USA > New Hampshire > History of the Twelfth regiment, New Hampshire volunteers in the war of the rebellion > Part 42
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When I awoke the next morning, either from sleep or a trance, it all seemed so real and so little like a dream, that I lay for a long time, scarcely daring to believe that I was once more on the conscious side of the dividing line; and from that time to this have never been quite able to decide whether I actually got up and went to the door and rooms that night or not.
Having at length convinced myself that I was still in the flesh and rational, I arose before any others of the household were up, and it being not yet late enough to see well about the house without a light, I dared not go into the sitting- room, but went to the front door and found it fastened. In answer to inquiries from the family, I told them that I awoke much earlier than usual and was unable to sleep again for thinking of the great battle that had just been fought; that Lieutenant French had been killed, and many others of his regiment, but Charles (meaning my husband) was as yet safe, or at least alive, and I should see him again if he was wounded.
To the many other questions of how I knew, if I had a dream, etc., I made little or no reply, except to reassert my conviction of the truth of what I had told them ; and I further remarked that probably Mr. - (one of the neighbors who usually went to the village or city every day when anything of importance was expected from the army, and therefore the first to get any news therefrom ) would be in during the day and confirm my statement.
As the forenoon wore away my anxiety to hear from the front increased; not that I doubted in the least the truth of my prediction, but that I wanted the rest of the family to be assured that I was not mistaken, and to know myself such additional particulars as the newspapers might give. Before noon Mr. - was seen coming over across the fields, and soon we were all eager listeners to the news he brought. He told of the great battle that had been fought, of the death of Lieutenant French and twenty or thirty others of the Twelfth Regiment, but thought my husband was all right, because his name was not in the list of killed or wounded. A day or two later and a letter from his own hand left no longer room for doubt that he had passed through the terrible carnage unscathed.
With such news to encourage and cheer me, my folks could not understand why I still continued sad, gloomy, and despondent. At first they attributed it to the untimely fall of our early friend and schoolmate, Lieutenant French, but seeing no change as the days went by, they thought that I must be sick, as indeed I was, but it was a disease of the heart that no medicine could reach, and the cause of which they little knew. My husband was alive and well, but the empty coffin was constantly before me, and there was but little more doubt in my mind for whom it remained open, than there was whom I saw in the other one.
Thus the fall and the winter came and went, and in the spring the regiment, as you know, joined the forces under General Butler, and was engaged in several of the battles and skirmishes between Petersburg and Richmond. Through them all my husband safely went, and I had almost begun to hope that I was mistaken in the interpretation of my vision when a letter from my husband informed me that the Eighteenth Corps, in which was his regiment, had been ordered by transports to White House Landing, whence it was then on the march to reinforce the Army of the Potomac under General Grant.
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I now seemed to anticipate afresh that the sad end, so long delayed, was soon to come ; and a nervous feeling of impending danger too plainly told me that the worst was about to be realized. A few days later and I received another and the last letter ever written by him for whose safe return I had so long waited and prayed in vain. It was written on the night and in the early morning before the terrible charge of Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864.
lle had commenced the letter on the evening of the second, and wrote that the morrow would again bring carnage and death into the ranks of the Twelfth, and that he felt that he should not again be among the lucky few who would escape unharmed. About midnight he wrote again, saying he was sure he should fall, but whether he should be killed on the field or receive his mortal wound he could not tell. Toward morning, and but a short time before the charge, he finished the letter, stating that in answer to his prayers he had then the assurance that although the bitter cup must be drunk for the redemption of his country, as his great Captain had drunk his for the redemption of the world, yet he should not be killed outright, but should live to see me once more at least before he died.
This was enough, for I knew his presentiment must prove true, and with a hasty preparation I immediately started for Washington and found my husband there in one of the large hospitals, prostrate and weak from the nervous shock and loss of blood from two severe wounds, one in his left arm and the other in his right thigh.
