USA > New Hampshire > History of the Second Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers: its camps, marches and battles > Part 8
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their shells across the river and over the heads of SUM- NER'S men into the rebel works. But though the Right Grand Division did everything and darcd everything that a devoted heroism could prompt them to do, it was worse than useless, for while thousands of their killed and wounded marked the spot where they had fought so bravely, the rebels, who had suffered comparatively but small loss, retained full possession of the heights.
The fighting also was furious upon the left, and during a charge made by one of our brigades, an entire North Carolina Regiment was taken prisoners. They were brought to the vicinity of the bridges, guarded by a de- tachment from RusII's Pennsylvania Lancers. The lieutenant colonel who had commanded the regiment ap- peared to feel keenly the disaster to his command, and was making strong efforts to discover how the thing was done. It appeared that the rebels were lying flat upon the ground in a dense growth of bushes, when our regi- ments charged so suddenly upon them that they were taken unawares, and gave up without firing a shot. The lieutenant colonel would have it that some one of his reg- iment called out "Don't fire; they are our own men," when the Yankees charged down upon them, by which means the volley which should have checked the charge was prevented. To discover who the "traitor" was he made diligent inquiries among his men, but failed to find out the offender.
In no position did we ever witness such a mixture of sad and of ludicrous incidents as at the bridges. No man, except the wounded or those who had passes from the proper authority, was allowed to cross to the Fal- mouth side, yet that fact did not prevent scores of "lay -
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backs" from attempting to pass the guards upon one pre- text or another. These men generally claimed to have been wounded, and while their faces indicated that they were suffering the most intense pain, they would show . the hole through their clothing where the bullet had en- tered, and even stains of blood. A close inspection gen- erally discovered these holes to extend no farther than the skin, and the blood to be that of some braver comrade who had been wounded in the fight. Every man who came along was examined by the guard -the wounded passed on, and the sneaks were sent back to the front.
At about sunset a furious artillery duel was fought upon the left, lasting but a short time, but resulting in the death of Gen. BAYARD, who, as the youngest general in the service, had already achieved an enviable name in connection with its cavalry arm. This affair is of interest to New Hampshire readers, as it was here the "Man- chester Battery" was hotly engaged, and lost several men.
About midnight we were relieved of our duty at the bridges by the Second New York Regiment, and marched to the front to participate in the expected battle of the morrow. We joined the brigade in a cornfield at the ex- treme front, which had been trampled by horses and men and cut up by wheels until the mud stood ankle - deep. We formed to the rear of the Twenty - Sixth Pennsylva- nia, and those who were fastidious about making their beds in the soft mud of the field, entered into conversa- tion with the Pennsylvania boys, who were under arms ready to awake their slumbering comrades upon warning from the pickets. Our pickets were about two hundred yards to the front, and the rebels were within easy rifle shot. In fact, although the brigade had not been engaged
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the day previous, the rebel sharpshooters had picked off some twenty - five men from the Twenty - Sixth as they lay in the line of battle. The enemy's camp fires, gleam- ing upon the hills to our front, seemed so near that we might almost have thrown a stone into them from the hand, and the bullets fired by their pickets whistled over our heads and struck in the fields far to our rear.
As the light of morn gradually approached the firing of the pickets became brisker; and to inaugurate the day, as the sun arose the rebels ran out a battery a few hun- dred yards to our front and commeneed to shell the brig- ade. Several men had been wounded, when Gen. CARR ordered Col. MARSTON to send out twenty or thirty rifle- men to silence the battery, and Company B was ordered to advance and pick off the gunners. Deploying as skir- mishers, they advanced, and soon their Sharp's rifles were cracking briskly along their picket line. The rebel artil- lerymen could not stand the fire of the New Hampshire riflemen, and their battery was whisked out of range as fast as the horses could haul the guns.
