USA > New Hampshire > History of the Twelfth regiment, New Hampshire volunteers in the war of the rebellion > Part 28
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August 16. Removed reserve camp this afternoon about one half-mile down the ravine, opposite our place in the trenches, and on a little hill so as not to be washed away by another flood. Poor Webber died of his wounds to-day. Another good man gone. How many, alas ! how many more before this cruel war will end? Another shower this afternoon. Water two or three feet deep in some of the trenches, and all of them any- thing but comfortable places to stay in - crumbling ditches of mud and water, regular mortar beds where the men must lie, or show their heads above and die. Oh ! what a privilege is given us here to suffer and die for our country. " Who wouldn't be a soldier?"
August 17. In new reserve camp where we moved to yesterday. Hot day ; another shower this afternoon. But little firing to-day. Both sides evidently trying to keep their powder dry.
August 18. This morning about 10 o'clock we were aroused by a terrific shelling from the enemy's works in our front : our guns reply and for several hours there was a grand pyrotechnic display. Captain Bar- ker writes : "It was literally a shower of shells that threatened general destruction of everything within its sweep. Though the shells dropped and burst all around and some in our very midst, strange to say, none of the little iron-clad remnant of the Twelfth were injured. After witnessing the scene for about two hours I . turned in ' and went to sleep, and while dreaming of a Fourth of July celebration at home, I'was awakened by an orderly bringing orders to have the regiment under arms at once ready to repel an attack which was expected to come after the cannon- ade." This is the third or fourth time that this regiment has been in almost the very centre of the enemy's fire and escaped with little or no loss. It seems as if each one of us left belongs to the elect, and is proof against shot and shells. But every day must have its victim, and George H. San- born, of Company F, was shot this afternoon by a sharpshooter. He had just brought up rations for his company, and had just been warned of his danger. Fifty men go out on picket to-night. Showers again this after- noon and evening.
August 19. About midnight both sides let loose again the savage bull dogs of war, and they continued to howl and roar till morning, but they came not very near us. Regiment in trenches. Lieutenant Batchelder
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wounded by shell while trying to get a nap in the works the men had been strengthening. Raining most all day and night. Everything by extremes here in this God-forsaken country, either drying up or drown- ing. Everybody wet and cross, why not?
August 20. Raining and shelling again as usual. We got drenched through and through in the trenches last night and buried in the mud, and still the heavens are open ; who will ever pray for rain again? We need no more Elijahs, but if a second Joshua would come to stay the sun in the heavens until we could get dried off, he would confer a great blessing on us all. One of the recruits of Company K, severely wounded by shell to-day.
August 21. Another one o'clock salute from the "Johnnies" this morning and our brigade catches it again " hot and heavy." They kept the shells flying into our camp until roll-call. A long, loud reveille they give us about every morning lately : they evidently don't want us to become sluggards. Toward noon there was a heavy discharge of mus- ketry from our lines in front, nobody knows here what started it, but probably another attempt to break our lines, or a feint by one side or the other to cover some more important movement. Orders for our division to move this afternoon ; march about a mile to the left near where the fort was blown up and relieve a part of the Second Corps which goes with other troops toward the left. But little firing here between the lines. Some rain to-day for a rarity.
August 22. Remain quietly here until 2 P. M. when we get orders to pack up expecting to follow the other troops that left yesterday. Move about dark thirty paces to the left, and in about two hours more again, but this time about one hundred paces toward the right- half the night in doing it. "This is military." as the boys ironically designate all such seemingly absurd movements, and there are many of them.
August 23. Under arms all the time from sunset last night until 2 o'clock this morning. The rest of the night obliged to stand up or lie down in soft beds of mud, and this morning we are ordered into the trenches, and all this through another night of rain! But the long wished for and needful change has come we hope at last. The sky is getting clear and the glorious sun once more appears and asserts his right- ful sovereignty over the deluged earth.
