USA > Massachusetts > The story of the Thirty-second regiment, Massachusetts infantry. Whence it came; where it went; what it saw, and what it did > Part 7
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Not far from mid-day, in an interval of compar- ative quiet along the lines, most of us stretched at full length basking in the sun and waiting for "what next?" enjoyed a beautiful sight in the endeavor of the enemy to shell our division.
As we were hidden from his view no direct shot could reach us, and he seemed to have calculated that by exploding his shells high in the air, the frag-
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THE ANTIETAM CAMPAIGN.
ments could be dropped among our ranks. What became of the fragments we did not know, hardly one of them fell near us, none of them did us injury ; but we watched for the shells with interest, and were sorry when they came no more. Gazing up into the clear blue sky there would from time to time suddenly appear a little cloudlet, which unfolding itself drifted lazily away, and soon melted in the air. Each of these cloudlets was the smoke from an exploding shell, the rapid flight of which gave no other evidence of its existence to the eye, and all sound was lost in the general tumult. Each seemingly miraculous appearance of the cloudlet was hailed with admiration, and we were quite ready to enjoy the entertainment as long as our friend the enemy chose to supply it, and were inclined to be gruff with him when it stopped.
While the divisions of Generals Richardson and French were advancing on the Confederate centre, a gun from one of Porter's horse batteries was run out quite a distance to the left, where, from a little swell of land, entirely unsupported, it opened upon the rebel infantry. The rake upon the enemy's line was so complete that after the first few shots we could see them breaking ; but the position was unten- able and after the gun had been discharged perhaps a dozen times, the enemy got two guns to bear upon it, whereupon our gun was hastily limbered up and went scampering back to cover as fast as four horses could run with it, and as it went rebel shots could be seen striking up the dust all about its track, as the
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THE ANTIETAM CAMPAIGN.
stones strike about an escaping dog when boys are pelting him.
When such an incident occurred we could hardly refrain from cheers. And when-as was once or twice the case-we could see some movement of the enemy against our lines which was unseen to those it menaced, it was almost irresistible to cry out a warning, and several times shells from the batteries of our division gave to the Union troops the first warning of a threatening movement.
Twenty-five days after the battle our Company C on detached service encamped for a night on the plateau, the summit of the heights which were won by Burnside's charge, and Captain Fuller observ- ing that the line of battle could even then be traced by the cartridge papers which lay in winrows on the ground, wondered that troops which had so gallantly charged up the steep ascent should have halted in this place long enough to have used so many cartridges.
On the 18th of September, Porter's corps relieved Burnside's at the lower bridge, and then we saw only too many of the woful sights which belong to battle, and saw them without that halo of excitement which in the midst of the contest diminishes their horror.
On the 19th, at dawn, we were in expectation of immediate participation in a second battle, but the enemy had retreated. In the pursuit Porter led the way. After passing through the town of Sharps- burg, the artillery occupied the roadway, the infantry
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moving along the fields on either side. At each rise of the land, a few pieces dashed to the summit and shelled the nearer woods, the infantry forming in the hollow in the rear, and so we felt our way a mile or two down to the Potomac. The rear guard of the enemy had just crossed the river, and General Griffin with parts of two brigades followed closely, capturing some prisoners and much property, among which were the very guns that were lost on the Peninsula from the battery he then commanded.
Returning, he reported the enemy as in full flight, and on the 20th Porter prepared to give immediate chase. A part of one of his divisions had crossed the ford and gained the bluffs on the right bank. Our own brigade was on the high lands of the other bank, when, looking across we saw the woods swarm out with rebel infantry rushing upon our little force. A sharp cannonade checked them and cov- ered the return of nearly all our regiments, but the 108th Pennsylvania was cut off from the road to the river crossing, and forced to retire up a rising ground, terminating at the river in a high bluff, from which the only escape was to scramble down the steep cliff and thus to gain the ford.
The men poured like a cataract over the edge and down the declivity, and so long as they stayed at its immediate base they were tolerably safe, but their assailants soon gained the edge of the bluff and lying flat, could pick off any who attempted to cross to the Maryland side, and many were killed or wounded and drowned before our eyes.