The skirmish thus inaugurated was kept up until nearly night, the regiment having one company out at a time, relieving as fast as ammunition was exhausted. The po- sition in front of the Second offered many good places for skirmishers to conceal themselves. There was the soli- tary, fire - blackened chimney, without which no Virginia scene would have been complete, the massive gateposts on either side of the road, the pile of lumber in the fields upon the right, and the ditches running at right angles with the rebel lines, from which a dozen men, lying one behind another and firing over each other's heads, kept a stream of bullets pouring down the road, that being the
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only way in which the rebels could be prevented from getting a raking fire down the ditch.
About a dozen of the regiment were wounded during the day, among whom was Sergeant CHARLES VICKERY. His position as " left general guide" would have excused him from the fight when the entire regiment was not engaged, but when his company ( I) began to deploy, he would not think of being left behind, and taking his position in the line, advanced with it. Taking shelter behind the pile of lumber before spoken of, he was care- fully reconnoitering the position, when a rebel rifleman sighted him and sent a bullet straight towards his heart. But the brass eagle - plate upon his cross - belt interposed, and the bullet, warded from the vital part, glanced and buried itself in his neck, inflicting a severe but not fatal wound.
Near four o'clock in the afternoon a rebel officer came out with a flag of truce, and the firing ceased immedi- ately. A truce had been established by FRANKLIN upon our left some time before, for the purpose of removing the wounded and burying the dead who lay between the lines, and though his skirmishers had shouted until they were hoarse for us to cease firing, the boys had kept industriously popping away, as did the rebels in our front. Yet, but a few minutes after the white flag appeared, the men who had been so busily engaged during the day in shooting at each other, laid down their arms and mingled together as cordially as though they had always been the best of friends. The rebels exchanged tobacco for coffce, and their papers for such as we happened to have. One of our boys had a copy of Harper's Weekly, with illus- trations of the war, which excited much interest among
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the rebels, who crowded around to see the pictures. A broad caricature upon the Confederacy was greeted with shouts of laughter, the rebels appearing to enjoy it as much as we did ourselves.
Notes were compared as to the result of the firing dur- ing the day, and they acknowledged a considerable loss. The captain of the battery which had greeted us in the morning, when informed that it was a New Hampshire company which drove him from his position, told us that one of his men killed at that time was from New Hampshire. Thus a renegade son of the old Granite State, received from her loyal sons the punishment due for his treachery.
There was considerable bantering and jesting between the men. "What makes your folks leave us so many good clothes and fine blankets?" enquired an unshorn confederate, who looked as if good clothes had not trou- bled him for some time. "We obey the injunction to clothe the naked and feed the hungry. But, I say, Johnny, what made you keep your stretchers so busy over there to - day ?" "Why, the fact is, your fellows were such good shots that they treed some of our men out skirmishing, so that they couldn't get away without being shot ; so they stayed out till they starved to death !"
Before parting, a mutual agreement was entered upon, that no more picket firing should take place unless an advance was made, and we accepted the polite invitation of the rebels to "call the next day."
Sunday and Monday, fourteenth and fifteenth, we lay upon the plains inviting an attack. and Monday night the army was withdrawn across the river to its old position, in perfect order and leaving no material for the enemy.
.
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The night was favorable for such a movement, rainy and dark, with a high wind blowing, which drowned the noise of rumbling wheels and tramping columns, and the first intimation the rebels received of our departure, was when the morning light revealed to them the unoccupied plains, and the long lines of blue - clad soldiers disappearing over the heights upon the other side of the river. But the movement did not surprise the rebels more than it did some of our own pickets, who in the morning found themselves entirely without reserves, and many of whom arrived at the river's bank just in season to cross upon the pontoons before they were taken up.
CHAPTER XIV.
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FALMOUTH AND NEW HAMPSHIRE.
- HE new year, 1863, opened upon the army at Falmouth, passing its time in reviews and drills, and preparing against the rains and snows of winter, until the twentieth of January, when the move- ment familiarly known as "BURNSIDE'S mud scrape" was commenced. Gen. BURNSIDE had, the day before, issued an address to the army, informing them that they were about to be led against the enemy, and calling upon them to fight with all their old spirit and enthusiasm.
