History of the Twelfth regiment, New Hampshire volunteers in the war of the rebellion, Part 10

Author: Bartlett, Asa W., 1839-
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: Concord, N.H. : I. C. Evans
Number of Pages: 878


USA > New Hampshire > History of the Twelfth regiment, New Hampshire volunteers in the war of the rebellion > Part 10


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In the mean time, and at the most critical moment, when the sword of Damocles hung over the Federal commander, night and Jackson fell and the army was saved.


It was just after twenty-two pieces of artillery, double-shotted with canister, had covered the ground with rebel dead, and driven their sur- viving comrades back under cover of the woods, that the Twelfth reached the field of carnage, and was at once ordered up to the support of the artillery. It was placed in the immediate rear of one of the batteries, and Company F was sent forward and deployed near the edge of the woods, into which the rebels had just been driven, with orders not to reply to the enemy's fire, but to quickly fall back behind our batteries should he again advance in force during the night. This was to give the artil- lery another chance to reap a bloody harvest.


The Third Corps, of about fifteen thousand men, was now bunched up on a few acres of cleared ground, almost surrounded by the forest, filled with exultant rebels, who had already paralyzed and almost destroyed


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the effectiveness of one corps, and now seriously threatened the safety of another.


Their charging screech and yell, that sounded like a commingled pack of wild-cats and wolves, had now ceased. But here and there in the distance a similar sound, in a minor key, heard at intervals until late in the night, told that the news of Jackson's great success was being heralded through their army, and, coming from almost every direction, reminded some of the Twelfth boys of the story of the lost traveler, spending a cold, sleepless night alone in the wilderness, surrounded by howling wolves and beasts of prey.


These cheers - for such they were intended - heard in their rear as well as their front, were not very cheering sounds to the silently listening ranks of Sickles's brave men, who fully realized their situation, and seriously anticipated the struggle that awaited them.


Thus cut off, and nearly surrounded, with only a narrow neck of swamp land, almost impassable, connecting him with the main army, the question for General Sickles to answer was, how he could best comply with the last order from General Hooker, to save his command if he could. Having, through the medium of a courier sent across the swamp, obtained permission, he resolved to make a midnight attack upon the enemy, which was so gallantly done by General Birney's division, charg- ing with fixed bayonets and uncapped pieces, that some of the Eleventh Corps guns and a part of the supply train lost by the Third Corps, were recaptured, and the enemy driven back through the woods beyond the plank road, thereby opening easy communication with Hooker's head- quarters at the Chancellor House.


This brilliant charge was made just to the right of our own position, and, lighted up by the flash and blaze of the enemy's artillery and mus- ketry along the dark edge of the dense forest, for a background, was a scene that no one who saw and may read these lines will fail to recall.


" By heavens ! it was a glorious sight For him who had no brother there."


Again the Twelfth Regiment was fortunate in being exposed only to the stray shots, instead of the direct fire of the foe, as it would have been had it arrived a little sooner upon the ground in the early evening, or had been a part of the charging column later in the night. But its turn in the sad havoc of war was soon to come.


The men, with their clothes still wet from fording the deep brooks in the afternoon, suffered much, lying with chilled limbs and shivering bodies, uncovered upon the cold ground, with no chance to warm or scarcely to move. Few, if any, closed their eyes in sleep during that eventful night. Had their physical condition allowed, their thoughts were too sadly busy for the mind to acquiesce. The events of the day. the situation of the night, and the unavoidable strife of the coming mor-


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row, when the great battle so disastrously commenced, would be re- newed ; the piteous cries of the wounded, still lying uncared for around them, and the memory of home, and the loved ones there, whom, as all feared and many felt, they should never see again, all combined to give ample scope for serious reflection.


Although thus far there was greater cause for joy than sorrow in the ranks of the Twelfth, yet, as " coming events cast their shadows before," there was a general feeling of apprehension, that the morrow would bring, as it did, the harvest of death.


