USA > New Hampshire > A history of the Second regiment, New Hampshire volunteer infantry, in the war of the rebellion > Part 7
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The head of Berry's Charles E. Putnam, Co. H. column halted a little distance Killed at Williamsburg, May 5, 1862. He was from Claremont. to the rear to close up the trailing ranks. Soon its lead- ing regiment was seen forming right forward into line by company ; and when the line came up in solid array, many men of the Second, determined to see the show to the end, borrowed a few cartridges and went in with it.
The rebels were now steadily pressed back, and in a short time the battle was over. The most determined stand was made at the very edge of the felled timber on the left of the road, and was a matter of necessity rather than of choice on the part of the rebels. An unfortunate portion of their line was here caught between a
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THE CLOSING RUSH.
relentless enemy pressing their front, and the abatis crossing their rear, so impenetrable as to prevent the rapid retirement their desperate fortunes now (lemanded. They had the advantage of an old rifle pit of revolutionary date, which still afforded a very good cover, and behind which they made a brave stand until flanked by the Thirty-eighth New York, which charged up the road, at the same time the impa- tient mass on their front rushed in and helped close up the affair.
1
Capt. Leonard Drown, Co. E.
The first commissioned officer from New Hamp- shire killed in battle in the war. He was shot at Williamsburg under circumstances of exasperating treachery set forth by Colonel Marston in his official report. He was from Fisherville (now Penacook.)
For the rebels, that narrow strip, only two or three rods wide, between the trench and the abatis, was the slaughterpen of the battlefield. In no other position were their dead found lying in such ghastly array, all the result of a few minutes' close work. And for some distance beyond the abatis was dotted with the dead and wounded who were shot down in endeavoring to escape through that terrible entangle- ment. In the grand round-up that abatis cost the rebels more The Fatal Bullet. good men than it had cost their opponents earlier in the day.
The above is a representation of the bullet that killed Captain Drown. Passing through his neck, it lodged in the arm of Charles F. Holt, of Co. G, from which it was extracted by the surgeon.
Right here the Second lost
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several of its best men ; among others, Corporal Bush, of Company C, a veteran of the Mexican War. Here, the following morning, was found a Second man who had met his death in a singular manner. He wore a " bullet-proof " vest some- what in vogue just at that time-an ordinary looking garment covering two thin plates of steel in the breast. A rebel had evidently made a desperate lunge at him with a bayonet, the point of which, striking well around to the side, glanced along the steel, cutting the cloth in its course, until passing between the plates at their junction, it deeply pierced the soldier's breast.
The Second was assem- bled upon its colors, and Charles E. Peaslee, Co. G. marching back about a Killed at Williamsburg by the same volley and within a few feet of Captain Drown. mile, went into bivouac, wet, weary, and without rations. The day's work had cost the regiment one hundred and three men. Sixteen were killed, sixty-eight wounded (six mortally), and nineteen captured or missing. The only commissioned officer killed was Captain Leonard Drown, of Company E. Captain Evarts W. Farr, of Company G, lost his right arm. He was aiming his revolver, when a bullet struck his arm, shattering the bone. Coolly picking up the revolver with his uninjured hand, he made his way to the rear. Lieutenant Samuel O. Burnham, of Company C, received a severe wound in the foot, permanently crippling him, so that he was transferred to the Veteran Reserve Corps.
The Second Regiment had no reason to be ashamed of its record here made. Its good cor.duct was fully recognized by General Heintzelman in his official report: " In General Grover's
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HOOKER'S INDIGNATION.
brigade most of the regiments did very well-the Second New Hampshire particularly so, and it suffered greatly."
But few battles of the war were productive of harsher criticisms of, or more bitter criminations between, high officers than this. Both Hooker and Heintzelman, in their official reports, plainly intimated that Sumner-the senior officer upon the field until McClellan's arrival late in the day-did not support Hooker as he could and should. To which Sumner replied that he sent Kearney to Hooker's assistance as soon as he learned he was in need.
" History will not be believed," wrote Hooker, " when it is told that the noble officers and men of my division were permitted to carry on this unequal struggle from morning until night unaided, in the presence of more than thirty thousand of their comrades with arms in their hands. Nevertheless, it is true."
