USA > New Hampshire > History of the Twelfth regiment, New Hampshire volunteers in the war of the rebellion > Part 22
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The rebels in the immediate front of the Twelfth had taken a position behind a rail fence, within less than fifty yards from the edge of the woods ; but they fell back in a few minutes after the regiment opened tire upon them. being outflanked by the advance of Heckman's brigade, after having repulsed the charge above referred to.
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Just before the Eleventh Connecticut fell back, quite a laughable inci- dent occurred in the successful effort of a lieutenant and a sergeant, of Company B, both undersized, to swing into line by their coat tails, two overgrown musketeers of that regiment - one of them an orderly ser- geant - who had faced about and started for the rear.
This engagement, which is recorded in history as the battle of Swift Creek or Harrowfield Church, was short and sharp ; and, according to rebel authorities, their retreat, if followed up, might have resulted in the capture of Petersburg.
A short time before forming a line of battle, but while within reach of the enemy's artillery. George W. Clark, of Company E, lost his right arm and leg by the explosion of a shell. He was at the time sitting upon the ground, surrounded by several of his comrades: but none. except himself, were seriously injured. He said it was a personal call for which he did not feel especially grateful. Several others of the Twelfth were wounded during the engagement, but none mortally.
A remarkable coincidence of this battle, in relation to the contest between Massachusetts and South Carolina troops, will be related later in this history.
The church from which this battle takes its name, and around which the battle fiercely raged, is still standing, unrepaired, and plainly shows by the many bullet holes in both sides, that it stood for a while between the contending lines. When visited a few years ago by Lieutenant Rufus E. Gale and the writer, it appeared as sombre and solemn as a tomb : and not strangely so either. for memory repictured the dead and dying who had once filled and surrounded it. To the surprise of the visitors, who walked over the distance, it was found to be but two miles from Petersburg city, between which and the Union army, at the time of the battle, there existed but nearly vacant works of defense, and a small defeated and retreating force of the enemy. Only two miles of almost unobstructed way, and more than twenty thousand comparatively fresh troops, leaving ample reserves, to fill it; and yet that most important plain, vitally so to the Confederate cause, left unmolested !
General Butler - being misled. as he says,* by false reports from the Army of the Potomac, from which he believed that Grant was driving Lee's forces, defeated and demoralized, rapidly southward - concluded, before the light of the next day, when he was to have pushed forward toward or into Petersburg, to change his plan of operating any further in that direction, and turn his course toward Richmond, in or around which he expected to join his army with that of the Potomac, and give a finish- ing stroke to the rebellion.
That night the men slept on their arms, but were called up three or four times to repel an expected attack. There was a detail from the reg- iment the next morning to help bury the rebel dead, with which the
* Sce many pages of explanation in "Butler's Own Book," which should be read by every survivor of the Army of the JJames.
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ground in front of Heckman's brigade was nearly covered. .. That man is alive." said a soldier to an officer of the Twelfth as he was carefully finding his way across the ground. .. What man do you mean?" . The one you have just stepped over." A glance at the upturned face and then, " Yes. in Heaven, I hope."
.. But he is alive : you get down and see if he isn't." And true as it was strange, though looking to be as dead as his comrades around him. closer examination showed that he still breathed, fourteen hours after having the back part of his head torn off by a shell ! Sad and sickening as was the sight of the battlefield. a more pitiable one was presented in the old church near by. filled with the Confederate wounded. How quick the hatred of man turns into tender compassion at such a sight as this : and something comes up from the depths of his soul. where dwells the germ of immortality, that says : This is all wrong : man was not made to kill his fellow man. An hour. perhaps, ago. and at bayonet points they seek each other's lives : but now, like noxious vapors of the night exhaled in the morning dew. the base passions of the human heart are washed away by tears, and the brute is a man again.