On the twentieth the division left camp and marched about two miles in the direction of Falmouth, where, after shivering for hours in a cold rain, the men, at nine o'clock in the evening, were marched back to camp. On the morning of the twenty - first the division was again on the move, and marched about six miles in the direction of the fords at which Gen. BURNSIDE designed to cross the
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army, encamping in dense pine woods. The day was rainy, and the roads soon became broad beds of mud, through which the men made their way with the utmost difficulty, and the mules and horses attached to the artil- lery and wagons floundered and struggled in vain en- deavors to drag their loads where they could not easily have made their way unencumbered. Light field - pieces, with a dozen horses attached to them, were stuck fast in the mud, and the wagons composing the unwieldly pon- toon train were scattered at various points along the route. The rebels soon found out the state of affairs in our army, and strongly guarded the fords. An attempt to advance was now worse than useless, and, in fact, to return to the camp we had left and take with us our heavy trains was no easy matter. On the twenty - second, details from the division were busy corduroying the roads, and on the twenty - third the troops returned to their old camp, the sun, which had for several days hid itself from sight, dispersing the clouds and shining warm and clear as soon as the retrograde movement was begun.
Shortly after this Gen. BURNSIDE was relieved of the command of the army, and the men of the division with pride saw their old general assigned to the position. Re- forms were immediately inaugurated, extending into the minutest details of camp life, which served to inspire the army with the knowledge that their new leader was mas- ter of the situation. The organization of the army into three grand divisions was abolished, and the army corps, of three divisions each, designated by numbers. "A sys- tem of corps badges was established-the lozenge for the First, the trefoil for the Second, and so on-the glorious old diamond, the brilliant of them all, being the emblem
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which the Third Corps, commanded by SICKLES, made as proud a decoration as was the cross of honor to the French soldiers of Napoleon.
The time passed with alternate seasons of snow and rain and mud, of drills, inspections and picket tours, until Thursday, the twenty - sixth of February, when one of the most important movements in the history of the Sec- ond began, the return to New Hampshire of the entire regiment upon furlough. The intense joy with which we greeted the order for the regiment to " report to Maj. Gen. JOHN E. WOOL, commanding Department of the East," can never be realized by outsiders; and though the roads were muddy and the knapsacks heavy, there was no strag- gling from the ranks when the regiment marched to "Stoneman's Switch," there to take the cars for Belle Plains.
On the morning of the twenty - seventh we moved to the "Soldiers' Rest" from the boat which had conveyed us from Aquia Creek, and on the following day started for Philadelphia, where we arrived Sunday morning, and were furnished with dinner at the "Soldier's Refreshment Saloon." Monday we arrived in New York, and on Tues- day morning again set foot upon the soil of our native New England, and inhaled her free and bracing air. Our friends at Boston greeted us on our return as warmly as twenty months before they had bidden us "Godspeed" upon our mission, and at Faneuil Hall spread a collation which furnished a strange contrast to our accustomed army farc.
But it was in our own State, at our own homes, we re- ceived our warmest welcome. At nine o'clock, Tuesday evening, the train bearing the regiment thundered into
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the depot at Manchester, and the men, thronging from the cars, met such a reception as they could have received from none but their "own people." Salvos of artillery pealed out on the night air, and escorted by a grand pro- cession the regiment proceeded to Smyth's Hall, where tables were spread with a profuseness which might have supplied the wants of two half- starved regiments instead of one which had been feasted in Boston but a few hours before. The galleries were filled with the lady friends and relatives of the soldiers, most of whom had shown their pluck by maintaining their position manfully hour after hour, even before the regiment had arrived in Boston. Mayor ABBOT welcomed the regiment in a neat speech, which was responded to by Lieut. Col. BAILEY, when the men accepted the invitation to attack the eata- bles which the ladies had bountifully spread upon the long tables. The wants of the inner man being supplied, Hon. FREDERICK SMYTH was introduced as toast - master, and short speeches by men of the regiment and by citi- zens, with responses to patriotic sentiments, filled up the time until a late hour, when the men scattered to seek the more welcome reception awaiting them upon the thresholds of their own homes.