A study of the positions of troops shows the probability that had other generals shown half the energy and soldierly judg- ment that Hooker did in getting at the retreating enemy, he might have been completely overwhelmed and routed. As it was, the battle of Williamsburg was in its essential features a rebel victory. Longstreet not only performed his duty as rear guard by holding the pursuers at bay all day, while the rest of the army and its impedimenta were making their way up the Corpl. John H. Mace, Co. B. Peninsula, but he came very
Now resides in Boston. In a communica- tion to a Boston newspaper, some time ago, he gave a version of the band incident as it came under his observation: " The band episode that the writer witnessed happened about four o'clock in the afternoon. During a charge which was made in the woods on the left of the road, the writer secured a couple of prisoners and started back to the rear with them. I had not gone far when some artillery came dashing to the rear on the gallop. Many troops who were lying about, waiting for ammunition, seeing the artillery going to the rear, thought a retreat was in order, and started to the rear also. General Heintzelman, seeing the men running to the rear, drew his sword, and, waving it above his head, cried out with a nasal twang: 'Halt ! halt! you - --! Halt!' Thinking he would like to question the prisoners, I stood near him. On seeing me he pointed to the flying troops and said: 'Shoot the ---! Shoot 'em!' At this moment some members of a band hap- pened along. On seeing them he cried: 'Halt there! halt! Give us Yankee Doodle or some other - doodle!' The band struck up a national air (not Yankee Doodle), which had the desired effect."
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George G. Davis, Co. A.
Was severely wounded at battle of Williamsburg, leading to his discharge for disability the following September. Settled in Marlborough, where he has been successfully engaged in manufacturing, mercantile and other business interests. Fifteen years town clerk, twenty years town treasurer, three terms as county commissioner, aide-de-camp on Gov. Currier's staff, and terms in the state senate and house of representatives, are among the political honors that have fallen to him.
near utterly routing one division of the pursuing forces. The most important factor in preventing this, after two brigades had been overwhelmed, was the staying quality of what one of the rebel prisoners termed " the New Hampshire squirrel hunters."
It is stating it very mildly to say that Hooker's men were astounded when they learned from McCllellan's dispatches that he had treated Hancock's little affair on the right-brilliant and soldierly, as Hancock's movements always were, but still only an
COLONEL MARSTON'S REPORT. 81
episode-as the battle of Williamsburg, with Hooker's all-day fight and loss of sixteen hundred men as a side show. He did, six days after the battle, for the first time, " bear testimony to the splendid conduct of Hooker's and Kearney's divisions ; " but he was not so tardy in self laudation-in ascribing to his own belated arrival at the front some power of saving grace, and results in which he really had about as much active instrumentality as the mummified cats in an Egyptian necropolis. Witness his dispatch to General Franklin on the night of the battle : " I found great confusion here, but all
is now right. We have made a tangent hit. I arrived in time." And to Secretary Stanton, May 9th : " Had I been one-half hour later on the field on the 5th we would have been routed and would have lost everything."
COLONEL MARSTON'S OFFICIAL REPORT.
SIR: I have the honor to report the part taken by the Second Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers in the battle of Williamsburg on the 5th instant. We arrived before the strong works which the enemy had erected in front of Williamsburg and within range of his guns about 5.30 a. m., preceded by the First Massachusetts Volunteers, and followed by the Eleventh Massachusetts Volunteers and Twenty-sixth Pennsylvania Volunteers. Company E, Captain Drown, and Company B, Lieutenant Boyden (Captain Colby, of Company B, being seriously ill at Camp Winfield Scott), were immediately deployed as skirmishers in the fallen timber on the leit of the road by which we advanced. The remaining companies (seven) formed in line of battle in the wood and on the right of the road, the left resting thereon. About 7.15 a. m. I was ordered by General Hooker to advance the line through the fallen timber about 250 yards to the margin thereof and there shelter the men from the enemy's fire as much as possible, and be prepared to support the batteries under Major Wainwright, which were about to be placed in position in front of us. We remained in that position for more than six hours, constantly under fire of the enemy's batteries, and the rain all the while falling in torrents. I am sure no veteran soldiers could have endured the discomforts and the dangers of those six long hours with more courage and cheerfulness than did the officers and men of the Second Regiment of New Hamp- shire Volunteers. Companies E and B, who had been deployed as skirmishers in the morning, quickly chased the skirmishers of the enemy from the fallen timber, and then from the rifle pits,. and finally into their fortifications. They then directed their attention to the cannoneers of the enemy, and so unerring was their aim that the fire of the batteries was very much enfeebled,. and sometimes completely silenced.
