USA > Maine > The story of one regiment; the Eleventh Maine infantry volunteers in the war of the rebellion > Part 2
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Lemuel E. Newcomb,
Corporals.
S. Albert Searcy, Jacob W. Gardiner,
Charles W. Bridgham,
'Thomas S. Albee,
Horace F. Albee, James Gross, Calif Smith, William Libby.
Musicians.
Henry E. Gardiner, Artemas Foster. William F. Burnham, Wagoner. Number of Privates. 62-total, 81.
COMPANY D.
Leonard S. Harvey, Captain. John D. S wood, First Lieutenant. Gibson S. age, Second Lieutenant.
Sergeants. Robert Brady, First Sergeant ; Abner F. Bassett, James W. Noyes, Judson L. Young, Francis M. Johnson.
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THE STORY OF ONE REGIMENT.
Corporals.
John McDonald, Richard W. Dawe,
Ephraim Francis,
Hughey G. Rideout, John Sherman, Benjamin Gould,
William H. Chamberlain, Freeman R. Dakin.
Robert A. Strickland, Musician.
Henry W. Rider, Wagoner. Number of Privates, 77-total, 95.
COMPANY E.
Samuel B. Straw, Captain. Francis W. Wiswell, First Lieutenant.
Francis W. Sabine, Second Lieutenant.
Sergeants. Lawson G. Ireland, First Sergeant ; Daniel S. Cole, Stephen B. Foster,
John N. Weymouth, Daniel T. Mayo.
Corporals.
Peter Bunker, Charles F. Wheeler, John Iliggins, Charles Babcock, James J. Bunker.
John S. Hodgdon,
John B. Reed, Wagoner. Number of Privates, 67-total, 82.
COMPANY F.
Augustus P. Davis, Captain. John M. Beal. First Lieutenant. Samuel G. Sewall, Second Lieutenant.
Sergeants. Thomas A. Brann, First Sergeant ;
Charles H. Scott, Alfred G. Brann, Benjamin F. Dunbar.
Henry O. Fox,
Archibald Clark, John C. Ross, Rufus N. Burgess, William B. Joy,
sporals.
Calvin R. Sears, James A. Scoullar, John C. Meader, Daniel S. Smith.
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FROM AUGUSTA TO WASHINGTON.
Musicians.
Franklin B. Morrill, Ira M. Rollins.
Wendell F. Joy, Wagoner. Number of Privates, 79 -- total, 98.
COMPANY G.
Winslow P. Spofford, Captain. Chas. E. Illsley, First Lieutenant, John S. Dodge, Second Lieutenant. Sergeants. William H. H. Rice, First Sergeant ; Thomas Clark, Rufus II. Wingate, John D. Clark.
Caleb Philbrick,
Corporals.
James C. Wentworth, Alfred E. Conners, William H. Burrill,
Isaac II. Small,
Judson Salisbury, James H. Abbott.
Ambrose P. Phillips, Wagoner.
Number of Privates, 73-total, 88.
COMPANY II.
Royal T. Nash, Captain. Nelson T. Smith, First Lieutenant. Charles A. Fuller, Second Lieutenant.
Sergeante.
Ezra W. Gould, First Sergeant ; William F. Haskell, George E. Morrill,
Nathan J. Gould, Joseph Harris.
Corporals.
Alvin Morrill, Cyrus H. Perkins,
Albert L. Rankin, George W. Smith,
William II. Girrell, James Ellis, Silas Howard.
Dustin Sands,
William L. Pinkham, Musician. John E. Gould, Wagoner.
Number of Privates, 73-total, 91.
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THE STORY OF ONE REGIMENT.
On December 26, 1861, the non-commissioned officers of Com- pany H were rearranged as follows :
Sergeants. Luther Lawrence, First Sergeant ; Ezra Gould, James M. Thompson, George W. Smith.
Nathan J. Gould,
Corporals.
Alvin Morrill, Joseph Harris,
Seth A. Ramsdell, Daniel M. Dill,
James Ellis,
Cyrus H. Perkins,
Dustin Sands,
William H. Girrell.