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THE ANTIETAM CAMPAIGN.
Our brigade was formed near to the ford; sharp- shooters were placed along the river bank, and the artillery rattled solid shot upon the summit of the bluff. After a time the Pennsylvanians began to run the gauntlet of the ford, but it was several hours before all of them had left the other shore.
In this time many gallant acts were performed, but none more daring than that of the Adjutant of the 108th, who, after reaching the Maryland shore, walked back upon the plate of the dam just above the ford, and standing there midway across the river, exposed from head to heels, shouted the directions to his men as to the manner of their escape from their awkward fix.
When this fight at the ford was over it was near nightfall, and the army encamped along the river side, the pickets of each army occupying its own bank, and for weeks it was all quiet on the Potomac.
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VII. AFTER ANTIETAM.
T HE life of a soldier in war-time is made up of alternating seasons of severe toil and of almost absolute idleness. For a few weeks he will be marched to the utmost limit of endurance-will be set to felling forests-building bridges or roads- constructing defences-and then may follow other weeks when his heaviest occupations are made up of drills, parades, and drawing or eating rations.
Such a time of repose was that which we passed on the banks of the Potomac, near Sharpsburg, guarding the line of the Potomac which for lack of heavy autumnal rains was fordable almost any- where. Generals, quartermasters and commissa- ries may have been busy, but it was an idle time for the bulk of the army. Stretching for some fifteen miles along the course of the river, the various corps were encamped in due form, the entire regularity of which could be seen from any neighboring eminence. From some such points one could take into view a landscape brilliant with the colors of autumn made yet brighter by the gleam of the orderly array of white tents, and could see the bounds of each regiment, brigade, or division, as if
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AFTER ANTIETAM.
marked upon a map. At night, before tattoo, the lines of lighted tents would show from a distance, like an army of glow-worms.
To supply the wants of the army of men, another army of wagon trains was kept in constant occupa- tion, and the road was soon covered with fine dust, which rose in clouds when it was stirred by the movements of the trains, or by the horses of mounted officers or men; and as these roads extended everywhere among the camps, we lived all day long in an atmosphere of dirt, which when moved by fresh winds, drove and drifted about to our exceeding discomfort. As the weather grew cooler this was increased by the smoke of the camp- fires, until everybody was habitually clothed in dust, and red about the eyes.
Along the picket lines the men of both armies, having agreed not to fire without previous notice, lolled in the sunshine, chaffed each other over the water, and occasionally traded newspapers even, or union coffee for confederate tobacco.
Once in a while there was a foraging expedition or a reconnoissance across the river. In one of these we captured quite a number of prisoners at Shepardstown. chiefly officers and men absent on leave and visiting their friends in that vicinity. One reconnoissance to Leetown occupied two days, and was followed back right sharply by a strong force of the enemy. We remember particularly the fact that on the advance we found where a long-range shell had exploded among a card party of the
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AFTER ANTIETAM.
enemy's men, one or two of whom lay dead with the cards still in their hands.
This uneventful life, aided no doubt by prevalent but not serious bilious disorders, developed in our Regiment a general tendency to homesickness and "hypo." To counteract it several attempts were made to initiate games and athletic exercises among the men, and the officers were requested to set an example to the men by organizing amusements among themselves-but it amounted to nothing, it seemed impossible to induce the men to amuse themselves. ·
We kept no very careful note of time. One day was pretty much like every other. Sundays were noticeable only for the absence of drills and a little more stupidity. To go home was the height of any- body's ambition.
Private Callahan, of K Company, sought to be discharged for disability-the disability was beyond question, for he was born with it, and he was told by the Surgeon that he ought not to have accepted the bounty for enlistment; that he "ought to be hung" for doing it, to which somewhat severe criti- cism the soldier retorted that he "would die first." It may not be necessary to state that Callahan was Irish. At Fredericksburg he lost a finger and ob- tained his coveted discharge.