Captain Snow, Company F, who had been on detached service at Cheeseman's Creek, arrived about 1 o'clock p. m., having marched all night to join his regiment. For several hours the fire of musketry had been very heavy in the wood some half a mile or more on the left of the road, and in advance of the position I occupied in the fallen timber. Sometimes the fire seemed to advance and again to recede, and we were doubtful how the day was going in that part of the field. About 3 o'clock p. m. the fire of the enemy suddenly increased on the left, and, appar- ently advancing indicated that the left was about to be turned.
As it was impossible to change front in the fallen timber where we lay and'preserve any formation whatever, I got the regiment out of the brush and moved across' the road by the left flank, to aid in driving the enemy back, where our troops seemed to be very hardly pressed. The regiment had become very much broken in making its way through the almost_impenetrable
6
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thickets in which we had lain for so many hours. Other regiments were in the same condition, but every man that had a musket to fire went into the fight with whatever regiment or company he happened to fall in with, and so continued until night put an end to the contest. Captain Drown had collected a company composed of his own men and those of other regiments, and bravely led them on to a body of the enemy, firing his revolver and cheering on his men, when the rebel barbarian in command exhibited a white flag, and cried out to him, " Don't fire, don't fire; we are friends," at the same time directing his men to trail their arms. Captain Drown, believing they were about to surrender, directed his men not to fire, whereupon the whole body of the enemy suddenly fired upon him, killing him instantly, and also several of his men. There was no braver man in the service of the country than Captain Drown, no truer patriot, no citizen more conscientious and upright.
There were 4 field and staff officers, 26 company officers, and 740 non-commissioned officers and privates present in the engagement belonging to the Second Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers, of whom 16 were killed, 66 wounded, and 23 missing.
In concluding this hasty report I take leave to say that the officers and men of my regiment, notwithstanding all the fatigues and privations to which they had been subjected, were throughout the day of battle not only uncomplaining but cheerful, and apparently anxious for nothing but the opportunity to do their country in the day of battle all the service in their power.
I am, respectfully, your obedient servant, GILMAN MARSTON. Lieut. JOSEPH HIBBERT, Jr.,
Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.
CHAPTER VI.
MAY 6 TO JUNE 26, 1862 .- ADVANCE UP THE PENINSULA-ACROSS THE CHICKAHOMINY-AN IMPROVISED TORCHLIGHT PARADE-GROVER'S BRIGADE AT POPLAR HILL-THE BATTLE OF FAIR OAKS-HOOKER'S POSITION AT FAIR OAKS-A LIVELY PICKET FIGHT-SIMMONS' REBEL FRIEND-THE BATTLE OF OAK GROVE-DESPERATE VALOR OF COMPANY B-HARRIET DAME'S GRIEF-SHARPSHOOTING INCIDENTS -A TERRIFIC " GOOD NIGHT "-A CROWD OF SKULKERS-COLONEL MARSTON'S OFFICIAL REPORT OF BATTLE OF OAK GROVE.
N the morning of the 6th troops began to pour up the road towards Williamsburg, and during the day Grover's brigade moved up out of the woods and went into camp on the plain in front of Fort Magruder. The burial of the dead commenced the same day. Most of those from the Excelsior and New Jersey brigades were collected and interred in long trenches. This could not well be done with the dead of Grover's brigade, as they were widely scattered, upon every portion of the field. Several days were spent at this duty, in gathering arms and equipments, and burning the felled timber, and then the brigade moved up nearer the city, the Second Regiment camping in a field close to William and Mary College.
Gen. Grover was appointed military governor, and the brigade performed provost duty for some time, while the army was advancing up the Peninsula. May 15th the brigade was relieved by a cavalry detachment and marched to rejoin the army. The roads, cut and churned by the feet and wheels of two armies, were in a frightful condition, especially where they led through the sloughs and morasses of the Chickahominy swamp.
The first day's march covered about sixteen miles, and on the following day, after a march of ten miles, the brigade joined its
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The Surgeon and his Assistants. No. 1.
From Photograph taken at Bladensburg in August, 1861.
I-A civilian named LEACH, servant of Dr. Hubbard.
2-JOHN C. W. MOORE, Co. B. Was promoted to Asst .- Surgeon Eleventh N. H., Jan. 3, 1863. Was from Concord, and now a practicing physician there.
3-JAMES W. BLAKE, Co. D. The ambulance driver, full of fun, mischievous as a monkey, a good banjo player and singer-the life of the hospital. Familiarly known as " Wes."