Just in rear of this night battle-line, for every man lay in file on his arms, there was an old stable, into which many of the wounded had been carried, and from which throughout the night came commingled moans and groans of the wounded and dying. The piteous, heart-piercing cries of one poor fellow, continuing until the angel of death heard and came to his relief, are still sounding through memory's half-deserted halls, and can only cease when he who heard them hears and feels no more.


Colonels Potter and Marsh, and the kind-hearted "Old Major," as he was called, walked up and down the line, telling the boys to keep quiet and sleep, if they could, and they would stand guard over them for that night.


They too well understood the meaning and effect of Jackson's unex- pected attack, the critical situation of Sickles's command, and the terrible struggle that must soon ensue, to think of rest or sleep for themselves.


The moon, though full, soon veiled herself with thin clouds, which spread a shade of sombre sadness over the earth that seemed to fore- shadow the coming strife.


But the slow and chilly hours of that night of doubt and fear went by at last.


" And Sabbath's holy morn too soon appeared, To bring such awful strife."


As soon as light both armies were standing to arms and ready for action. Sickles had received orders from his chief to withdraw, if possible, from his perilous position, and unite with the main army on his right. This was a request much easier to make than to comply with, and no sooner is the attempt made than the enemy objects, and the battle com- mences.


While the troops nearer to, or in the edge of the woods, are engaged in holding the forces of Jackson - now commanded by General Stuart - back at the point of the bayonet, the rest of the corps, not needed for immediate support, is being rapidly moved off to the new lines of de- fence, surrounding the open rise of cleared ground near the Chancellor House, known as Fairview.


Whipple's division being, as we have seen, in reserve, and farthest from the woods, was first to move. Down through a narrow valley of


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swamp land, partly covered with bushes, regiment after regiment fol- lowed each other in quick succession, until it was evident that Hazel Grove was to be abandoned to the surrounding lines of " butternut and gray," who were eagerly pushing forward on three sides, impatient to possess it.


Hooker has been severely criticised for giving up that position, as it gave the enemy a convenient elevation upon which to mask his artillery and enfilade the Union lines.


But how he could have held it without sacrificing one of his best fight- ing corps, we have never seen or heard explained.


The Twelfth, passing for some distance beside a fence in this quick and short retreat, every man was ordered to shoulder a rail, the special purpose of which, to the explosion of a multitude of conjectures, was soon found to be the filling up of a miry creek so that the artillery could be safely hauled across. It was a novel but expeditious way of building a corduroy road, and proved useful to the builders as well as to the heavier arm of the service that was to follow.


After marching about half a mile to the eastward, and on a line nearly at right angles with the plank road, on either side of which the Confed- erates were already savagely pushing the fight, the regiment was halted, faced into line of battle, and ordered to lie down just in front of a couple of batteries that had taken position on the crest of a low sand ridge, and which now opened a rapid fire upon the woods in front.


So close under the mouths of these guns did some of the men lie, that they were obliged to stop their ears and cover their faces to keep from being stunned and scorched by the terrific howl and fiery breath of these fierce bull-dogs of war.


But soon their full-vented fury was checked by the order to cease fir- ing ; and the regiment, marching by the right flank a few rods, is again faced to the front and advanced to the edge of a small stream - some of the right companies passing over it - and again ordered to lie down.


The battle was now raging fiercely all around, and especially so as regards the position taken by Colonel Bowman's brigade, his being the third and last line of battle. Let us take a sweeping glance of this posi- tion and its immediate surroundings, that the reader may better under- stand the situation, and realize as best he can in imagination, the intro- ductory exercises of the occasion as witnessed and participated in by the Twelfth New Hampshire Volunteers.


The sun - not, alas ! of Austerlitz - is now up, but the dew-exhaling mists mingling with the smoke of battle fill the air, through which his bright rays penetrate with a strange and lurid glare.


From the woods in front comes a continuous roll of musketry. On the right and left the sounds of deadly conflict come to our ears in startling detonations, now louder and nigher and now again decreasing and reced- ing like the wind waves of a mighty tempest. A few rods to the rear a


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score or more of brass and iron twelve-pounders are, with deafening reports sending twenty shells a minute over our heads, each screeching defiance to the rebel batteries, which, from the woods in front and from Hazel Grove elevation on the left, are as defiantly answering back and sending their bursting shells all around us.


