mournful and horrible sights which we have been compelled to witness here are veiled from the eyes of our wives and little ones.
We continued our march on Tuesday morning, the 16th, until ten o'clock A.M., when our second engagement, the battle of Whitehall, began.
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WHITEHALL AND GOLDSBOROUGHI.
CHAPTER IV.
WHITEHALL AND GOLDSBOROUGH ..
T r HE Forty-third was very near the head of the column.
We were moving through the narrow forest-road, with "route step," "arms at will," in the usual military " go-as- you-please " manner of long marches, when we heard a few rifle-cracks, followed almost instantly by the boom of one of the brass Napoleons sending its terrific echoes up the road, and through the forest.
We knew at once that the ball had opened again. An involuntary emotional throb vibrated through the column, as, silently, without formal orders, we found our places as we marched, and pressed forward.
It was but a few moments before we came out from the forest, and began the descent into the valley of Whitehall. Gen. Foster and his staff had halted at the edge of the for- est while the column passed on. Looking down the road about an eighth of a mile, I noticed something in flames, the bridge, as I suppose ; and in its vicinity a signal-man was vigorously waving his flag, communicating with the staff.
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