August 24. In reserve camp to-day. At dark orders came to march to Bermuda Front, but are soon countermanded and ordered to be ready to move into the intrenchments. Pack up ready to move to the front or rear, but remain in camp all night. Deserters report that the rebel govern- ment is conscripting every one old and young who can carry a gun. "Cousin Jeff" is getting into a tight place " I rec'on."
August 25. Break camp at half past four this morning, march to and across the Appomattox and halt near our old place in the works at Ber- muda front. The boys are all worn down and glad to get out from under
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the enemy's guns, if only for a few hours, so that they can have a little rest. A hot and weary march, but we are encouraged by the hope of being relieved for a while from the sufferings and dangers we are leaving behind us.
From the 15th of June to the 25th of August, a period of seventy-two days, inclusive, the regiment had been under fire every day and every night but one, and about half of the time in the trenches. The loss had been nine killed or fatally injured and fifteen or more wounded .* Among those mortally wounded was Chaplain Thomas L. Ambrose who died at Hamil- ton hospital near Fortress Monroe, Va., August 16, 1864. His death was a great and irreparable loss to the regiment. For sometime during the siege he had, with untiring energy, acted in the fourfold capacity of chap- lain, surgeon, nurse, and messenger, for the regiment had neither of its physicians with it for a while before he was wounded as it did not during the remainder of the siege and for a long time afterward.
The chaplain's early knowledge of medicine was therefore of great advantage to him in his care and nursing of the sick. With his own hands he improvised hospitals and took charge of them, making of himself a min- istering angel to all who came within his reach, his good deeds being bounded only by his time and ability to do them.
Something more than the brief mention already made ought perhaps to be written concerning the battle of the " Mine," or " Cemetery Hill," on the 30th of July, 1864. Although the Twelfth took no active part in the fighting it was present, ready and waiting to move with its brigade, as it was expected and intended that the whole corps should, as soon as a lodgment of our own advance troops - General Ledlie's division of the Ninth Corps- should be made within the enemy's lines. The idea of min- ing the enemy's works first orignated with Lieutenant-Colonel Pleasants of the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania Volunteers, and the whole work was engi- neered by himself and performed by his regiment under the most discour- aging circumstances. But the colonel and his men knew their business, being all from the coal regions of their State, and persevered to the end.
The fort undermined was on Burnside's front and known by the rebels as " Elliott's Salient." It was about one hundred yards from our front line, and was occupied at the time of the explosion by Pegram's battery and the whole of the Eighteenth and a part of the Twenty-second South Caro- lina Infantry, amounting in all to two hundred and seventy-eight officers and men - all asleep except the guards- that were hurled without a moment's warning hundreds of feet into the air, and many of them into eternity.
We quote from Colonel Pleasant's testimony before the " Committee on the Conduct of the War":
My regiment was only about four hundred strong. At first I employed but a few men at a time, but the number was increased as the work progressed until at
* See table of losses.
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last I had to use the whole regiment, non-commissioned officers and all. The great difficulty I had was to dispose of the material got out of the mine. I found it impossible to get any assistance from anybody; I had to do all the work my- self. 1 had to remove all the earth in old cracker boxes. I got pieces of hick- ory and nailed on to the boxes in which we received our crackers and then iron- clad them with hoops of iron taken from old pork and beef barrels. * * * * Whenever I made an application I could not get anything, although General Burnside was very favorable to it. The most important thing was to ascertain how far I had to mine; because if I fell short of or went beyond the proper place the explosion would have no practical effect.
Therefore I wanted an accurate instrument with which to make the necessary triangulations. I had to make them on the farthest front line where the enemy's sharpshooters could reach me. I could not get the instrument I wanted although there was one at army headquarters and General Burnside had to send to Wash- ington and get an old-fashioned theodolite which was given to me. * * * * General Burnside told me that General Meade, and Major Duane, chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac, said the thing could not be done -that it was all clap-trap and nonsense ; that such a length of mine had never been excavated in military operations and could not be ; that I would either get the men smothered for want of air or crushed by the falling of the earth ; or the enemy would find it out and it would amount to nothing. I could get no boards or lumber supplied to me for my operations. I had to get a pass and send two companies of my own regiment with wagons outside of our lines to rebel sawmills and get lumber in that way, after having previously got what lumber I could by tearing down an old bridge. I had no mining picks furnished me but had to take common army picks and have them straightened for my mining picks. * * *
The only officers of high rank so far as I learned that favored the enterprise were General Burnside, the corps commander, and General Potter, the division commander.