Now followed days and nights of watching and praying, while life and death seemed balancing in the scales, until at last the physicians spoke encouragingly, and thought the danger well nigh passed. Ilis arm had been taken off, and the stump was healing so well that he, too, was beginning to entertain strong hopes of final recovery and the enjoyment of many happy days with me in our pleasant cottage home.
We had talked over our trials in the past and our hopes for the future; he had told me of the battles he had been in, and of his narrow escapes; and several times spoke of the great battle of Gettysburg, and the death of Lieutenant French, and of how he had saved the national colors of his regiment from capture in that battle. When told that I had never before heard anything about his saving the flag, he seemed surprised, and wondered that Adjutant Heath, who went, you know, from the same town, had never written home about it.
He then related to me briefly the circumstances, and said: " If I should not live to get home, Heath, I have no doubt, will make known the facts about it and see that full justice is done me."
He also talked to me freely all about the strange premonition he had the night before he was wounded, how deeply it impressed him, and how glad and thank- ful he was and ought to be that he was not killed, like so many of the brave boys around him, but was still alive with the chances daily increasing of his seeing his native hills once more, and there living to enjoy the blessings of peace which he had given his own blood and limbs to secure.
During all this time, nearly two months, I said nothing of my own warning more than a year before, and, although it was almost constantly in my mind, I carefully avoided saying or doing anything to awaken in his mind a suspicion that I did not share with him his often expressed and most sanguine hopes of his final recovery.
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And, to tell the fact, he had lived so long and improved so much, that, at times, the desire to have it so was so strong, I thought I could see a silver lining to the dark cloud of fear and doubt that had for many months hung over me; but it would soon disappear and leave a still deeper shade of gloom, that no ray of hope could penetrate or dispel. But the days and nights of anxious waiting and watching were at last nearly numbered, and the final, fatal hour was fast approach- ing. As well and hopeful as usual, my husband had closed his eyes in peace- ful, quiet rest ; but something of the same dread feeling of impending danger that I had felt once or twice before, as you will remember, came over me, and I could not sleep.
Soon I was summoned to his bedside, and I knew, even before I could get there, that the dread messenger had come. I found him, slowly but surely, bleed- ing to death ! Secondary hemorrhage from his wound in the groin, caused by the sloughing open of one of the femoral arteries, had broken out, and there was no power in medical skill to stop it.
Just as he breathed his last, a stream of blood ran from off' the foot of his bed upon the floor, just as I had seen it run out the foot of the empty coffin, and the realization of my vision was then and there sadly and solemnly consummated.
The following strange but true story the writer had himself from the lips of the widow of David S. Sanborn, of Company H, who was killed in the battle of Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864. Mrs. Sanborn still resides in Laconia, where her husband resided at the time of his enlistment .*
The night before the battle in which David was killed, I had a strange dream -if I can rightly call it such, for it seemed like no other dream I ever had - which proved, as you will see, most seriously and solemnly prophetic.
It then and has ever since seemed to me that I was as fully awake as I am at this moment, but I suppose I could not have been. But however that may be, I thought I saw my husband in the midst of the fight, and pushing bravely forward with his comrades toward the rebel lines. And while watching, with a com- mingled feeling of pride for his valor and fear for his danger, I saw him and others by his side go down, and it seemed as if I could hear the roar of the guns and was for a moment in the midst of the conflict and carnage. I saw, oh so pain- fully plain ! my dear husband lie bleeding and dying upon the ground, with the dead and wounded all around him ; and so distinctly vivid was the scene that it almost makes me shudder now to recall it. I even remember the general outline of the field as it appeared to me and the particular configuration of the ground where David fell and I saw him lying; and I have since been told by members of his company who were in the battle, but lived to come home, that my description of the field and battle was about as accurate as they could have given themselves.
Well, my vision ended with his death, and when I arose in the morning - I will not say awoke for it seemed, as I have said, that I was not asleep-it was the beginning of my great sorrow, for I felt as sure then, and every day until the news came by mail, as I did afterward, that my life companion would greet me no more on the shores of time.
