USA > Maine > The story of one regiment; the Eleventh Maine infantry volunteers in the war of the rebellion > Part 13
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third stage now comes on : the pulse resumes its natural force and frequency, and a copious sweat breaks from the whole body."
Doesn't that bring it all back to you, till the notes of the sick call ring in your ears : "Come get your quinine, quinine, quinine " ? That held in a spirituous solution was generally preferred.
Lieutenant Dunbar set down in his diary a summary of a month's experience with the ague ; and as he seems to have had it in about its worst form, his jotting gives a fair idea of the per- sistence of the disease when it fastens on one. His diary of June, 1863, reads as follows : "8th .- Officer of the guard to-day. 9th. - Had a shake to-day. 11th. - Am officer of the day. 12th .-- Had a very heavy chill to-day. 13th. - Sick with fever and ague. 14th .- All right to-day. 15th .- Officer of the day. 19th .- Regi- mental officer of the day. 20th .- Shaking. 21st .- Shaking. 22d .- Shaking. 23d .- Fever and ague. 24th .- Shakes and fever. 25th .- Very weak, not strength to shake. 26th .- Stronger and shaking, with heavy fever. 27th .- Fever, without the shakes. 28th .- Ague and shaking, without the fever. 29th .- Better to-day. 30th .-- About the same." He recovered so speedily from the effects of this siege of ague that he notes for July 4th : " Went to the negro school exhibition, and a better one I never saw, white or black."
The rations were exceptionally good while at Fernandina ; not only were we plentifully supplied, but, as flour was issued to com- panies preferring part of their bread ration in this form, the companies were able to bake their own bread and biscuits. Each company built a brick oven in which to bake beans, bread, bis- cuits, and gingerbread. , Then the companies commuted their rations partly, drawing cash for such of their allowances as they did not want, and invested the money in vegetables, etc. Fish was to be had for the catching, turtles abounded, and then there were wild grapes and delicious pomegranates. Yes, and if you needed a drastic touch, you need but pick and cat a few castor-oil beans from the bushes they grew on.
The nucleus of a colored regiment had its headquarters at. Fernandina-the Fourth South Carolina, Colonel Littlefield. We saw very little of this regiment ; indeed, there was very little of it to see-only a colonel and adjutant, and a few other officers, with now and then a stalwart negro in a blue uniform. Coal black was the prevailing color of its rank and file, though there
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were lighter shades, and at least one "red " negro, a sergeant, a sort of albino, a full-blooded negro with red wool, a skin light enough to appear freckled, very much resembling a well-sun- burned white man of " sandy " complexion-enough, anyway, to deceive Maxfield ; for when this sergeant was drawing rations for his men at the commissary, Maxfield took him for a non-commis- sioned officer of some white regiment, who was waiting for a com- mission in the Fourth South Carolina, and asked him when he expected to receive his commission, and what rank he was to hold.
These colored soldiers, with the contrabands, were employed in building Fort Naglee, the earthwork planned by Colonel Plaisted, and which was nearly completed when we left Fernandina. It was an elaborately planned work, and occupied a commanding position just outside of the city.
Now for the diaries of our friends. They faithfully note the coming and going of the infrequent mail steamers-we received mail only about once in three weeks, while here; and that the passing back and forth of flags of truce between the lines was frequent-probably mostly in connection with the necessities of the women and children left in Fernandina by their men folk, who were now on the mainland, dressed in Confederate gray. There were infrequent alarms-three or four this summer, all without adequate cause.
Of the weather, Morton notes, August 8th : "Eighty-three degrees in the shade at ? A.M., 102° part of the day." Newcomb notes, August 11th : " Have not had a rainstorm for three months now, nor a shower for two weeks. During June and July we had a shower every day."
Divine services were held by Chaplain Wells in the "regimental church " on Sundays. This was a small church building, and in it the chaplain, with the assistance of Major Spofford, had fitted up a reading room. Morton notes that there were plenty of good books.