About noon. while the rays of the mid-day's sun were almost hot enough to liquify the air. the Twelfth, with the rest of the brigade, started on a forced march of four miles up the turnpike to reinforce Gen- eral Terry, who. in command of a part of the Tenth Corps, was heavily engaged with the enemy at Lempster Hill. This was the severest test of physical endurance that the regiment was ever called upon to make. in the same length of time, on a march. No man that fell by the wayside that afternoon. and there were many. could be accused or suspicioned of ·· playing it." Almost as consistent to accuse a company of hunters, who had run through a North Carolina pitch pine conflagration, of pretend- ing to be overcome by the heat. Indeed, the comparison is but a part of the reality, for when the brigade came up to the scene of action the underbrush of the woods that had been set on fire was still burning, and into these woods, from which Terry's men had been driven, a portion of the reinforcements, among which was Company B of the Twelfth. was obliged to advance to form a skirmish and picket line.
·· Stand it for half an hour if possible. and you shall be relieved," were the words of Captain Barker to the nearly exhausted men of his old company as they advanced into the smoke and fire. With their blood already boiling within their veins. it seemed impossible for them to bear up under the terrible ordeal, and withstand both the heat of the sun and the flames. And so it proved : for the lieutenant commanding the com- pany, hurrying back and forward to have his command connect - before the enemy should again attack - with the details from the other regiments. snapped the over-strained cord of his physical endurance, and he tell exhausted upon the ground. feeling. as he afterwards expressed it, as if every drop of his blood had instantly turned into ice water. This
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instance is given to illustrate the experience of all in a greater or less degree, as they were more or less able to withstand the heat and toil of the day. Captain Barker, in a letter home, writes that " over one hun- dred of the regiment were prostrated by the heat on the 9th and 10th." The enemy having been repulsed. the brigade, after a few hours' rest- as necessary as desirable-marched back in the evening to its late camping ground.
The officer above referred to by a quick and free application of cold water upon his head recovered so that he was able to return to camp with the regiment by riding on a cannon, but has probably never fully recov- ered from the effects of the shock to this day.
On the 12th another advance was made by the whole army, but this time toward Richmond ; the Eighteenth and Tenth Corps forming the right and left wings. Day had but just dawned when the Twelfth started again in search of the enemy. The turnpike was soon reached, but not now, as on Tuesday, to burn and choke in the sun and dust, for the clouds that had obscured the one had already commenced to secure the . other : and rain and mud, however disagreeable, was a most welcome change from the scorching sun and suffocating dust. In line of battle. with the Second Brigade in the lead and the Twelfth in the front line. the division advances up the turnpike some three or four miles with but little opposition, the enemy falling slowly back. Now and then the scattering skirmish fire would thicken into volleys, as if the resisting force had taken a position and intended to hold it ; but no sooner would the reserve come up to the relief of the skirmishers, than the enemy would fall back again, showing that they were fighting to gain time for reinforcements before daring to risk a general engagement. Thus were the rebel troops driven back about four miles to Proctor's Creek. Here night found the picket lines of the two armies so closely confronting each other that orders were given to shoot at anything that approached without calling a halt. A detail from the regiment went on picket.
The temperature had fallen rapidly during the day, and the night set in cold and rainy. It is hard enough for men in the front line, as was the Twelfth, to be obliged to lie all night on their arms in the cold drenching rain : but for the picket, who has to stand where the snap of a twig beneath, or the fall of a limb or piece of bark from above, vividly suggests to his mind the stealthy advance of a rebel in front, and where the blaze of a match to light his pipe, unless carefully covered from sight, is at the peril of his life, it is even harder. Sometimes imagination will give human shape to the darkness in the direction of the sound, and then. without a word, he takes deliberate aim at nothing, and discharges his musket. This, of course. is followed by shots from the enemy's pickets, answered by our own ; and soon the reserves are roused up and stand to arms an hour or more. But this night the heavy fall of rain drowned out all other sounds, save the dismal howl of the wind through the forest trees, and no false alarm disturbed the tired soldiers' rest.
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New Hampshire Volunteers.