The foregoing statement is given here because it is not often found in our histories of the war, although it is one of the most interesting and important parts of the enterprise and because it shows that the whole thing was conceived and performed, from the first suggestion to the final explo- sion, without aid or encouragement from any of our generals, except as above related.
Had the undertaking been proposed by some one high in command and had, as it probably then would, the sanction of some eminent chief engi- neer there would have been no lack of implements, or of negroes to use them ; no more than there was a little later when General Butler com- menced operations upon that stupendous piece of folly known as " Dutch Gap," where many thousands of dollars were expended and scores of lives lost with no other effect or result, than to furnish laughing stock for the army at the time, and contemptuous ridicule for historians ever since.
After the mine had been completed and was-considering the time and the means- a marvel of success, then commenced a wrangle between Generals Meade and Burnside as to how and by whom the last and by far
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the easier part of the undertaking, if rightly managed, should be accom- plished. The latter having taken considerable interest in it from the start had drilled one of his divisions - colored troops-to clear the breach and intrench themselves upon Cemetery Hill in the rear of the enemy's lines and but a few rods from the streets of Petersburg. To this Meade objected, but Burnside insisting upon carrying out his original design of letting the colored troop take the lead, the matter was referred to General Grant who unfortunately decided for Meade-not only as to the troops to lead the assault, but also in respect to the plan of attack - both changes proving to be for the worse and lessening instead of increasing the chances of success.
Yet General Meade screening himself behind his superior requested of the President a Court of Inquiry. The Court ignored the main questions before them almost entirely, and found that the failure of success was chiefly because the division commanders, Ledlie and Ferrero of Burn- side's corps, were back in bomb-proofs within the Union lines instead of being with their troops at the front. Fault was also found with Burnside for not making the necessary preparations, but General Grant had the manliness to acknowledge afterward, before a Committee of Inquiry, insti- tuted by Congress, that he believed that if General Burnside had been allowed to have his way " it would have been a success."
The explosion was more effectual than even the most sanguine had dared to hope for. Not only did it change, almost in a moment, a strong rebel work into a big hole in the ground some thirty feet deep, twice as wide and six times as long, but it had so frightened and demoralized the rebel troops that their lines were vacated for two or three hundred yards on each side of the crater, and it was half an hour before their infantry were rallied to any purpose, and twice that length of time that their artillery was so nearly silent as to do but little damage! This seems too strange or strong to be true, but it is backed up by the best authority -General Meade's chief of staff, General Humphreys.
What an opportunity then was here presented ! And how wonderingly woeful was it misimproved. It is certainly not venturing a single step beyond the bounds of reason to assert that had Burnside's colored divis- ion of over four thousand men been turned loose, with not a single star commander among them, each man with a shovel on his back and his musket in his hands and with no other instructions than to capture Ceme- tery Hill and hold it, Petersburg would have been safely within our pos- session within two hours from the word " go." And yet it was such a ** stupendous failure," as Grant called it, that it disgraced and discouraged the whole army.
It had been in the air for some time that mining operations were going on somewhere along our line, and important movements against the enemy intended by Grant had been postponed that they might be made in cooperation with the explosion of the mine. Even the rebels had got
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wind of what was going on and there were wild rumors among them that the whole of Petersburg was undermined.