4-JOHN SULLIVAN, JR., Co. E. [See page 21.] At close of the war settled in Boston as a druggist, firm of Sullivan & Lotz, and retired a few years ago on a competency.
5-GEORGE H. HUBBARD, Surgeon. [See opposite page. ]
6-ISRAEL THORNDIKE HUNT, Co. D. [See page 13.] Son of Gen. Israel Hunt, of Nashua. After his transfer to the Fourth Regiment, he served under Sherman on the Port Royal expedition and at the capture of Fernandina, Jacksonville, and St. Augustine, Fla., when he was honorably discharged for disability and returned to New Hampshire. Resided several years in New York city, and graduating in medicine, settled in Boston, where he has resided since 1871. Has retired from active practice, and now devotes his leisure time to examining for life insurance, being chief examiner at Boston for various companies.
7-WILLIAM WESLEY WILKINS, Co. I. Was a practicing physician in Manchester before his enlistment. In September was appointed Acting Assistant Surgeon, U. S. Navy, and served on the blockading squadron until the fall of 1862, when he resigned. He was subsequently Assistant Surgeon of the Tenth N. H. He was for many years one of the leading physicians of Manchester, in which city he died September 1, 1892.
8-CHARLES A. MILTON, a sergeant of Co. B, from Hopkinton. He was appointed U. S. Med- ical Cadet (the second one appointed) Oct. 1, 1861, and died at the U. S. General Hospital at Mound City, Ill., in May, 1862, from poisonous virus which fell on a scratch on his wrist while dressing a soldier's wound.
9-MRS. MARY A. MARDEN, of Windham. With Miss Harriet P. Dame, was nurse, cook, and mother to everybody. She was much older than Miss Dame-too old to bear the privations and hardships of active campaigning, and got sick and went home in January, 1862.
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SURGEON AND ASSISTANTS.
I 2 3 4
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The Surgeon and his Assistants.
No. 2.
From Photograph taken at Bladensburg in August, 1861.
I-The civilian LEACH, also appears in picture on opposite page.
2-JOHN KENNEY, Co. G. A general utility man, and not half as ministerial as he looks. He now lives at Milford, engaged in real estate and insurance business. Is a "hustler," and personally known to nearly everybody in New Hampshire.
3-CHARLES A. MILTON, Co. B. He also appears as No. 8 in opposite picture.
4-GEORGE H. HUBBARD, Surgeon. Was a physician of high standing in Manchester. He resigned October 1, 1861, to accept commission as Surgeon of Volunteers, and was ordered to duty at Tipton, Mo., where he remained during the winter of 1861-2 in charge of the hospi- tals in that department. In the summer of 1862 he was ordered to Paducah, Ky., where he served as Medical Director until the summer of 1864, when he was put in charge of the great military hospital at Troy, N. Y., where he remained until the close of the war. After his muster out he resumed private practice in Lansingburg, N. V. He soon built up a very good practice, and was highly esteemed. Everything was bright and happy until the death of a beautiful daughter. From that day he seemed to lose all interest in life, and died a year or more after his daughter, on the 19th of January, 1876. A son and widow who survived him are now both dead.
5-JOSEPH E. JANVRIN, Co. K. [See page 8.] He went from Exeter. After the war he settled in New York city, and after a time became an assistant of Professor Peaslee, the eminent physician and expert in diseases of females; and on Dr. Peaslee's retirement from practice, he succeeded him. He has amassed a large fortune, has an enormous practice, and is one of the most prominent physicians in New York city.
6-WILLIAM G. STARK, Co. D. Was a druggist in Manchester, before the war, and put up prescriptions for Dr. Hubbard, who persuaded Stark to go with him in the Second. He was appointed Hospital Steward, and served in that capacity three full years, when, having meantime re-enlisted, he was commissioned Assistant Surgeon, and remained with the regiment till the end. He died at Manchester, November 4, 1880.
7-WILLIAM J. RAHN, Co. I. Served in the capacity of ward-master until June 15, 1862, when he was appointed Commissary-Sergeant to succeed James A. Cook, and served out his term of enlistment in that capacity.
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division, near New Kent Court House. The entire Third Corps- now reduced to two divisions by the detachment of Porter's-was in the vicinity of New Kent Court House and Cumberland, the latter place being a steamboat landing on the Pamunky, a few miles below White House, where McClellan had established his base of supplies, and from which he was repairing the railroad toward Richmond.