Between the little stream, that smoothly and quietly glides along this " perilous edge of battle," as if undisturbed by the agitation of its kin- dred elements of earth and air, and the darker line of the forest, half a gunshot beyond, there is an open space of ground ascending gradually toward the woods, and thickly covered with dead sage grass, still stand- ing stiff and straight upon its soft carpet of vernal green, and through which the leaden messengers of death are cutting their way into our prostrate ranks lying face to the ground and head to the foe.


Nothing but smoke can be seen of the terrible conflict going on in the woods in advance, but of its deadly strife the ear, though half-paralyzed by our own artillery close behind, too plainly tells.


Regiments. torn and shattered, are seen retreating on the right and left, but some in Zouave uniform with apparently full ranks falling back from the enemy before having hardly engaged him. The other two regiments of the brigade - Eighty-fourth and One Hundred and Tenth Pennsylva- nia-are no longer to be seen upon the left, having advanced obliquely in that direction into the fight, followed by Colonel Bowman, who leaves the Twelfth New Hampshire to look after itself .*


Along the open space in front, staff officers are swiftly dashing to and fro, and riderless horses running wild with fear; while back across it, wounded men in constantly increasing numbers are coming, and here and there irregular squads-mostly of blue, but some in gray- like fragments torn from the contending lines by the shock of battle, are seen hastily retreating.


On the right front, and about midway between the brook and the woods, lies another regiment, half-hidden in the tall, dead grass, await- ing like the Twelfth, the momentarily expected order to advance.


Such, briefly sketched, was the position and situation of the regiment on the early morning of the third day of May, 1863.


That it was not a very pleasant or encouraging one, the reader and writer will probably agree. It was certainly a realistic dramatization of the first part of Dante's Inferno, and such as none who were there would care to witness or listen to again.


Is it any wonder that some, who were not too anxious for their own safety to think of anything else, should have asked of themselves ques- tions like these : " Was it to avoid such a scene as this, that He, who knew and saw all from the beginning to the end, said ' resist not evil ?'" " Must reason serve when passion rules ; and yet reason, a Godlike attribute of man that raises him above, and contradistinguishes him from


* See Colonel Hall's letter and Colonel Bowman's report, post.


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the brute?" And more natural, if less philosophical : " What would they think at home if they could see us now?"


How long the regiment lay in this passive but trying position, obliged to receive but unable to return the enemy's fire, no one can tell or will ever know. To some it seemed not more than ten minutes, and to others an hour ; probably half-way between the two extremes would not be far from the correct time. It was, at any rate, long enough to make many vacant places in the ranks of three or four of the companies.


Charles M. Gilman, of Company A ; Winsor P. Huntress, of Company B ; and Henry R. Kidder, of Company D, were all struck in the head by musket balls and instantly killed. William B. Worth, of Company G. was shot in the side or breast, and died an hour afterward in the log house near by, while others were more or less severely wounded.


A staff' officer now rides up to Colonel Potter, and informs him that the regiment at the right front - regard for the State that sent it out, as well as for its colonel and a few of its officers and men, require that its name be not given - is to advance first, and his to follow and support it. A few moments later, and the long and loud command of attention is heard from the colonel of that regiment, as he rises from the ground, but only a few of his officers and men are seen to obey his order by showing their heads above the grass; and despite threats, curses, and kicks, with sword-pointed pricks, and broadside slaps, the men do not and will not move forward, or even rise from the ground, choosing to die like cowards where they lay, rather than to stand up and fight like men.


Colonel Potter, secing the vain attempt of getting the regiment that he was to follow started, called upon his own; and all, save the dead and dying, immediately arose and moved forward to the edge of the woods, along which a few trees had been felled the night before as a slight pro- tection from the enemy's fire.