As the time approached for the grand assault that was immediately to follow the blowing up of the enemy's works, as an opening signal, every preparation was made for the long awaited and important event ; and the soldiers, although entirely ignorant of plans and particulars, knew as well as the corps commanders themselves, that a heavy storm was brewing which was expected to strike with shivering and destructive force the enemy's lines. Their hopes increased and their spirits improved, there- fore, with every hour, until when the final and fatal morning came almost every one of the officers and men were quite confident of success.
But the unexpected and disastrous result brought with it a reaction and corresponding depression of feeling, and the esprit de corps of the army was at a lower ebb than at any time since the winter of 1862-3. And this despondency increased as the hot, weary days of toil and suffering wore slowly on, with the rebel forces again threatening Washington and no successful movement of Grant's army, though often attempted, either on the right or the left of his long investing line. But the brilliant vic- tory of Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley, followed in a few days by the successful advance of Grant's right and the capture of Fort Harrison, north of the James, inspired new hope and restored confidence in the rank and file once more.
If at last, and for the first time since the war commenced, victory had crowned our arms in the " Valley of Humiliation," as it might properly be called by the North, there was certainly some ground for hope that the tide had turned ; and that, with Grant's bull-dog hold on Petersburg, while Sherman like a blood-hound was chasing the rebel forces through new fields of conquest further south, and Sheridan ready to strike like a thun- der-bolt at any time and place needed, the end of the Southern Confeder- acy must soon come.
The colored troops looked upon their selection to lead the assault as an acknowledgement of the confidence their corps commander had in their superiority as soldiers, and this touch of pride, strengthened by the encour- aging and complimentary words of their line officers in their long and special drilling for the heroic effort expected of them, had wrought them up to just that pitch of enthusiasm which would be most conducive to its success. Every night for some time before the explosion they could be heard chanting the war choruses, the most common of which was :
" We-e looks I-i-ike men a-a-marchin' on, We looks li-ike men-er-war."
But, when they were told that the order for them to lead had been countermanded, they fell into sullen silence, and their songs of that kind were heard no more. After all reasonable chances for success were long past and gone, and the crater breach was choked up with white troops, the
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black men, as a last resort, were ordered forward, and had they not been impeded by white troops in advance, over some of whom they charged, would probably have reached the crest of Cemetery Hill. As it was, they captured about two hundred prisoners and a stand of rebel colors, and recaptured the colors lost by a white regiment in the same corps. " Had anyone in authority been present," says Maj. W. H. Powell, U. S. A .. who was then aide-de-camp to General Ledlie, " when the colored troops made their charge, and had they been supported, even at that late hour in the day, there would have been a possibility of success."
In contrast with the disgraceful and cowardly conduct of their division commander, and as an amusing incident of the fight, the following is here given as related by the officer just quoted :
As the colored column was moving by the left flank around the edge of the cra- ter to the right, the file-closers on account of the narrowness of the way, were compelled to pass through the mass of white men inside the crater. One of these file-closers was a massively built, powerful, and well formed sergeant stripped to the waist, his coal-black skin shining like polished ebony in the strong sunlight. As he was passing up the slope to emerge on the enemy's side of the crest he came across one of his own black fellows who was lagging behind his company evidently with the intention of remaining inside the crater out of the way of the bullets. He was accosted by the sergeant with " none ob yo' d-d skulkin' now," with which remark he seized the culprit with one hand and, lift- ing him up in his powerful grasp by the waistband of his trousers, carried him to the crest of the crater, threw him over on the enemy's side and quickly fol- lowed.
And let it not be forgotten by posterity, that it was the true courage and strong arms of such men, black as well as white, as the negro ser- geant who put down the great American Rebellion, though their com- manders were oftentimes, as in this battle, hiding in bomb-proofs or playing sick, at a safe distance from rebel shot and shell in the rear.
" Fiat justitia ruat colum."
The explosion of the mine was an awe-inspiring sight, and especially to those of our troops who, waiting to lead the assault, were so near the rebel line that it seemed as if the mighty mass of earth, thrown as by vol- canic force two or three hundred feet into the air, was to descend upon and bury them up. This danger appeared more imminent because these soldiers were down in a ravine near the mouth of the tunnel and much lower than the base of the fort. Several regiments broke their lines and fell back when the vast mound poised in mid-air, as if held up by some unseen power, and then, spreading out like a huge umbrella, began slowly to descend.