The 13th. so far as the Twelfth and rest of the brigade participated. was but a repetition of the day before, the rebel lines, closely contesting every foot of ground before yielding it. were driven back to the Relay House, half way on the turnpike between Petersburg and Richmond, but only a few miles nearer either place than where the troops landed at Bermuda Hundred seven days before. The rain continued to fall during the day and night, yet a bow of promise appeared to the mental vision when the news came that Grant was driving Lee back, and had " cap- tured forty guns and six thousand prisoners." News of this kind. whether true or false, was generally believed by the soldiers, for a report of what we ardently wish we easily believe ; and something of this kind was needed at this time to cheer up the half desponding officers and men, who had already begun to fear that Butler had lost the key to the rear entrance, and if Richmond was taken at all that spring it would be by the Army of the Potomac, and not by that of the James.
On the 14th occurred what is referred to by some of the southern authors as the attack upon Fort Stevens, but to which the Twelfth Regi- ment has given the name of the Battle of the Relay House, as it was near the latter that the affair commenced early in the morning, by a loss in the regiment of one man killed and several wounded, and ended in the afternoon by the capture of the fort in the assault upon which it took a conspicuous part.
The outer line of the enemy's defenses, on a commanding ridge of land, were abandoned after a slight resistance, as General Beauregard " thought it better to concentrate his troops" before risking a general engagement, * and the Army of the James, now extending from that river or near it, across and for some distance beyond the turnpike, advanced slowly and cautiously over the next rise of ground, running back from the river nearly parallel with the first, and known as Drury's Bluff. The Twelfth, still in the front line, advances through a piece of woods, where the spiked tops of the felled trees made further progress both difficult and dangerous, and suddenly debouches close upon the glacis of a small fort. Fortunately the guns of the fort just then were too busy in another direc- tion to turn their attention upon the " Mountaineers," otherwise the fight- ing record of the regiment, without new recruits, would have ended then and there. But the situation was too perilous for such good luck to con- tinue long, and no sooner was the clear ground reached, where a rapid advance upon the fort could be made, than two howitzers open fire at short range with shell and scrapnel upon them. It seemed now as if little less than annihilation would be the fate of the brave men, who. stern and steady, were moving into the very jaws of death. The first shell passes over the heads of the men and explodes just in the rear.
The rebel gunners, firing from the parapet of the fort at so short a range, had miscalculated the angle of depression, and cut their fuse cor-
* Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, by Jefferson Davis.
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respondingly long : the second, third, fourth, and fifth, each coming closer and bursting nearer than the preceding one, until the last barely grazes the low bowed heads of the men and explodes but a few feet in their rear. The last? Would it had been so! but before the Union sharpshooters, who had crept up under the fort, could silence the guns. another shot strikes in the front of Company G, and nine more men of that ill-fated company are left behind to find their way or be carried to the field hospital, where one of them. A. H. Prescott, soon after expired.
The rebels, finding capture or evacuation the only alternative, chose the latter, and fell back into another and larger fort, from which they opened a destructive fire upon such troops as, in the attack upon the smaller one, had come within range. This exposure, which was shared by the Twelfth, was, however, of short duration : for one or two of our batteries concentrating their fire upon it, this fort - called by its defend- ers Fort Stevens - soon became as silent, although still occupied, as the other : but not until its flag staff had been twice cut off, and a heavy explosion, thought at the time to be its magazine, had taken place within its walls from the excellent practice of our artillery.