We were so long here that. as the season ad vanced, we began to construct defences against the weather, and the acting adjutant even dreamed of a log hut, with a real door and real hinges. The only
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AFTER ANTIETAM.
artificer at his command was his negro servant, a man who could admire but could not comprehend long dictionary words. The Adjutant, directing the negro as to the construction of the door frame, told him certain parts were to be perpendicular, others horizontal, and others parallel ; but the black man's face showed no evidence of comprehension, until after a dozen different forms of the same instruction had been resorted to and the master's patience was exhausted, the idea penetrated the darkened mind of the servant, who turned upon the officer with the pertinent remark, " Why, massa, what you wants is ter have it truc, ain't it?"
New orders of architecture were rapidly devel- oped, and the manufacture of furniture became an extensive occupation. It was quite wonderful what results could be obtained in both of these industries by the use of barrels and hard-bread boxes. Of the barrels we made chimneys and chairs; and of the boxes, tables, washstands, cupboards, and the walls and clapboards of our dwellings.
We were really getting to be very comfortable in the latter days of October, 1862, when the orders began to intimate that we would not live always in that neighborhood. First, our Company C was de- tatched for a guard to the reserve artillery, where it served for ten months. Then, on the 30th, the whole army drew out like a great serpent, and moved away down the Potomac to Harper's Ferry, crossing the river there, then up on the Virginia side, and along the foot hills of the Blue Ridge.
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AFTER ANTIETAM.
It was lively times again, and the march was rapid-often forced; but the weather was cool and bracing, and the men were glad of the change. . From the 2d to the 15th of November we were on the eastern slopes of the Ridge, and Lee's army in its western valley, racing each for the advantage over the other.
At each gap there was a lively fight for the con- trol of the pass, but we were always ahead, and possession is as many points in war as it is in law. Holding these passes, our movements could be, to a considerable extent, masked from the observation of the enemy, while his were known to our General, whose object was to keep the army of the enemy strung out to the greatest possible length, and at a favorable moment to pounce upon its centre, divide and conquer it.
With the sound of guns almost always in our ears, we raced away through Snickersville, Middle- bury, White Plains, and New Baltimore to Warren -- ton, with little to eat and plenty of exercise. Near White Plains, on the Sth, we marched all day in a snow-storm, and at night, splashed and chilled, bivouacked in a sprout field, making ourselves as comfortable as might be on three or four inches of snow.
Throughout this march the orders were very stringent against straggling and marauding. No allowance was made for transportation of regimental rations except the haversacks of the soldiers, and on the march in cold weather it is a poor (or good)
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AFTER ANTIETAM.
soldier that does not eat three days' rations in two. Our changes of base left us often very short of sup- lies, and it was not in the most amiable mood that we came to our nightly camp.
Acting-quartermaster Dana, hungering for flesh- pots, was tempted by the sight of a fat turkey on a barn-yard fence. The road was a by-way, and not a soul in sight. Before he could recall the tenor of the orders, he had covered the bird with his revolver, but at that moment General Butterfield, with his staff and escort, following the abrupt turn of the road, came upon the quartermaster in the very act, and scared the bird, which flopped heavily down from the fence and disappeared. To the General's angry demand for an explanation, Dana quietly replied that he was about to shoot that " buzzard."
"Buzzard !" roared the General, "that was a tur- key, sir." "Was it, indeed?" replied the innocent officer ; "how fortunate, General, that you came as you did, for in two minutes more I should have shot him for a buzzard." Dana thought that, amid the laughter which succeeded, he heard the General describe him as an idiot, but he was not sufficiently certain about it to warrant charges against the Gen- eral for unofficer-like language.
The hurried march from Sharpsburg to Warren- ton was fruitful in cases of marauding for court- martial trials, but these courts very generally refused to convict, on the ground that the men had been so ill-supplied from our commissariat, that some irregu- larity was excusable.
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AFTER ANTIETAM.
One of our sergeants, a butcher by trade, stroll- ing about the woods, came upon a party of men who had captured and killed, and were about cut- ting up, a rebel pig. Shocked at the unskilful way in which they were operating, our sergeant volun- teered his advice and services, which were grate- fully accepted. In the midst of the operation the party was surprised by one of the brigade staff, and the non-commissioned officer, being tried by court-martial, was by its sentence reduced to the ranks and deprived of six months' pay. The story ends sadly, for his mortification from loss of rank, and possibly his anxiety from fear that his family might suffer from the loss of pay, caused him to droop and die.