And notwithstanding the efforts of my relatives and friends to make me believe it was only a dream, and that the next letter I should get from him would not
* Recently deceased.
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only prove that he was alive and well, but show perhaps that he had not been in any recent battle, it was all hopelessly vain, for I knew, as I told them, that I had received my last letter from him.
Thus much for the wife's vision on the night before that fatal morn ; but who can tell what her soldier husband saw or felt while he stood silently watchful as a picket amid the surrounding gloom of the same night? What entered into his mind and heart, and left its solemn conviction there, is, like the vision, beyond the power of mortals to decide or explain ; but that something did there can be no question.
Almon J. Farrar, of the same company, says :
At that time Sanborn and I tented together, and he, on the night before the battle of Cold Harbor, was detailed for picket. Early the next morning, before the pickets came in, rations were issued, and I, as was usual for one tent-mate to do when the other was absent, drew his rations with my own. So when he was relieved and came to his quarters, I told him that rations had just been distributed but that I had looked out for him. Not receiving an immediate response of some kind, as was expected, I looked up at him, and saw that he looked pale and troubled. I was about to ask him if he was sick, but before I could do so he said : " Well, you will never have to draw any more rations for me." Wish- ing to hear what more he might feel inclined to say I asked him what he meant, although I already too well knew, " Because I have eaten my last ration," was his short but solemn reply.
He ate not a mouthful of the breakfast I had prepared for him, for I knew, from the orders that had come in during the night, that he would have no time to do so before being called into the ranks, and only said, as I tried to cheer him up : "It's no use, my last hour has come," and so it proved, for before another had commenced he lay one among the many who had fallen to rise no more.
The venerable Christian parents of " the Nelson boys," as they were called, of Company D, both had a warning of the death of their son Dan, who was killed at about ten o'clock in the morning, while assisting his wounded brother from off the field of Chancellorsville.
That of the father seemed to be in the nature of a presentiment, while that of the mother was entirely different, although it is significant that both were felt and heard at the same hour that the angel of death visited their son more than a thousand miles away. The former sought and found relief in prayer, although confirmed thereby in the belief that his son would never more return.
The writer, who visited them at their old homestead in Bristol, heard the strange experiences of both from their own mouths, and will here give, as near as memory will allow, the mother's strange story as if she herself was talking to the reader.
I was sitting here alone in this very room one forenoon, which, as I well remem- ber, was on the 3d day of May, 1863. All at once there was a quick, loud rattle of the fence bars, that you can see there directly across the road, and the thought came
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into my mind, how much that sounds as I have often heard them when one of my dear boys, now so far away, would spring upon and over the bars in going across lots to one of our neighbors whose sons were intimate with mine. This naturally led me into feelings of sadness, from which, however, I was quickly startled by the plain sound of footsteps coming across the dooryard and approach- ing the end door. The sound of the footsteps ceased when the door was reached, and I waited and listened a moment for some one to rap or come in; but, hear- ing nothing more. I got up and went to that window, where, as you notice, I could see both the doorway and all that part of the yard, but no mortal person nor living thing could be seen. I then went immediately out of the door and looked all around the buildings, but could not see or hear anyone, nor see any tracks where I had first heard the footsteps near the corner of the house.
You may ask what there was to startle me when I heard the footsteps, since the sound of the bars indicated that some one had climbed or jumped over them, as I supposed there had, and it was quite as probable as otherwise that any per- son doing so would be on some errand to the house. Ah! here comes in the mystery - his invisible presence ! as I then felt and have ever since believed ; for the step that I heard was the peculiar and unmistakable step of Dan !
You will not wonder now that it startled me almost into trembling; nor doubt me when I tell you that from out the solemn silence that followed, there came to me a voice unheard, but painfully felt and plainly understood, that told me that my dear boy was no longer a resident of earth.
The days that followed, before any report came from the field of battle, were those of resignation rather than apprehension about him, for both my husband and myself felt and were nearly certain what that report would contain in rela- tion to his fate. Our only fear was for his two brothers, one of whom. as we soon learned, had been seriously wounded.