It was during the artillery fight between our batteries and this fort that one of the Union officers made himself most unenviably conspicuous by riding daringly and defiantly into the very face of the enemy. Mounted on a large white horse and wearing a broad-rimmed white or light colored hat, but without coat or vest, he galloped off in easy " cow boy " style towards the fort. Rebel minies warned him back, almost as soon as he started : but unheedingly he rode on, not even quickening the pace of his steed, straight toward the smoke-wreathed mouths of the enemy's guns. It was thought at first that he was the bearer of some message from General Butler to the commander of the fort, perhaps demanding its surrender ; but as he displayed no flag of truce, except that his white horse and hat might be acknowledged as such, this idea of his purpose soon gave way to one of intense curiosity as to what it might be. After approaching to within a few yards of the fort, he veers off to the left. his horse now being urged onward both by the sting of his fearless rider's spurs and of bullets from rebel sharpshooters in the fort and in the trees beyond, and taking a circuitous course between that and the fort just captured, rides around the latter and back into the Union lines none the worse, but all the better for the entertainment he had given the many lookers-on in both armies, for it evidently had sobered him off a little. The horse, the only one of the two to be either pitied or praised, was severely injured and lamed, when near the fort, by a bullet in the shoulder ; but succeeded, apparently by great effort. for one of his legs was almost useless, in bringing his master safely out of the danger so foolishly incurred. Some have said that the rider was a staff officer, acting sober-minded and under orders : but it is not easy to be thus convinced, for there was neither sense nor service in the undertaking.
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New Hampshire Volunteers.
About noon the long. cold rain storm broke and scattered in fugitive clouds, and soon the sun shone out again clear and hot. much more needed and less dreaded by the tired, water-soaked soldiers than when he disappeared three days before. The soldier, as well as the sailor, has reason sometimes to thank God that he can see
" The glorious lamp of heaven, the radiant sun "
once more and feel his genial rays.
It was this afternoon, after the firing had subsided to now and then a crack from sharpshooters on either side, that Jefferson Davis, who had come down from Richmond to consult with General Beauregard, suppos- ing his forces still held the advance line of defense, came near walking into our lines. Had the fact been then known, our pickets could have easily brought him in and introduced him to General Butler, who would undoubtedly have gladly given him safe passport back to - Washington.
It had been a severe day for the regiment. From light till night it had been facing and fighting the enemy, without chance to eat. drink, or rest : while its loss had been one killed and ten or twelve wounded, one mortally and one dying soon after .*
Under date of May 15, we find the following written in one of the diaries before us : ·· Sweet day of rest to some but not to us"; and from another : .. Last night the enemy tried to drive us back, but in vain -shells fell thickly around us"; while from a third we read : " Not much doing : skirmishing going on all day." These extracts, taken together, need but little explanation to give the reader a good idea of the situation. Although there was but little done, compared with the three preceding days, it was far different from the quiet Sabbath rest of home: and the attack of the night before, followed up by the constant activity of the opposing skirmish lines through the day, were premonitory vibrations of the coming earthquake shock that rendered vigilance too rigid and exact- ing to allow that relaxation of nerve, without which mere muscular inertia is like hanging up the bent bow, that it may swifter send the arrow when it is again used.
There was no attack or advance made or attempted on either side. It was the lull before the storm. Smith and Gillmore, fearing it, suggested to General Butler, it is said, the propriety of entrenching : but were given to understand that hearts and not spades were trumps in the Army of the James. When, a few hours later, he saw so many brave hearts left to be covered up by the rebel spades, he doubtless thought differ- ently. The officers and men of the regiments, receiving no orders but thinking it prudent to throw up some means of defense. went to work. where they could, and built up a kind of breastwork of old logs and poles, which served them a good purpose the next day.
* See table of losses.
CHAPTER X
DRURY'S BLUFF AND PORT WALTHALL.
Butler's army was now resting upon dangerous ground. Beauregard, one of the ablest of the Confederate generals, had arrived upon the field early on the morning of the 14th, and a few hours later Jeff. Davis himself was there, holding consultation with him. Their forces were gathering from all directions, and concentrating upon Butler's front, with a well defined purpose of turning one or both of his flanks, cutting him from his base and destroying his army. How dangerously near they came to doing it is now well known history.