One of our men, returning from a private foraging expedition laden with a heavy leg of beef, was cap- tured by the provost guard, and, by order of Gen- eral Griffin, was kept all day " walking post," with the beef on his shoulder, in front of the head- quarters' tents. As the General passed his beat he would occasionally entertain him with some question as to the price of beef, or the state of the provision trade, and at retreat the man, minus his beef, was sent down to his regiment " for proper punishment," which his commanding officer concluded that he had already received.
Yet another soldier was sent to our headquarters by the Colonel of the Ninth Massachusetts, with the statement that he had been arrested for maraud- ing. Upon cross-examination of the culprit it
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AFTER ANTIETAM.
appeared that he had been captured with a quarter of veal in his possession by the provost guard of ·the Ninth Regiment. A regimental provost guard was a novelty in the army, but when, on further questioning, it appeared that the offending soldier had been compelled to leave the veal at Colonel Guiney's quarters, the advantage of such an organiz- ation in hungry times to the headquarters' mess was apparent, and our Colonel at once ordered a provost guard to be detailed from the Thirty-second, with orders to capture marauders and turn over their ill- gotten plunder to his cook. Unhappily, within the next twenty-four hours, some high General, whose larder was growing lean, forbade regimental pro- vost guards in general orders.
It was during our stay at Warrenton that General Griffin requested the attendance of Colonel Parker and told him, not as an official communication, but for his personal information, that three officers of the Thirty-second had, during the previous night, taken and killed a sheep, the property of a farmer near by. Of course the Colonel expressed his re- gret at the occurrence, but he represented to the General that, inasmuch as the officers of our regiment were not generally men of abundant means, and inasmuch as they had received no pay from their Government for several months, and inas- much as it was forbidden them to obtain food by taking it either from the rations of their men or the property of the enemy, he (the Colonel) would be glad to know how officers were to live? The
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AFTER ANTIETAM.
General, utterly astonished at the state of affairs thus disclosed, asked in return for some suggestion to .relieve the difficulty. The suggestion made that officers should be allowed to buy from the com- missaries on credit, was, at the request of General Griffin, embodied in a formal written communication to him, and by an order the next day from the headquarters of the army, it became a standing regulation until the end of the war.
On the Ioth of November the Army of the Poto- mac was massed near Warrenton as if a general action was at hand, when everybody was surprised by the announcement of the removal of General McClellan from its command. It was a sad day among the camps. The troops turned out at nine o'clock, bordering the road, each regiment in doubled column, and General McClellan, followed by all the generals with their staffs, a cortege of a hundred or more mounted officers, rode through the lines, saluted and cheered continually.
It happened that the 32d was the first regiment to be reviewed. Being a regiment of soldiers, it was accustomed to salute its officers in a soldierly way, and on this occasion was, probably, the only battalion in the army that did not cheer "Little Mac," but stood steadily. with arms presented, colors drooping, and drums beating. From the surprised expression on the General's face, it was evident that for a moment he feared that he had overrated the good-will of his troops. The incident, though really creditable to the Regiment, was considered as a
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AFTER ANTIETAM.
slight to the General, and for a time was the cause of considerable feeling against the 32d. Even the politics of its commander could not prevent its being stigmatized as an "Abolition concern."
At noon the officers of the Fifth corps were received by General McClellan, who shook hands with all, and at the close of the reception said, his voice broken with emotion : "Gentlemen, I hardly know how to bid you good-bye. We have been so long together that it is very hard. Whatever fate may await me I shall never be able to think of my- self except as belonging to the Army of the Poto- mac. For what you have done history will do you justice-this generation never will. I must say it. 'Good-bye.'" And so the army parted from the first, the most trusted, and the ablest of its com- manders.
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VIII. TO FREDERICKSBURG.