July 4th was celebrated by the colored people particularly. The Declaration of Independence was read, songs were sung, and Colonel Plaisted delivered an oration. Newcomb, who was stationed at Fort Clinch, notes that they fired a salute from the fort at sunrise. On July 20th, forty enlisted men, and Lieutenants Sellmer and Charles H. Foster, were detailed to go to Morris
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Island, S. C., on artillery service. We shall hear from this de- tachment later on. The 23d of July, Company G was added to the garrison at Fort Clinch.
Heavy firing was heard in the direction of Charleston in August, usually at night and in the early morning. On August 1st the Boston, the regular mail steamer, touched, with the Forty-eighth New York on board, bound for St. Augustine. We heard with envy the graphic story they had to tell of the siege of Charleston, and of the gallant part they took in landing on the island, and in the assault on Fort Wagner. Captains Wiswell and Sewell, with three non-commissioned officers, started North on the 15th of August on recruiting service ; with them went a number of furloughed men.
September 9th, the hospital boat Cosmopolitan came in with Surgeon-General Hammond on board. He ordered several of our sick men to be sent North.
In September a terrible storm swept the coast, during which there was much excitement in Fernandina concerning the fate of a schooner that was anchored off the bar. The diaries tell the story. 16th-Morton : "Storming to-day. A navy schooner outside the bar in a critical condition." Newcomb : "A terrific gale has been blowing for twelve hours now. A vessel has been lying at anchor off the bar all day. It don't seem possible that she can live through the night." 17th -- Morton : "The schooner cut away her masts last night ; it blows and rains very hard yet." Newcomb : "The gale has abated, the wind has changed, the schooner lies in the same position this morning, with both masts gone." 18th-Morton : " The gunboat went out and towed the hull of the schooner in."
On the 26th of September a party went to Cumberland Island to visit the mansion of General Nathanael Greene, a fine old house built of indestructible shell and cement. Morton was of the party, and noted that it was fired on from Fort Clinch. The- orders were that all boats should report at the fort in passing. but this one, as it was bearing a headquarters party, presumed to- push on without reporting. A shot from the fort was fired, fall- ing far ahead of the boat. No attention was paid to this hint, but when one came whirling over the bow, then the boat was promptly put about, and the regulation complied with. Orders were orders with Nickels and Newcomb.
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The general verdict before the end of September was that Fer- nandina was a terribly dull place. Newcomb summed it all up soon after we arrived there : " Nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to do." The only excitement was the coming and going of the steamers and gunboats, and a signal could rarely be hoisted on the tower withont catching the eye of every man of us with its first flutter. We rejoiced when it told us that a boat was coming in, and were disgusted when there was a failure to touch. Morton notes more than once : " Had the aggravation of seeing a signal hoisted for a steamer that went by."
News did not reach us until long after everybody else in the United States had it, and we sometimes got it through the rebel papers that passed through the lines, before we did from the North. Morton notes in his diary, August 12th : " It is reported by the rebel papers that Banks is badly whipped." It was July 19th before we received the news of the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, which took place July 4th, and we heard at the same time of the New York riots and of the beginning of the siege of Charleston. Sometimes a steamer stopped off the port and gave us a bit of news. Newcomb's diary tells how one hoaxed us cruelly : "July 10th .- News has come by a steamer that stopped off the bar that Portland has been burnt by privateers, that Lee is besieging Harrisburg, that Grant has been repulsed, and that Banks's army is in a critical condition."
During the summer Lieutenants Brann and Johnson resigned and went home. Captain Nickels resigned, but subsequently withdrew his resignation, and Lieutenants Stephen B. Foster and Newcomb sent in their resignations the Ist of October. The movement was becoming epidemie when, on the 2d of October, two steamers touched at the wharf with the Twenty-fourth Mas- sachusetts on board on its way to St. Augustine to relieve the Forty-eighth New York. They told us that a regiment was making ready to relieve us: and, sure enough, on the 5th the Ninety-seventh Pennsylvania arrived on the Boston, and we learned that we were ordered to Morris Island. The feeling in the regiment was a joyful one, and is exemplified by New- comb's entry in his diary : " Foster and I withdraw our resigna- tions in view of active service."