A little past midnight on the morning of the 16th of May orders came from brigade headquarters to Captain Barker to tear down the telegraph wire along the turnpike and stretch it. a little less than knee high, about eighty paces in front of the regiment. This order was at once given to Lieutenant Bartlett, and selecting three agile young men from his com- pany, one of whom was John D. Sherburne, of Company F, to assist him, the telegraph poles were climbed and wire enough detached to stretch two lines instead of one, which was accordingly done, the second line about half between the first and the line of battle. The ground in front had been cleared a year or two before, so that while the stumps made good posts to securely fasten the wire, the thick growth of sprouts com- pletely hid it from sight. Although protected by only a low line of logs and sticks, such as could be easily gathered and thrown up scarcely high enough to cover the legs, yet, with this double line of wire within close musket range in their front, the Twelfth alone, with flanks secure, could have withstood a good portion of the rebel force. It was the only time that the regiment ever fought the enemy at an advantage of either works or position, and never before did it inflict so great a punishment at so little cost.
Three or four hours later, but before the light of day had scarcely penetrated the dense fog, that had intensified the darkness of the night, there was a screech and a roll of musketry on our right and centre, and soon our pickets came running in, closely followed by the flash-marked lines of the enemy in rapid pursuit, hoping evidently to attack our main line before fully prepared to receive them. At the same time their artillery opened upon our lines with deadly effect, showing that they had the exact range of our position and were ready for action the day before.
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New Hampshire Volunteers.
The men jumped to arms, half awake and half dreaming, hardly hav- ing time to fully realize the situation before the rebel infantry burst out of the fog upon them.
The pickets from the Twelfth, in command of Lieutenant Emery, of Company F, not knowing that the wire had been put up between them and the regiment, had a rough but amusing experience in running against and tumbling over two lines of it in their hasty retreat. So quickly and unexpectedly did they go down, upon striking the first wire. that some thought they had been shot, and all had their legs more or less severely scraped and bruised.
While the attack is made, almost at the same time, along the whole line. its chief weight falls upon the Eighteenth Corps, forming the right wing and holding the ground between the turnpike and the river. Gen- eral Heckman's brigade on the extreme right is soon driven back and he with many of his men captured. The enemy now concentrates upon our centre. and the storm of battle beats upon Wistar's and Burnham's bri- gades on the right and left of the turnpike with redoubled fury. Charge after charge was made. first on one brigade and then on the other. But four New Hampshire regiments, with as many more from New York and Connecticut, were there ; while on or near the turnpike were aligned four twenty-pound Parrott guns and two or more ten-pound Napoleon pieces of Ashby's and Belger's batteries, presenting a dangerous front.
This strong array of infantry and artillery, protected by the hidden line of telegraph wire, within easy range of the ranks of musketry, was a lit- tle too formidable even for a triple number of fiery Southerners ; and their efforts to break or drive back the Yankees at this point were all in vain.
General Ransom. the Confederate commander on the field, seeing his troops as often repulsed as they charged, and attributing the chief cause to our artillery - knowing nothing of the more potent but silent line of wire in the bushes - ordered that the guns upon the turnpike be silenced by sharpshooters, and if possible, captured. This made the position of Companies C and G, on the left of the regiment, not only uncomfortably warm, but, for a while at least, dangerously hot : and there was a sharp contest for the guns in which the battery was getting the worst of it, the gunners being nearly all killed or wounded, and the only officer left obliged to fall back and leave his guns, already silent, within a few yards of the enemy. Seeing this, Captain Bedee of Company G. and Lieuten- ant Sanders. in command of Company C. followed by eight or ten men as brave and determined as themselves, rushed forward, manned and served some of the guns so promptly and efficiently that the charging rebel force that had so nearly captured them, was driven back, and the battery, for the time being. saved.
Before this, however, there had been two charges upon our brigade, both of which the Twelfth had its full share of work in repulsing. But
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the best and the most unyielding and destructive line of battle that the rebel forces had to meet that day was the telegraph wire, and had it been stretched in front of Heckman's brigade as it was in front of Wistar's the result might have been a Union victory. As before stated, the Twelfth was protected by a double line of this wire : and with a few logs behind which the men, by kneeling down, could load and fire without much exposure, their position was secure against many times their num- ber attacking them in front. When. therefore, after having easily repulsed the enemy, the order came to retreat. it was reluctantly obeyed with many exclamations of surprise and dissatisfaction.
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