Something similar to the strange experience of the Nelson parents, just related, is that of the father and mother of Alfred W. Maxfield, of Com- pany F, who was killed in the same battle as the Nelson boy.
Mrs. Maxfield, in telling her story some years ago, said that she well remembered the day that her son was killed, and always should until her death, because she never had anything like it come to her before.
She said she could not explain nor even intelligently express her feel- ings in full, but one thing, more prominent than all the rest, was that it seemed as if her son was with or very near her; and so strong was this mysterious impression that she would look up from her work and around her to see if he was not actually present. She felt and then believed that he was dead and his spirit was with her. And who shall question it, since no other explanation can be given, and at that time his spirit no longer animated the material form that lay motionless and breathless on the field of Chancellorsville.
But stranger still, and seemingly impossible, his father said that while at work in the field, at or about the same time, his son appeared to him in bodily form, and that he saw him, or thought he did, as plainly as he ever saw him in his life.
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The following concerning Henry H. Nickerson, of Company B, is from the pen of George E. Place, of the same company :
He had been showing such depression of mind that I finally inquired of him the cause. He replied that the first battle he went into he should be killed. I tried to cheer him up, arguing that presentiments were simply superstitions; but I could not lift him out of his mood. I was in the habit of offering prayer when retiring at night, and one night to my surprise he knelt with me and prayed. After that he appeared more cheerful, but would occasionally refer to his present- iment. The following spring occurred the battle of Chancellorsville, and in that fight he was killed.
Captain Savage foresaw his doom and told Surgeon Fowler the day of its coming. It seems, from what his widow has since related, that he must have had quite a clear vision of his fate from a time almost as early as his enlistment, and that he felt very sure, when at home on a furlough a short time before the battle in which he fell, that he should never return to his family again.
Many others might be mentioned, if space permitted, as having pre- sentiments of their death, among whom are Edwin A. Kelley, of Com- pany F: Frank Knowlton and Benjamin F. Sanborn, of Company D : and several of the recruits. Of the latter was Frederick W. Dietze, of Company F, who was killed at Cold Harbor. He told Sergt. B. M. Til- ton the day before the battle that he expected to be killed, and that he had fifteen hundred dollars in a waist belt that he wore about his body, which he wanted Tilton, if he fell, to take and send to one of his relatives, giving Tilton the name and place. Ile fell as he had predicted, and the money was sent as requested.
And last to be related of the regiment, though the first to happen, is the case of Darius Robinson, of Company 1. It was the first sad lesson of the regiment in the strange mystery of presentiments, and left too deep an impression to ever be forgotten. He was a strong, resolute, and ap- parently a brave hearted man ; and he appeared light hearted and cheer- ful with the rest of the boys until the regiment reached Baltimore on its way from Concord to Washington and the battlefields of the South. Here, while waiting for transportation, a sudden and very remarkable change came over him, and when inquiry was made by his officers and comrades as to the cause, he said he was going to be killed, and be- moaned his fate because of his wife and child.
Thinking that he referred to and was worrying about being killed when the regiment should be called into action, and knowing nothing then about presentiments, they made light of his fears, telling him that it was foolish and unmanly to borrow trouble about a thing so far ahead, and that he might never have to go into battle at all. His reply was that the folly was with them instead of him, for he knew what he was talking about while they did not. He said he had no fears nor expectations of
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ever going into a battle, and knew that he never should, unless fought within two hours, for he should be shot through the heart before the regi- ment reached Washington. Thirteen miles from there and he lay a corpse on the bottom of the car through the door of which the fatal bullet entered and pierced his heart, just as he had predicted !*
Although it was not intended to extend this subject beyond the family circle of the Twelfth Regiment, the exceptions concerning General Sickles and Colonel Cross, of the Fifth New Hampshire, will be here given.
General Sickles was so sure that he would be seriously wounded at the battle of Gettysburg, where he lost a leg, that he had Doctor Alexander take the place of Doctor Simms as medical director of his corps, that the latter. in whose skill he had great confidence, might be at liberty to attend to him.