The diariste seem to have set down every notable incident of our stay there, even that the officers had a billiard table to amuse
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themselves with, while the boys contented themselves with a more plebeian bowling alley ; everything except that we ran a newspaper. Horace A. Manley found an abandoned newspaper plant, and, as he was a practical printer, he, with other kindred spirits, sct to work and got out several numbers of a spicy sheet that we regret our inability to find a copy of. Could we, we think we might cull from its columns a number of instructive and diverting items bearing on our life in Fernandina.
We were now very different-looking men than when, a year before, we marched into Yorktown. Then bronzed by exposure and gaunt from a want of over-feeding, ragged, yes, and dirty-to go no further-now we were fat, and sleek, nattily uniformed, buttons, brogans, and brasses all well polished, equipments and arms showing the best of care, every man with his white gloves for parade duty. Indeed, Morton could have set down for us now what he did for the soldiers we saw at Port Royal when we reached there in February, 1863. "Regiments around here look as if they were playing soldier," was the observation of that hardy Peninsula campaigner.
But our pipeclay days were nearly over. We were very soon to leave all this fancy soldiering in the roar, were soon to take position in the front again, where for a long year, waking and sleeping, we were for but a few hours at a time out of the reach of shells and bullets, or the sound of roaring artillery and cracking rifles.
CHAPTER XV.
THE SIEGE OF CHARLESTON.
We Land on Folly Island and March to Morris Island-The Geography of the Situation-General Q. A. Gillmore and his Military Antecedents -The Landing on Morris Island and the Assaults on Fort Wagner- The "Swamp Angel " Battery-It is Manned by a Detachment of Volunteers from the Eleventh Maine, who Left Fernandina in July for Artillery Service in the Siege-The Story of this Detachment as told by their Commander, Lieutenant Sellmer.
IN the afternoon of October 6th we went on board the Boston, and before night were at sea. We passed Hilton Head in the early hours of the next morning, kept on northward, ran into Stono Inlet, and landed on Folly Island late in the afternoon of October 7th. Marching for a half-mile through a growth of heavy timber, we went into bivouac for the night.
It seemed quite like old times to the Peninsula men to lie around roaring camp fires, under tall trees, and to sleep on the ground. Nor did they lose the opportunity it gave them of reciting the glories of the summer of 1862 to their later-mustered comrades. And it must be confessed that their more than twice-told tales were listened to with much more respeet than they had been for some time, the dull roar of the big guns that we could hear at work but a few miles away giving their stories of battles a touch of sober reality.
We were up at daybreak of the Sth, and by ten o'clock had crossed the ponton bridge connecting Folly Island with Morris Island, and were marching up the beach of Morris. We were now in sight of the fleet lying inside the bar, and of Sumter, of Wagner, of Moultrie, of Johnson, and Gregg, and of batteries, Federal and Confederate, without number : and away to the north- east, at the head of a beautiful bay, we could see the tall spires of the city of Charleston.
Morris Island is but a strip of white sand on which roll the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. It runs nearly north and south, and is about four miles long. Its broad southerly end, lying well out
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of the range of the enemy's fire, served as a camp ground for troops not actively engaged in the siege, and for headquarters and depot purposes. Narrowing as it approaches Sumter, till Fort Wagner completely barred all further progress at fairly high water, the island ended in a hooked projection known as Cumming's Point. From Cumming's Point it was but 1,300 yards to Sumter, due northwest, and but four miles to Charleston city, looking about directly west across the bay, and but about a mile and a half across to Sullivan's Island, where Moultrie and battery Beau- regard lay beyond Sumter and to its east, Sullivan's Island running about east for a short distance and then bearing rapidly towards the northeast, the north end of Morris pointing to about the west- ern end of Sullivan's. To the west of the upper part of Morris Island, across a marshy tideway through which flows Vincent Creek, James Island points a blunt end to Morris, the length of James forming the southern boundary line of Charleston Harbor. Outside of James, on the Atlantic, and separated from James by the Stono River, lies Folly Island, with Black Island wedged in between Folly, James, and Morris.
We use the past tense in referring to Cumming's Point, as we learn that it has been washed away, and that the waves even roll over the spot where Fort Wagner stood ; Gregg, Chatfield, Wagner, and numerous unnamed batteries, with the remains of many of their assailants and defenders, have been swallowed by the Atlantic.