The next day was a gala day at Concord, and the re- ception was upon a magnificent scale, consisting of a grand procession, dinner at the hotels, and speeches of welcome. Gen. WOOL was there to add eclat to .the occasion, and everything passed off to the unbounded satisfaction of all concerned.
The headquarters of the regiment were established at Concord; and while seven companies were stationed at that place, three companies (D, E and K,) were sent to 6
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Portsmouth and quartered at Fort Constitution. Fur- loughs for a few days were granted, which were usually extended for as many weeks by the men, who preferred the comforts and pleasures of home to the rough accom- modations which the barracks afforded. But though many members of the regiment visited Canada, the refuge of sneaks and runaways, the first call for the regiment to assemble, preparatory to returning to the seat of war, brought these men from the shelter of the " neutral" soil once more to take their places bencath the old flag, and to share its dangers and its glories.
Before leaving the State the Seventeenth Regiment, numbering about one hundred and fifty men, was consoli- dated with our regiment, after the officers of the former - commissioned and non- commissioned-had been dis- charged. The men at first were very unwilling to consent to any such arrangement, and stuck up placards which read, "The Seventeenth or nothing," which the veterans of the Second read and commented on by remarking that " there was not much choice between the two," which was supposed to be sufficiently sarcastic upon the men who were unwilling to become members of such a regiment as the Second. But when we returned we took them with us, and during the nine months they served with us no more faithful men were found in the ranks; and at Gettys- burg they distinguished themselves by their good behavior and lost a large proportion of their number.
CHAPTER XV.
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THE MARCH TO GETTYSBURG.
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EMAINING at home until the twenty - fifth of May, we set out to return to Washington, where we arrived on the twenty - eighth, and went into camp on East Capitol Hill. Here we remained until the eleventh of June, when we took steamer for Aquia Creek, once more to join the Army of the Potomac. The strategic movements which finally cul- minated in the battle of Gettysburg had already commenced, and when, at about dark we arrived at Stoneman's Switch the deserted camps in the vicinity proclaimed that the army had gone. The next day, however, we were once more with our old com- rades, joining the Excelsior Brigade at Hartwood Church, nine miles above Falmouth. On the thirteenth we joined the Jersey Brigade, to which we were attached as long as we remained with the Army of the Potomac. We made on that day a march of nearly thirty miles, to Rappahan-
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nock Station, where we remained during the following day, in the evening of which we commenced one of the most trying marches we ever made. Although under arms at sunset we were not on our way until nearly ten o'clock, when, striking the railroad, we followed that in the direction of Warrenton Junction.
The division was marching rapidly along the track, with its unceasing tramp, tramp, tramp of thousands of feet, and the monotonous clatter of tin dippers against bayonets and canteens, when the horses attached to a caisson of one of the batteries became frightened and unmanageable, and dashed through the column near the head of the Second Regiment, making a furious clatter and severely injuring one or two men who could not get out of the way with sufficient agility. The men in the immediate vicinity scattered in every direction to escape injury from the frightened brutes. Those farther beyond, who could hear but not see the cause of the commotion, naturally supposed that some infernal rebel trap had been sprung, and when they saw the men in that direction scattering for the bushes they followed suit. The stam- pede spread from company to company, and from regi- ment to regiment, through the whole division, the men seeking shelter from the unseen danger in wild flight. Officers shouted "Halt! Halt!" at the top of their voices, at the same time running away as fast as any of their men. In such a pellmell rush there were naturally many collisions- the men could not get out of each oth- er's way fast enough-and the ditches upon either side of the road were filled with prostrate forms, writhing and kicking, scratching and clawing like a nest of Kilkenny cats. Those who got beyond the ditches generally brought
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up over a stump or log, which sent them sprawling in one direction while guns and other loose articles flew in an- other. Never, in its fiercest fights, had the division seen as many men fall in so short a time as on this occasion. But the panic was soon over, and the men came swarming back upon the railroad. Then came loud calls for miss- ing articles. "Where's my gun?" " Who's seen any- thing of a stray hat?" "My haversack and three days rations missing-liberal reward!" and so on. Many of the men were obliged to resume the march minus these articles ; and if some relic seeker should light upon the · spot where the stampede occurred he would doubtless consult his note-book to discover what great battle was fought between Warrenton and Rappahannock Station, and might collect relics enough to furnish any museum of moderate pretensions. The uninitiated may laugh at this affair, and call it a " cowardly skedaddle," but they must bear in mind that the men engaged in it were the same who had borne the brunt at Williamsburg, who at Chan- cellorsville had stemmed the tide of disaster which threat- ened to engulf all, forming with their bayonets a bulwark against which the exultant legions of JACKSON hurled themselves in vain, and who afterwards at Gettysburg fought with a desperation which was never excelled dur- ing the war.