COMPANY I.
John Pomroy, Captain. Benjamin B. Foster, First Lieutenant. Simeon H. Merrill, Second Lieutenant.
Sergeants. George A. Stratton, First Sergeant ; Geo. B. Weymouth, A. Litchfield Leland,
George Leader, William W. Foster.
Corporals.
George W. Butterfield,
William Brannen,
Joseph S. Butler, John Wilson,
David B. Snow, Elbridge G. Decker,
Charles W. Trott, Robert Doyle.
William M. Brick, Musician.
George Foster, Wagoner. Number of Privates, 66-total, 84.
COMPANY K.
Jonathan A. Hill. Captain. Melville M. Folsom, First Lieutenant. . Albert G. Mudgett. Second Lieutenant. Sergeants. Alphonzo Patten, First Sergeant ; William P. Plaisted. Horatio Knowles, Nelson P. Cram, George B. Noyes.
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7
FROM AUGUSTA TO WASHINGTON.
Corporals.
Daniel West, Calvin S. Chapman,
Charles H. Foster,
Daniel D. Noyes,
Charles G. L. Aiken, John E. Smith,
George W. Small, Silas H. Kenney.
Abner Brooks, Musician. Joseph G. Ricker, Wagoner. Number of Privates, 75-total, 93. Total of the Regiment, 910. .
The regiment as thus organized was mustered into the United States service the 12th day of November, 1861, was uniformed, was reviewed by Governor Israel Washburn, Jr., and the 13th day of November was on its way to Washington, where it was to be armed, and, in the minds of its more sanguine members, was to immediately proceed to "hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple-trec." This was the war song of the original regiment, and in the even- ings of the days of our stay at Angusta the camp resounded with its stirring chorus.
The marching order issued to the Eleventh by Governor Wash- burn contains so handsome a compliment to the original members " the regiment, the only one of its kind given in orders to an going Maine regiment (so Captain Clark assures us), that it possesses a personal and historical value to everyone interested in the fame of the Eleventh. We give it in full:
STATE OF MAINE. HEADQUARTERS, ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE, AUGUSTA, ME., November 12, 1861. General Order No. 54.
Colonel Caldwell's Regiment, the Eleventh Maine Volunteers, composed of the following companies, viz. :
Company A, Captain Pennell ; Company B, Captain Kimball : Company C, Captain Campbell ; Company D, Captain Harvey ; Company E. Captain Straw ; Company E, Captain Davis : Company G, Captain Spofford ; Company HI, Captain Nash ; Company 1. Captain Pomroy ; Company K, Captain Hill ;
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THE STORY OF ONE REGIMENT.
having been mustered into the service of the United States, and returned enlistment descriptive and muster rolls in proper form, and duly certified to this office, and been furnished, upon due requisitions, by the Quartermaster-General's Department of this State with a full and complete outfit of camp equipage, utensils, clothing, uniforms, and equipments, and all other neces- sary articles (except arms), for immediate service in the field, will break up their camp at this place on Wednesday morning, the 13th instant, at such hour as Colonel Caldwell may direct, and forthwith leave for Washington, per railroad.
Rations in sufficient quantity for subsistence of the troops until after their arrival in Washington, and assignment to quarters and duty, have been duly furnished them by order of Lieutenant- Colonel Seth Eastman of the United States Army.
The Commander-in-Chief cannot permit the present occasion to pass without an expression of his gratification at the evidence of the increasing patriotism of his fellow-citizens, shown in the promptness with which the members of this regiment have enlisted for the defense of the Government, and the zeal and readiness with which they have taken upon themselves the obligations of a soldier.
Their sense of duty has surmounted the motive of special bounty, hitherto bestowed, and made them willing to do, and to suffer, if need be, for the vindication of the majesty of the Laws and the imperishable Constitution.
By order of the Commander-in-Chief.
(Signed,) JOHN L. HODSDON, Adjutant- General.