The operations against Charleston were now in the hands of Brigadier-General Quincy A. Gillmore. Let us take a glance at his military antecedents. Early in 1862, Captain Quincy Adams Gillmore, a West Point graduate, was acting as Chief Engineer of the Department of the South. He was directed by General Thomas W. Sherman, the department commander, to undertake the reduction of Fort Pulaski, at the mouth of the Savannah River. Erecting batteries of heavy Parroti guns on Tybee Island during the months of January, February, and March, Captain Gillimore was ready to open fire by April Ist. On the 31st of March General Sherman was relieved of his command by General Hunter, who arrived at Tybee Island ou the 8th of April. At sunrise of the 10th, General Hunter sent a summons to the Con- federate commander of Fort Pulaski to surrender. His answer was, " I am here to defend this fort. not to surrender it." Shortly after eight o'clock Gillmore's heavy batteries opened, and after
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sustaining a continnons bombardment until two o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, the commander of the fort concluded that he was there to surrender it after all.
It was determined by this bombardment that brick walls could not withstand the force of modern artillery, the projectiles cutting through six and seven feet of the land walls of Pulaski, completely breaching the angle the fire was converged on.
For this service Captain Gillmore was made a brigadier-general of volunteers, and gained a fame that led many in the North to press him on the Administration as the man to subdue Charleston. Nor does Gillmore seem to have been at all loath to assume the undertaking. A letter of his to General Cullom, chief of staff to General-in-Chief Halleck, dated May 23, 1863 (a probably invited letter), and in which he gave General Cullom liberty to show it to General Halleck, expressed the opinion that the forts in Charles- ton Harbor could be reduced by the naval and military forces then in the Department of the South, and implied that the writer felt confident that he could bring about the capture of that city were he given command of the Department.
His appointment to supplant General Hunter followed closely on the date of this letter. The appointment was dated June 3d, and on June 12th, so prompt was Gillmore, he had reached Hilton Head, assumed command, and had begun to arrange a plan of campaign with Admiral Dahlgren, who had succeeded Dupont, that officer having experienced the fate of the unsuccessful. Of course, General Hunter did not take kindly to his removal ; he was not that kind of man. Attributing his deposition to Horace Greeley particularly, he wrote that gentleman an acrid letter, men- tioning, among other things. the Tribune's persistent war-cry of " On to Richmond," in which movement, wrote Hunter, " You shed much ink and other mnen some blood."
Since early in April, General Vogdes had commanded a force occupying Folly Island. This force had been engaged in cutting roads through the heavy timber of that island, and in building batteries to cover a descent on Morris I land. The Morris Island route seems to have been selected largely from the ability of the fleet to cooperate with the army. General Beauregard looked on the selection as providential for the Confederates, his fear having been that the landing might be made on James Island. He says, in his " Military Operations": "It was fortunate that the new
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commanding general, in whose engineering ability the North greatly relied, preferred making his attack by Morris Island instead of on the broad and weak front of James Island, where he might have penetrated our long, attenuated line and have taken Charleston in flank and rear. Nothing then could have prevented Sumter from falling, for there is no doubt that General Gillmore would have immediately increased the armament at and around Fort Johnson, and have then completely commanded the inner harbor. The possession of Charleston, and of all the South Caro- lina seacoast, would have followed as a necessary sequence."
Preparations were finally completed for the attack. General Terry went up the Stono with 3,000 men and made a feint of occupying James Island, landing a force under cover of the gun- boats, and carrying on threatening operations until the 17th, when he retired his force to Folly and Morris Islands. The night of July 9th, General Strong's brigade embarked in launches manned by sailors and were rowed to a position from which, on the opening of the batteries on Folly Island, they could be rowed swiftly across Light House Inlet, six hundred yards wide, and land on Oyster Point, the southern end of Morris Island. At sunrise the batter- ies and the monitors that had crossed the bar in the night opened sixty guns on the Confederate positions. Strong's brigade was quickly across the inlet, had soon landed and driven the Confed- erates from the works on the lower end of the island, and by ten o'clock was before Fort Wagner. Here the line halted. It has been said that a vigorous movement would have carried the fort at this time.