At Warrenton Junction, where the division arrived the next morning, we rested for a few hours, when the march was again resumed toward Manassas, down the railroad and over the same route we had before traveled on the day of the battle of Bristow Station. As on that day many men were sunstruck, but the column was pushed wearily on, mile after mile, hour after hour, until at mid-
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night the halt was sounded within the line of works which encircled Manassas Junction.
The army was working its way northward, HOOKER manœuvering so as to constantly interpose a barrier between LEE and Washington. For several days the division was encamped at " Gum Springs," a little village of half a dozen houses, where Gen. BRADDOCK had also cncamped during his ill-fated campaign; and on the twenty - fifth we broke up our camp there, crossed the Potomac at Edwards Ferry upon a long pontoon bridge, and were led upon the "tow - path march," of which we will tell the story and leave the reader to judge of the wisdom and humanity of it. Gen. HUMPHREYS, tempo- rarily commanding the division, can have the full credit of the affair, for no general ever has or probably ever will be found willing to contest for the honors resulting from that night's work.
After crossing the river at Edwards Ferry the point to be reached was the mouth of the Monocacy, not far from twenty miles above. The "Ohio and Chesapeake Canal" followed the windings of the river for that distance, upon one side of which was a highway broad and direct, afford- ing excellent passage for troops, upon the other the " tow - path," a narrow bank between the river and canal. Upon the latter road the division was led, and the general con- gratulated himself that he had got his machines upon a track where there was no opportunity for straggling. His stout horse led off at a slashing gait, and the column fol- lowed after. Night came on dark and rainy, and the men splashed along the narrow pathway which soon became coated with mud and slime. Occasionally a " souse" would be heard as some unfortunate soldier lost his pre-
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carious foothold and slipped into the canal. The men began to grumble and wonder why they were led upon such a road when one so much more passable ran parallel with their course and not a dozen rods distant. No halt, no rest, and yet they kept manfully on after the horse which led the column, hoping soon to come to a bridge across the canal by which a camping ground might be gained. A light appeared ahead, beaming from the win- dows of a canal- boat bound for Georgetown, and as it approached, the men, hailing the driver of the tow - horse, inquired how far it was to a bridge. " A trifle rising of twelve miles," was the reply, which put a damper upon the men's hopes of rest anywhere but on the tow - path that night. Horse-flesh won. One by one, and then squad by squad the exhausted men sank upon the ground and refused to go farther, until the little plots of land which occasionally intervened upon the river side were covered with the stragglers. Commanders of regiments were left without the colors and almost without men, and finally some of them followed the example of the men, until when the general had arrived at his goal he had hardly men enough left to form a respectable headquarters guard. In the morning a stream of men poured from the tow- path across Monocacy Aqueduct, and when a good portion of the division had been collected together the march was resumed, the bivouac that night being not far from Point of Rocks.
On Sunday, the twenty - eighth, while passing through Frederick we heard with sorrow that Gen. HOOKER had been relieved of the command of the army, and that Gen. MEADE had been assigned to the position. But the men were not of that stamp to let their prejudices and feelings
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work upon their efficiency, and they ever yielded to Gen. MEADE a hearty support. The regiment passed and loudly cheered its old commander, MARSTON, upon whose shoulders shone the stars of a general.
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