Here a halt was ordered, the colonel not caring to advance further, hav- ing already exceeded his instructions, without further orders. He had not long to wait ; for scarcely had the wounded who had been disabled on the advance from the brook been sent to the rear, before another order was delivered by the same officer who brought the last-both coming direct from General Whipple - which, considering its import and conse- quences, is here given in full : " You are ordered, Colonel Potter, to im- mediately advance your regiment into the woods, engage the enemy there, and hold him in check as long as possible," or, as some remember it, " until the last man falls."


Such an order, at such a time and place, was enough to make the stout- est heart quail ; for obedience to it meant that upon one single regiment of less than six hundred officers and men, now for the first time under mus- ketry fire, must soon fall the whole weight of at least three times their number of the powder-stained veterans of " Stonewall " Jackson, whose fall the night before they had sworn to avenge, and who were, at that


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very moment, pressing eagerly and exultingly forward to complete a vic- tory which they confidently and correctly believed was already within their grasp.


The reader will notice that the order was not to advance and drive the enemy from the woods. Oh, no! not that : for General Whipple did not need his field-glass, as he stood upon the top of the little hill in the rear of his batteries, to see how wide the breach that the Twelfth was now left alone to fill. But it must be filled, or his division would soon be cut in twain, and all his batteries, in the enemy's possession or flying from the field. And hence the emphasis that this staff officer gave to the last and most important part of the order. "Hold in check " were the words, and they implied all, and more, than could be expected from any single regiment, for any length of time. But he knew Colonel Potter and his brave and able assistant Colonel Marsh, both of whom had fought with him in Mexico : and he knew that they led men who were the descend- ants of the heroes of Bunker Hill and Bennington, and hoped that to such officers and men the words "as long as possible," or, "until the last man falls" might not be in vain, and he was not disappointed.


Here, so far as can be seen through the smoke of the conflict, the Twelfth stands isolated and alone; for even the cowardly skulks, who disgraced the flags of both their State and country, have disappeared to the flank or rear to save their craven hearts from the fate that awaited them in front.


Whipple's batteries, on the sand hill behind, are still being served as rapidly as the over-heated guns will permit, and the battle is yet raging unabated on the right and left, where our line is evidently being driven slowly but surely back.


Directly in front there is a lull, portentous of the fury of the quick recurring blast, whose coming is being heralded by that savage-like screech so well known to every old soldier as the " rebel yell."


With nothing confronting them, they are cheering at their success and are rushing onward to meet and defeat the next Yankee line that dare oppose them. Indeed, from the very start, after reaching the woods, it was for the Twelfth a forlorn hope.


" Forward," comes the quick and stern command from Colonel Potter, as he jumps forward himself from the top of the breastworks upon which he had been standing to get a better view of the ground before him.


The right and centre at once obey, but on the extreme left the line officers not hearing, or failing to repeat the order, there was a slight delay in the starting of that wing, which the sergeant-major perceiving, but mistaking the cause, stepped to the front of the left company and ex- claimed "Forward, forward is the order ; now is the time to show our- selves men."


But the men no less than the officers understood and realized their duties and dangers, and were as ready and willing to meet them.


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Observing that he was ascending quite an elevation that grew steeper as he advanced, and wishing to reach its height before the enemy, Colo- nel Potter gives the order to " double quick," and in less time than it can be written the regiment gained the crest, and sent a volley of " buck and ball," flanked by rifle Minies, into the close advancing lines of their country's foes.


No sooner did Colonel Potter, who had gallantly led his command from the time it entered the woods, discover the enemy's near approach, than, facing about, he halted the regiment, more by the motion of his extended arms than verbal order, and, pointing with his sword to the line of " butternut and gray," said, "There the devils are, give them hell." The almost simultaneous volley that instantly followed must have sharply reminded some of them that the battle-field is about as near that woful place as any other spot to be found on this mundane sphere.


The right companies had no sooner given their first volley to the front than their attention is directed to quite a large battalion of the enemy marching obliquely past them, as if intending to outflank their position and attack them in reverse. Companies C, K, and B half face to the right and open a well directed fire upon their flank. At the same time one of our batteries, on or near the plank road, gave them such a grape and canister reminder of their temerity, that they went back over the hill much quicker than they came.