The morning of November 13th, long before daylight, the cir- cular Ellis tents we had camped in were taken down, and the camp became a gipsy one in appearance ; the camp fires burning with increasing brilliancy as the camp debris was heaped upon them, until a red glare of almost noonday intensity gave light to the men engaged in piling the tents into baggage wagons for removal to the cars, to the bustling officers and non-commissioned officers as they hurried back and forth shouting orders and counter-orders to their distracted men, and to the throngs of loyal ladies and girls who, in hurried but none the less charming costumes, bearing pails of hot coffee and armloads of sandwiches, cakes, and pies, had arisen at an unseemly honr to cheer the hearts of the heroes about to depart for the seat of war. The ladies of Augusta were always the friends of the Eleventh Maine ; and the men of the Eleventh Maine have always been respectful admirers of the ladies of Augusta.
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FROM AUGUSTA TO WASHINGTON.
At last we were on our way to Portland. The enthusiasm along the road was enchanting. Hurrahing crowds were at every station, flags floated from many houses, delegations of town officials bade us God-speed at every stopping-place, and as an example of the wide liberty accorded us, the girls, all crying with the sympathetic excitement of the moment, were not as enraged as perhaps they ought to have been when some bold soldier boy would leap from his car to clasp an especially pretty one in his arms, to kiss her heartily, her smothered screams of pleased consternation unheard in the hurrah with which not only his comrades, but the citizens too, would greet his gallantry.
We moved southward as triumphantly as if we were returning, not departing soldiers, our men hoarse with shouting, our band playing patriotic and sentimental airs at every opportunity ; in short, all of us wild with excitement, and fortunately ignorant of what the South had in store for us.
Our men made sure that when we reached opulent Portland they would be accorded not ouly a rousing reception but an abundant collation, one fit in every way for a thousand hungry men. Alas ! whether the citizens of Portland were saving their enthusiasm for the ongoing of the regiments forming within orders of their own city, and so had none to spare for a regi- mentes et had rendezvoused in another, if not a rival city ; or whether it was that they were already blase with martial glory is a question ; the fact remains that they did not offer the rank and file of our regiment either reception or collation, only giving the officers of the regiment a hasty lunch. It was a disappointment to the many of our men forced to satisfy the cravings of empty stomachs with the cold, dry, army rations in their haversacks. Our jaws had not yet acquired the leverage necessary to the mas- tication of " hard-tack." These required a different biting power than had sufficed for the biscuits of our experience. For exam- ple, Captain Maxfield's diary has this illustrative entry concerning his first meal off army rations : "My ration for the first night consists of three hard breads. They are very good, but my jaws are so tired after eating two that I think I will leave the other."
It must have been just after such an experience that a regi- mental bard dropped into the sarcastic rhymes in which he told Is :
10
THE STORY OF ONE REGIMENT.
" The rot took their potatoes, And the weevil took their grain, So they'd nothing left to give us, In Portland City, Maine."
Leaving the cold-hearted city behind us, we sped toward Boston, still through an enthusiastic country. We arrived in Boston in the evening, and, marching to Faneuil Hall, were entertained with a bountiful supper, after partaking of which we took the cars for Fall River. Arriving, we went on board the steamer State of Maine, and steamed for New York City, arriving late in the forenoon of November 14th.
We were here given our first lesson in military rule. We marched from the boat-landing to barracks situated in City Hall Park, where we were kept for some hours with every avenue to sight-seeing closed by armed sentinels. Clinging to the iron railings of the high fence surrounding the courtyard of the bar- racks, we could see but little more than the City Hall, the old New York Times building, and the ramshackle one then occupied by Horace Greeley and his politically omnipotent Tribune.
In the course of the day we crossed the North River to Jersey City, and took the cars for Washington. We halted at Philadel- phia, where we were given a fine supper; then, reentering our tr ed the night of the 14th and the day of the 15th, so slow were military trains in those days, not reaching Washington until in the night of the loth. We passed the last part of that night on the not so very soft plank flooring of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Depot.