To those further back where the Twelfth was stationed the sight was more imposing than frightening, and reminded some well versed in classic
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lore - and there were such among the privates as well as the officers of the Union army, - when they saw the whole fort lifted like a hill-top into the air, of Virgil's mythological account of the war between Jupiter and the Titans when the latter " piled Ossa on Pelion " in their mad attempt to reach the skies : and, when the descending and dissolving mass disclosed timbers, guns, and men amid big rocks and lumps of clay, it reminded them again of Milton's description of the overthrow of another great rebellion, instigated by the same rule-or-ruin spirit as that which they were trying to put down, when Lucifer and his confederate apostates were hurled head- long over the battlements of Heaven.
Eight tons of powder, placed in the two lateral galleries under the fort, and exploded by a fuse extending therefrom five hundred and ten feet through and to the mouth of the main gallery, had so mixed up the elements of earth and air in giving this grand exhibition of its power, that the troops for a while were unable to advance because of the dense cloud of dust that arose when the crumbling fragments of the fort fell back to earth, and under which they were soon lost to view as they advanced. Immediately following the explosion, eighty-one heavy guns and mortars and about the same number of field pieces opened upon the enemy's works at the right and left of the crater, and for an hour or more there was such an air-quaking and earth-trembling artillery chorus as the Twelfth boys had never listened to at so close a range before unless it was at Gettysburg.
As soon as the rebel artillery men on either side of the crater had recovered from their fright, they opened in reply to our guns, and the whole Eighteenth Corps was more or less exposed to their shot and shells. Several men were killed or wounded, and some of them in the brigade of the Twelfth, but the good luck of the regiment being conversely to its size, only two or three of its fortunate few were wounded, and those but slightly. Just before the enemy's shells got dangerously thick, Generals Grant, Meade, and Ord came along in front of the Twelfth conversing together. General Burnside soon joined the other three making quite a distinguished and conspicuous group.
Grant for one and the only time that he was ever thus seen by some of the regiment had no cigar in his mouth. He was apparently as cool and impassive as usual, but Meade and Burnside betrayed some nervousness as they looked through their glasses in vain for some sign of success at the front. But the visiting shells from the opposite side of the ravine soon commenced introducing themselves to the high-ranking commanders, and at last became so obtrusively intimate in their attentions that the group hastily dispersed to seek some less, or more, inviting situation.
" Oh ! don't get disgusted so quick now, it's just such treatment as we have to stand every day," said one of the boys close in the rear of them as they moved away. The words were loudly spoken and must have been heard by some of those for whom they were intended, but if they
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were, not as much as a glance betrayed the fact. During the conflict the Twelfth received orders through the adjutant-general of the brigade to move to the left and front to support a battery and while executing this order General Steadman seeing that his order had been misunderstood by his adjutant gave the command direct to move the regiment to the rear and right. While changing its direction to comply with the last order, General Ord. commanding the corps, rode up and called out : " What is that regiment falling back for? "
Captain Barker, without waiting or caring to know whether the question was directed to him or his brigade commander, stood up in his stirrups and half turning his head toward the questioner, loudly exclaimed: "God . Almighty! This regiment was never known to fall back, yet, without orders." And judging the few left of the regiment by the spirit of their commander, General Ord probably thought he was telling the truth.
After the war, the owner of the land upon which the rebel fort was blown up, fenced off a few acres around the deep depression where it had stood - which he very properly called the " crater," - and collecting together, in an old negro shanty near by, a lot of broken muskets and swords, with shells and shot, and pieces of equipment of every descrip- tion, and many other more or less interesting relics of the battle, picked up in and around the powder-blown excavation, put them and the grounds on exhibition, charging twenty-five cents as an admission fee.
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