The musketry duel, that now ensued between the "New Hampshire Mountaineers " and the Virginia Chivalry opposed to them, was one of the most desperate and destructive, for the time and number engaged, that ever was fought on any battle-field of the war. It was the fiery im- petuosity of the South against the granite endurance of the North, never, on a small scale, better illustrated.


Though not quite the irresistible meeting the immovable, it was a most desperate and determined " I will" against an equally determined and more stubborn " you wont."


The men began to fall as soon as they began to fire, the line so rapidly thinning that, within one half-hour, fully one third of the regiment were killed or wounded.


Soon the tall, commanding form of Major Savage is no longer to be seen standing firm and resolute in the midst of the battle, for a bullet has pierced his lower jaw, compelling him to leave the field with a ghastly wound. His brother, Captain Savage, of Company A, is breathing his last beside the stream in the rear to which he has been carried. Captain Keyes lies dead on the battle-line, where he fell while defiantly waving his sword in the face of the foe. Captain Durgin has been shot through the body and lies dying, as supposed, at the foot of a tree ; and Lieuten- ant Cram, just promoted from the ranks, is lying lifeless among his dead comrades, while Captain May, disabled at the edge of the woods, and


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other line officers have been more or less seriously wounded, and every company has been two or three times decimated in its rank and file.


Yet the battle, so desperately begun, goes bravely on, the fire of the enemy seemingly increasing as that of the regiment diminishes.


About this time there was an attempt of about fifty of the enemy to make a charge upon our centre and capture the colors. But it was only an attempt, for part of the number turned back, when little more than well started, and the bravely foolish few who kept on, were most all cut down by the converging fire of the right and left centre companies.


Directly following this, as if maddened by their failure to either drive or capture, the storm of leaden hail that poured into the now fast thin- ning ranks of the regiment seemed like a withering blast that must soon destroy all opposition.


So hot was the fire upon the centre, that the color bearers were both wounded, and a few of the men on the right and left of the colors gave back a little, seeing which, Colonel Potter sprang forward and urged his men to stand firm and hold their line good. There was no attempt to retreat or purpose to yield any ground to the enemy, for every man standing, except the wounded, still faced the foe, but it was like the tough oak in the tempest blast, which bends but does not break.


A moment later and Colonel Potter himself was wounded and carried from the field, followed by Sergeant McDuffee, who, though severely wounded, still held on fast to his standard - the state colors -that up to this time he had bravely up-borne, a part of the time in advance of the line.


The national colors are still waving defiantly in their place on the battle-line, but the stout and brave-hearted Sergeant Tasker can no longer bear them. for he has been disabled by a severe wound.


Lieutenant-Colonel Marsh, who has been everywhere present on the right wing of the regiment directing the fire and praising the steady. veteran-like action of the men, receives a bullet in his leg just after the colonel was disabled by a similar wound, and is obliged to leave the field.


Captains Lang, Barker, and Shackford, all nobly worthy to command the heroic fighters of their respective companies, are no longer permitted. by reason of wounds, to lead them ; while Lientenants Smith, Huntoon, Edgerly, Tilton, Milliken, Sargent, Heath, Fernal, and Bedee have all received blood-signed and bullet-sealed passes to the rear, but the last named refuses to use his for that purpose, preferring to stay and fight with the few brave men left on the field, some of whom, like himself, are bleeding from their wounds.


Two first, and three or four second lieutenants - among whom are Mor- rill, French, and Dunn, not already mentioned -are the only commissioned officers now left alive on the field; and of the five and one half hundred of the rank and file that opened fire upon the enemy an hour and a half


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ago, not more than one fourth remain to hold the ground upon which are lying so many of their dead and wounded comrades.


But still the fight goes on, and the steel-nerved and iron-hearted men from New Hampshire are proving about as firm and reliable, and making themselves a name as enduring as the granite of their native hills.




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