In the morning of November 16th, after breakfasting on coffee made in the public streets (in dofiance of the local guardians of the peace), and such rations as we had left in our haversacks, eked out by the mercenary hospitality of swarming pie-women, venders of the tough-crusted pies Washington was famous for in those days -- pies so suggestive of leather that the soldier in the play asks if they are sewed or pegged. We were marched to Meridian Hill, where, our Ellis tents arriving, we pitched Camp Knox.
CHAPTER II.
WASHINGTON.
Meridian Hill-School of the Soldier -- Calling the Hours - "Corporal of the Guard"-"Battle of the Sand Pits "-Brigade Formation -- Carver Barracks-Colonel Davis-Barrack Life-Disease and Death -"On to Richmond "-A False Start.
CAMP KNOX was beautifully situated on a slope of Meridian Hill. The camp overlooked the city of Washington and a stretch of adjoining country, its rear resting on a deep wood-bordered ravine, through which flowed a stream, the fountain-head supply- ing us with an abundance of pure water.
We were now armed, and set to learning our drill from the "School of the Soldier." Some of us had first to unlearn all the drill we had so far acquired, for certain of our military authorities bad taught us from Scott's obsolete tactics, while Casey's, a patri- otic revision of the rebel Hardee's, were the adopted tactics of
For a while one antiquated custom prevailed, the calling of the night hours by the sentinels. As our camp was a large one, our guard-posts were numerous, so that the first quarter of each hour of the night was rendered hideous by a cry that passed along from post to post of " ten (or so) o'clock and a-l-1-'s well," the cry run- ning from the roar of some deep-chested ball of a man to a shrill wailing cry as of a woman at a wake. But this disturbance to sleep was soon discontinued and the sleepy sentinels obliged to pace their posts silently : that is, except when they passed the cry for the "corporal of the guard " along. This cry, too, would some nights ring over and over again, in all possible voices. These were the nights when the sentries of a relief were hazing a new or an objectionable corporal. And after one of these worthy non-coms. had passed his two hours in trotting from guard-house to post, to stand temporary guard for this and that tormentor, he would throw himself on the guard-bed fully determined that before he was another twenty-four hours older he would insist on being killed, promoted to sergeant, or reduced to the ranks.
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THE STORY OF ONE REGIMENT.
But no corporal but one, that I ever knew, really resigned his war- rant, and as the one did so in favor of his brother, his resignation was looked upon as an expression of fraternal regard rather than as a deliberately taken backward step from the first one out of the ranks to a commission of major-general.
The notable event of the several weeks the regiment occupied Camp Knox was the Battle of the Sand Pits, by which name the quarrel between the men of the Eleventh and those of a United States cavalry regiment camped near Camp Knox is known to the initiated. Whatever the cause of the quarrel, it culminated in an undisciplined rush to arms, and a prompt occupation of the disputed sand pits by the more hot-headed of the Eleventh. Fortunately, no blood was shed before the officers of the two regi- ments got their men under control. And no reputations were lost in this engagement, and but one was made, that of Private John Longley, of D Company, who, with characteristic French- Canadian impetuosity, slipped a cartridge into the muzzle of his Austrian riffe, bullet end first, effectually spiking the piece.
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The Eleventh was now brigaded with the One Hundred and Fourth and Fifty-second Pennsylvania and the Fifty-sixth and One Hundredth New York Regiments, with Regan's Seventh New York Battery of six 3-inch ordnance guns attached. Colonel W. W wwwis, of the One Hundred and Fourth Pennsylvania, assumed command of the brigade by reason of seniority of com- mission.
On New Year's Day, 1862, soon after this formation, the brigade went into winter quarters in Carver Barracks, on the crown of Meridian Hill .* Each regiment was now domiciled in a dozen or fourteen one-story wooden houses ; shell-like structures of from fifty to sixty fect in length, twenty-five or thirty feet in width, and separated from each other by a street of perhaps twenty-five feet in width. The buildings of each regiment bordered one side of a great esplanade, the garrison flag floating from a tall staff in its center, each building laying a gable end to this square, which was common to all for drill and parade purposes.
The winter was passed in perfecting the drill and discipline of the men, the officers gaining their technical military knowledge book in hand, while imparting the contents to their stalwart pupils. In this way both officers and mnen practiced assiduously
* These barracks were built by detailed artificers of the brigade.