The heroic Colonel Cross, who was mortally wounded in the same battle, predicted his death before. saying to his old friend. Colonel Whipple, while at home recovering from wounds received at Fredericks- burg, that he should surely be killed in the next battle he should partici- pate in after his return to duty. He expressed the same conviction to many others, among whom were Doctors Fowler and Sanborn, of the Twelfth. telling them where and how he should be wounded, and expressing a wish that he could have been shot dead and spared the pain of such a wound. This was but a day or two before the battle, in which he remarked to one of his officers who knew of his feelings : " I am still upon my feet, you see, but my time is short."
A few minutes later he was being carried from the field upon which he had been prostrated by a bullet penetrating his bowels and lodging in his spine : knowing that his wound was mortal, he wanted his men to shoot him and end his suffering.
ยท See page 25.
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THE "BOYS."
One of the strongest evidences of the immortality of the human soul is that, while confined to this terrestrial sphere, it is always young.
The mere animal senses, from which most of the outward acts evolve, may become dull and dim, and the physical powers weakened by the wear and strain of task and time; but there is something deeper down in the well-spring of our spiritual being, call it what or when you may, that never fails to respond to the bright and beautiful. as well as the noble and the good. And it is from this source that the sweet, pure waters of perpetual youth come bubbling up, to refresh and rejuvenate the old, as well as to enliven and exhilarate the young.
Ponce de Leon is not the only one who has crossed oceans and traversed continents to find that which alone exists in the human heart - "the fountain of perpetual youth."
Yet such is the folly of the world that, urged by the impulse of blind desire rather than guided by the wisdom of sober reflection, we chase, like boys that we are, our own shadows until the sun of life's short day has set, and we rest in the dark, still night of the grave.
Rest ! Nay ; for what is the need of rest for that which never grows old nor weary? And who shall question, that in this final so called rest of the tired and worn out embodiment of animalized clay, we shall find that, the shadow of which we have so long pursued - the youth and pleasure of immortality.
But craving pardon of the reader for so long an introductory ramble along the mystic border of the spirit world, let us return to our text and subject, and write about the " boys" a while.
This was a common name given to all, whether young or old, who wore the blue at any time, '61 to '65, and which still clings to those who now survive, though their heads are fast whitening by the bleaching frosts of life's closing years.
That this should have become the term used by officers and men and finally adopted everywhere outside of the army as well as in, is not sur- prising when it is considered that a great majority of those who enlisted were in the years of adolescence or scarcely beyond the age of legal responsibility. With so large a sprinkling of beardless humanity in the make-up of the army, it is easy to imagine that there must have been more or less of frolic and fun to enliven the otherwise dull and monoto- nous routine of camp life. One of the principal sources of amusement among them was card playing. This was so universally common that few, even including the chaplains, did not learn to " call," " pass," " beg," or " peg" in the different games of poker, euchre, high-low-jack, cribbage, etc.
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Many, who had been brought up to look upon a pack of cards as a bunch of fifty-two free passes to eternal ruin, soon forgot or reasoned away their early home-instilled prejudice, and became adept euchre players. This was the great game in the army and did not loose its hold upon the " boys " when the war ended, but it soon became so universally popular that a well worn " euchre deck " could be found in almost every house. The good old father and mother looked on, at first, with fear and trembling, but they could not deny what seemed to afford so much pleasure to their boy for whose safe return they had so long waited and prayed : and, beside, whatever of evil there was, it was too late to avert, for he had already learned to play. And so, not only were the long winter evenings made merry by the boys and girls playing four-handed games of euchre, in many houses where a game of cards was never played before ; but, stranger still, such is the power of example, upon the old as well as the young, to influence for good or evil. that in many pious homes the game was admitted and entertained as a welcome guest where, a few years before, it would not have been allowed an introduc- tion to any of the family. Whether there will be blessings or curses in another world for this great change from the old Puritanic order of Christian society, the reader must decide for himself and act accordingly.
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