G ENERAL BURNSIDE assumed the command and we remained quiet for a week, then moved slowly away toward Falmouth and Fredricks- burg, where we arrived on the 22d of November. and encamped near Potomac Creek, at a place after- wards known as "Stoneman's Switch." This camp. was destined to be our home for nearly six months, but the popular prejudice against winter quarters was so great that we were never allowed to feel that it was more than a temporary camp.
On several occasions we had suffered for want of supplies, generally not more than for a day or two, and when on the march ; but for ten days after our arrival near Fredericksburg, the whole army was on short allowance. Our base was supposed to be at Acquia Creek, but the railroad was not recon- structed and what supplies we got were wagoned up some miles from Belle Plain, over or through roads which were alternately boggy with mud, or rough with the frozen inequalities of what had been a miry way.
Little by little the scarcity became more severe ; for a week there had been no meat-ration, nothing
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TO FREDERICKSBURG.
was issued except hard-bread, and on the morning of Thanksgiving Day, there was absolutely no food for the Regiment. The evening previous, one box of hard-bread, the last remainder of the supply of the headquarters' mess was issued to the Regiment, giving one half of a cracker to each man, and this was gratefully received.
That Thanskgiving Day dawned upon a famished and almost mutinous army. Rude signs were set up in the camp, such as "Camp Starvation," "Death's Headquarters," "Misery." Every General as he appeared, was hailed with cries for "hard- bread, hard-bread !" and matters looked threatening. In the 32d there was no disturbance, but the men sat about with moody looks and faces wan with hunger. Officers had been despatched in every direction in search of food but, it was high noon before even hard- biscuit could be obtained. Then twenty boxes were procured by borrowing from the regular division, and they were brought to our camp from a distance of two miles, on the shoulders of our men.
That morning the breakfast table of the field and staff mess, exhibited a small plate of fried hard- bread and another of beefsteak, obtained by incred- ible exertions of the Adjutant the day before, in order to do honor to the festival. One must be very hungry to know how sumptuous the repast appeared, but none of us could eat while the soldiers were starving, and the breakfast was sent to the hospital tent.
One man refused to do duty, declaring that the government had agreed to pay, clothe, and feed him,
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and having left him penniless, ragged. and starving with cold and hunger, he could not be expected to keep his part of the contract. With this one excep- tion the bearing of our men was superb, and was in remarkable contrast with that of the army in general.
At the company roll call at "retreat," the soldier just referred to, who had been in confinement all day, was marched through the camp under guard, and made to face each company in succession, while a regimental order was read acknowledging and thanking the men for their good behavior under try- ing circumstances, and closing with the declaration that "if on this day of Thanksgiving we have failed to enjoy the abundance which has usually marked the festival, we have at least one reason for thank- fulness and that is, that when all of us were hungry there was only one man who desired to shirk his duty, leaving it to be done by his equally-hungry comrades, and that the name of that man was- -.
Notwithstanding the repeated declarations that there would be no winter quarters short of Rich- mond, the army proceeded to make itself as com- fortable as possible. The woods melted rapidly to supply the great camp-fires, now needed for warmth as well as cooking; and the soldiers, organizing themselves into messes, built shelters more satisfac- tory than the canvas which was provided for that purpose.
Great variety of ingenuity was exhibited in the construction of these quarters. A few were content
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TO FREDERICKSBURG.
with an excavation in the ground, over which would be pitched a roofing of tent cloth; but some of the quarters rose almost to the dignity of cottages, having walls of logs, the interstices closed by a plastering of clay, and roofs of rough-hewn slabs, or thatched with branches of pine. Windows were covered by canvas, and chimneys were built up cob fashion and plastered inside, and comfortable fires blazed upon the hearths.
About the headquarters of the generals were enclosing fences of sapling pines set into the ground upright, and held firmly in that position. Within the enclosures were grouped the tents of the gen- eral, his staff, and their servants, some of them having outer walls of boards enclosing the sides of their wall tents.
The weather was of a variety indescribable, except as Virginia weather - alternating periods of cold so severe as to freeze men on picket duty, and so warm as to make overcoats an insupportable burden. The rains made the earth everywhere miry, then it would freeze the uneven mud to the hardness of stone, then a thaw made everything mud and all travel impossible, and presently dry winds would convert all into dust and blow about in clouds.
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