During the day and night a ponton bridge was thrown across the inlet, and troops were crossed and placed in position for an assault on Wagner. The assault was made in the early morning of the 11th by three regiments, but failed for want of cooperation.
After this repulse General Gillmore determined to erect batter- ies, and breach the sand parapets of Wagner before venturing another assault. This work was immediately begun, and went on day and night under the Confederate fire, until on the 18th of July, after a most terrific twelve hours' bombardment of Wagner by the fleet and the shore batteries, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts (colored), 650 strong, assaulted the fort, but was beaten back with heavy loss, Colonel Shaw dying on the parapet. Then Strong's brigade, supported by Putnam's, assaulted the fort on the sea-
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shore salient, and after a desperate conflict, in which a body of men of the Forty-eighth New York and the Sixth and Seventh Connecticut Regiments penetrated the fort and gained the south- west bastion, the assailants were defeated with heavy loss. Gen- eral Strong was mortally wounded, Colonel Putnam killed, and General Seymour, in immediate command of the assailing force, was wounded. The historian of the Forty-eighth New York says that General Gillmore seems to have been too far in the rear to have brought forward reinforcements promptly.
At a dinner of an association of officers of the Department of the South, that was given in New York in April, 1822, Captain Luis F. Emitio spoke of the operations of the Army of the South before Fort Wagner. He said that the assault was determined upon by General Gillmore on the supposition that the armament of the fort had been broken by the previous bombardment, which supposition was not verified in so far as he could learn before the assault was ordered. And then, instead of one constant attack, the forces were thrown upon the parapet in three divisions, with an interval of time between each. Thus the enemy were given time to rally, which they made excellent use of. Then the troops were massed three-quarters of a mile from the works, while it is an axiom of warfare to mass as closely as possible to the point of attack. The assault was made just as night was coming on, another departure from military custom. In fact, that all the details which are necessary to insure a successful assault were neglected.
After this failure Wagner was regularly besieged, with the result that it and Morris Island were abandoned by the Confederates ou the night of the 6th of September, nearly three months after the landing of Strong's brigade.
While the siege of Wagner was in progress, General Gillmore devised the building of the marsh battery now known as the " Swamp Angel." Its position was in the swamp between Morris and James Islands, and so strongly to the upper end of both that it could range by the upper end of James Island and throw shells into the city. The story ran that when the engineer who con- structed this battery was ordered to report on its feasibility, and to state his requirements, he called for "one hundred men. eighteen feet high, to wade through mud sixteen feet deep." But. nevertheless, he built the battery, largely at night-built it of logs and of bags filled with sand. Captain Newcomb sets down in his
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diary that it took " the equivalent of 3,000 days' work, and 7,000 bags of sand and 300 logs," to construct the battery, and that afterwards "nearly 2,000 bags of sand were added to it."
When it was completed, and the big gun placed in position-no light undertaking, it having to be taken across the marsh in a scow at night and when the tide served-then Lieutenant Sell- mer and his detachment from our regiment went into the battery to man it. Probably the fact that Lieutenant Sellmer was known to be an able artillerist, having served for some years in the regular artillery, led to the selection of himself and men for this service.
We have received from. Colonel Sellmer the following state- ment of the experiences of the detachment at the siege of Wagner, and in the Swamp Angel Battery. It is a most interesting account of the difficulties and dangers these members of our regiment underwent before the regiment reached Morris Island, and renders generous testimony to their gallantry and zeal in another branch of service than the one in which they had enlisted.
" Operations of the Artillery Detachment of the Eleventh Maine at the Siege of Fort Wagner, in the Svamp Angel Battery, and in the Bombardment of Fort Sumter.
"After the capture of the lower part of Morris Island by the Union forces, Fort Wagner, a strong bastioned earth fort, barred the way. It was gallantly and unsuccessfully assaulted, and the slow process of a regular siege was forced upon the Union troops. Trained and practical artillerymen being very much needed, First Lieutenant Charles Sellier, of Company D, Eleventh Maine, who had served nine years in the United States Artillery, one year of it at the Artillery School at Fortress Monroe, Va., received orders from Department Headquarters to proceed at once from Fernan- dina, Florida, to Morris Island with a volunteer detachment from his regiment, to there report for Guty in heavy artillery service.
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