Corpl. George E. Pingree, Co. G.
Wounded at Williamsburg, May 5, 1862, by a volley from the Fourteenth Louisiana, the ball passing through his right forearm. Discharged for disability, he was commissioned captain of Co. G, Eleventh N. H., with which he served until his wound assumed so serious a form as to necessi- tate his transfer to the Veteran Reserve Corps. He remained in the service, in connection with the Freedmen's Bureau, until January 1, 1868. Now resides at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where he has large manufacturing interests.
The 17th was a day of rest for the brigade, and on the 18th it advanced three or four miles, passing through New Kent Court House. On the 19th the division moved to Baltimore Cross Roads, a distance of eight or nine miles, where it remained quietly in camp until the afternoon of the 23d, when it marched to Bottom's Bridge, on the Chickahominy. The last stretch of that march, made in the night, over a flooded swamp road, with mud and water knee deep, was unanimously voted " the worst yet."
The next day (24th) Hooker's division crossed the river as support for a recon- noissance towards Fair Oaks by Naglee's brigade of Keyes' corps. Advancing about two miles, to some rifle pits upon the Williamsburg road, it remained all day in line of battle, with its artillery in position. At sunset it began its return to the morning's camp. It was already dark when the troops struck down upon the flooded flats bordering the river and began to wallow across. Light was wanted, and there were men in that column equal to the emergency.
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ACROSS THE CHICKAHOMINY.
Fishing from haversacks and knapsacks little pieces of candle, they lighted and stuck them in the muzzles of their guns, and almost in the twinkling of an eye Grover's brigade blossomed out into one of the finest torchlight parades of the season. But as quickly as it was evolved, just as suddenly it vanished when an aide, wild with the urgency of his mission, came ploughing back from the head of the column, shouting at the top of his voice : "Put out those devilish candles !" So the men floundered along as best they could in the darkness, back to their old camps.
The following day (25th), leaving the Excelsior Brigade at Bottom's Bridge, the First and Third Brigades again crossed the river and advanced to and occupied Poplar Hill, an important , position twelve miles from Richmond, commanding the Capt. Ichabod Pearl, Co. H. approach to Bottom's Bridge Was from Great Falls, and the original captain of Company H. Resigned August 12, 1861, He died at Somersworth December 25, 1879. from the Charles City and Long Bridge roads. Upon the front was White Oak Swamp, an arm of the Chickahominy, traversed by a small but practically fordless stream from above this position to its mouth, and here crossed by its only bridge. Grover's brigade remained here a week, literally " in clover "-acres of it.
On the afternoon of the 30th, and extending well into the night, came that almost unparalleled storm, but for which the battle of Fair Oaks would not have been fought. For hours the rain came in a deluge, and even the sodded slopes of Poplar Hill were furrowed deep in places by the rushing floods. The sluggish Chickahominy was transformed into a raging torrent, and its bordering lowlands were a turbid sea. But two corps-Keyes'
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and Heintzelman's-were on the south side, with Casey's division of the former advanced to Fair Oaks. Johnston was quick to see his opportunity and act upon it ; for on the following day he moved out to crush the two corps before they could be reinforced from the north side. Casey was overwhelmed and driven back, losing his camps and several pieces of artillery, and Johnston's triumphant advance was only checked at nightfall by Couch's and Kearney's divisions, assisted by a portion of Sumner's corps, which with remarkable promptness and under extreme difficulties had crossed the river on two bridges built by the corps some distance above Bottom's Bridge. If the movement against the Union left by Huger's division, which had formed a part of Johnston's plan of battle, had not miscarried, Hooker's division would have become involved in this day's fight ; but as it was, the men remained quietly in their camps, listening to the heavy firing on the right.
The following morning (June ist) the Excelsior and New Jersey brigades were hurried to the right, leaving Grover's brigade with four pieces of artillery to defend the Poplar Hill position. The bridge was torn up and the artillery posted to command the crossing, the Eleventh Massachusetts deployed as skirmishers along the creek, and the other regiments held in line of battle upon the hill. They were not disturbed, however, for as the result of this day's fight the rebel forces were driven back, the lost positions recovered, and Johnston had failed in his well-planned attempt to crush the left wing of the Union army. And not only this, but he was himself severely wounded, and Gen. Robert E. Lee succeeded to the command of the rebel army, which he retained until the final smash at Appomattox.
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