--
13
WASHINGTON.
natil they could load and fire in a truly military manuer, march with mathematical accuracy, and wheel geometrically. The men also learned to obey orders without demur or question, under pen- alty of " death, or some worse punishment," as they would have it the United States Army Regulations, road to them so frequently, provided for about all the offenses in the military decalogue, this being their free rendering of the often closing phrase of a para- graph : "Death, or such other punishment as the sentence of a court-martial may inflict."
As Colonel Davis, our brigade commander, had served in the Mexican War, he had clear ideas of the necessity of military dis- cipline, and did not hesitate to punish any breach thereof. Those of our men inclined to overstay their passes, or to indulge in intoxicating liquors to an appreciable extent, or to otherwise in- fract the rules laid down for their guidance-especially sentinels inclined to accept " whiskey " as a satisfactory countersign from guard-running comrades-soon learned that the heads of barrels were unpleasant things to stand on for several hours at a time, that a heavily loaded knapsack when carried for hours grew steadily heavier with passing time, and that the " wooden horse" by the guard-house had a wonderfully unpleasant backbone for its involuntary riders. We will not ask these sufferers to express their Leron of Colonel Davis, but the most of us learned to. rather like his pleasant, soldierly face, and to admire his light, trim figure as we saw it riding around on the speckled mustang he had brought from Mexico, as he had the silver-mounted saddle and bridle with which the mustang was usually caparisoned. Colonel Davis's apparently low-pitched voice was our wonder. On brigade drills it would ring out to the uttermost points of the line. It was as clear, as piercing, and as far-reaching as a bugle call.
In after-months the writer of this sketch was one of his boy orderlies, and learned to know him well ; he can say, from the daily contact and observation of months, that he never met a more fatherly, kind-hearted, or admirable gentleman than General Davis, as he now deservedly ranks.
At first the company barracks were partitioned into rooms, four or five in number, each room occupied by a squad, usually a self- selected one, in charge of a sergeant. But these partitions were soon torn down, and the whole company, except the commissioned
14
THE STORY OF ONE REGIMENT.
officers, who retained their separate quarters in the ends of the buildings abutting on the parade ground, occupied the large, hall- like room thus made. One reason for this change of plan-an- other was a hygienic one-may have been that while the company rooms were in existence a state of verbal war existed between the occupants of the different rooms. While, for example, in one room a prayer meeting might be going on, an enthusiastic new recruit to the Army of the Lord straining his lungs in enunciating his budding religious views, in an adjoining room, separated only by a thin board partition, a card party would be in progress, vocifer- ously " swinging for Jack "; and on the other side of the prayer- meeting room the company's singing club would be waking the echoes with, " And O ! the battles I've been in, to my ankles deep in blood "-a sanguinary declaration that the realities of the Peninsula campaign gave the singers good reason to change to " deep in mud."
With the destruction of the partitions all the enlisted men came under the immediate control of the First Sergeant, whose duty it now became to keep the peace ; an arduous duty that did not cease even with taps. He must sleep cat-like, and have a candle and matches by his bunk that, when a scerei. *andgel, or other missile, should be hurled across the dark room, aim about the spot some person obnoxious to the thrower would be located, as the clamorous voice of the victim would rise in a howl of pain and wrath, the scratch of a match might be heard and by the flickering flare of a lighting candle the First Sergeant would be seen standing in the middle of the floor in comical deshabille, his snapping eyes and questioning tongue trying to search out the culprit from among the growling. sleepy-looking heads roused from their rude pillows by the sudden commotion. The rascal was rarely caught. Indeed, how could he be when, if not one of the most sleepy-looking of the growling lot, he was one of the stiff snoring ones that nothing short of an earthquake could seemingly wake up ?
To the fact that we had not yet the community of recollections to thrash over and over, that served to while away idle hours spent in other winter quarters, must be attributed much of the dullness of this -winter in Washington. How to kill time when off duty was a problem. I remember that we of Company D killed a minaber of evenings while in Camp Knox by meeting in first one tent one evening, the adjoining one the next, and so on
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15
WASHINGTON.
through the line of company tents, to while away time by obliging each occupant of the tent we met in to tell the story of his life. And a meager story-telling fare it was, on the whole. A few had something to tell, as Amaziah Hunter, who had been a coastwise sailor, so could tell of storms and cities ; and Amaziah told true stories, I think-something that cannot be said of all mariners. For I remember that, before the war, while "working on the road" one spring, we had a sailor with us, one that bad abandoned the sea and taken to agriculture. We led him into telling us of his adventurous life, and as he told of years spent here and there, a wicked member of our easy-working crew of road tinkers kept tally of the different periods, all unknown to the ex-sailor, who . was blasphemously enraged when gravely called to account for the fact that, though he professed to be but forty years old by the family Bible, he was certainly over one hundred years old by the total of his own account of his years of various adventure.
There was a great deal of homesickness this winter, and no wonder. Accustomed hitherto to family surroundings and fra- ternal sympathy, now huddled pell-mell into a great room, with an unaccustomed diet-though a plentiful, a rough one, when compared with a home one --- without accustomed privacy, steroly required to keep the hours by drum tap and bugle call, it is no wonder that most, if not all, of the men were homesick. The symptoms were not noisy ones, neither sighing nor crying oues, but the cagerness with which letters were looked for, the hours spent in letter-writing, and the almost childish delight with which a box from home, filled with cakes and pies made by loving hands, was received, attested that to the minds of our men there was "no place like home."
That many of the regiment succumbed to even the slight hard- ship of this barrack life, and that many more succumbed to the sterner hardships of the Peninsula campaign, and had to be dis- charged from service, is no reflection upon their manhood. For in nearly all cases their inability to undergo the unavoidable hard- ships of a soldier's life, whether in barrack or camp, was the result of some constitutional weakness, hitherto unsuspected perhaps, now coming to the front to take advantage of the low spirits and flaccid physique of the victim. And it must not be forgotten that the percentage of enlisted men discharged during the first year, if not in the first two years, of the war, was not larger than that of
1
16
THE STORY OF ONE REGIMENT.
officers resigning. Indeed, it was but very little more difficult for an enlisted man to get discharged than it was for an officer to resign. The doctors were not yet callous, and the fact that a poor. fellow was pining for home was considered a fair enough reason for recommending his discharge.
It is a matter to note that very many of those discharged early in their terms of service could not reconcile their consciences to remain citizens, but reënlisted in our own and other regi- ments.
The prevailing diseases in the winter of 1862 were infantile ones ; mumps, measles, and whooping-cough. This was not peculiar to our own regiment. General Viele says rather extrava- gantly of the Eighth Maine, of his brigade, that they "caught the mumps and measles to a man." . He accounts for their doing so in this wholesale manner by concluding that " in the pure air of the pine woods where they came from these diseases of child- hood had never prevailed "-an erroneous conclusion, as we know, for the majority of us had found just these diseases preva- lent enough at times in the same pine woods. And a comparison of notes shows that many regiments from other States suffered from these diseases equally with those from Maine-not only from the States of the North but from those of the South, from Maine to Louisiana, from the pure air of the pine woods to the malarial air of the Gulf. For General " Dick " Taylor, the first colonel of the Ninth Louisiana Regiment, states that these diseases were a particular scourge, not only in his regiment, but in the whole Confederate army that lay in camps along Manassas that winter. And the carefully considered statement he makes of the causes and deadly effects of these apparently trivial diseases tells our own experience so happily that we quote it : " Drawn almost exclusively from rural districts, where the families lived isolated, the men were scourged with mumps, whooping-cough, and measles, diseases readily overcome by childhood in city popula- tions. Measles proved as virulent as smallpox or cholera ; sudden changes of temperature drove the eruption from the sur- face to the internal organs, and fevers, lang and typhoid, and dysenteries followed !" Yes, and death followed too often, for the mortality in the Eleventh Maine was very large, numbers of our boys dying that winter from these very causes and effects.
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