USA > New Jersey > New Jersey and the rebellion : a history of the service of the troops and people of New Jersey in aid of the Union cause, Pt. 1 > Part 45
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393
THE FIFTEENTH REGIMENT.
meeting was held in the Chapel on Tuesday night, the 3d of May, after which the canvass covering was taken down and packed for removal. Out of one hundred and thirty in the regiment who professed to have found peace in the Saviour of men, many never again met at a religious meeting on earth, and before the month ended two-thirds of them had died or been disabled on the battle- field.
On May 4th, the regiment broke camp at daylight, and marching by way of Brandy Station and Stevensburg, crossed the Rapidan at Germania Ford by pontoon bridge. The 5th found it in the Wilderness, and the sounds of battle where Warren had come into collision with Ewell's Corps, soon brought the order hastening the Sixth Corps to his support. The thickness of the woods, and encum- bered state of the road, formed a great obstacle to a speedy advance to the point of contest ; but at length, being put on the double- quick, the men, with much confusion floundering through the thicket, reached the battle-ground about one o'clock, p. m. Each side was waiting for reinforcements, and during the afternoon little was done beyond firing by artillery-which seemed ineffectual- and straightening our lines and getting the regiment out of the con- fusion into which they had been thrown by the brushwood. The Fifteenth was now thrown in advance upon a rise of ground, from which our forces had withdrawn in the morning, and began to throw up rifle pits. (The regiment was for a time detached from the rest of the brigade, and for two days served under Colonel Upton of the Second Brigade.) Towards night the firing was re- sumed, inflicting some casualties-Captain Van Derveer, Company E, having his hand shattered and being wounded in the throat. He was a valuable officer, brave and capable; disabled by these wounds he was sent to Washington, and after resigning his com- mission received a Government appointment, and died of fever soon after the war closed. Several men were also wounded, and Leonard Decker, Company D, killed. The night was cold, and marked by musketry firing, and at break of day the men stood to arms anticipating a stubborn contest. Just at sunrise, Captain Ellis Hamilton was struck by a bullet from a rebel sharpshooter,
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NEW JERSEY AND THE REBELLION.
which passed through both thighs. He was sent to Washington, and after lingering some days, tenderly watched by loving friends, he expired, expressing his firm faith and telling of that change of heart he felt he had experienced while in camp at Brandy Station. Though one of the most youthful officers in the regiment, he was distinguished for bravery and efficiency, and universally beloved as having gone into the service from the purest sense of duty. At length, an hour after sunrise, the roar of artillery and musketry on the right announced that the rebels had assailed. Soon the combat approached and swept by the regimental front and on to the left. For a while it was vehement, but presently died down and the morning was disturbed only by occasional discharges of artillery and musketry firing along the skirmish line. But a more prolonged contest was being waged on the left, where Hancock had engaged Hill and Longstreet. Just at dark Ewell's troops, who fronted the Sixth Corps, attacked the flank of the Third Division, which fell back in confusion, the rebels carrying the breastworks, and then pouring a fire upon the flank of the First Division, the Fourth Brigade being driven from its position and flying in panic. The Tenth New Jersey in this disorder, and Colonel Ryerson, after having rallied his men and made them lie down on a new line which he determined to hold, as he rose upon one knee, received a bullet in the forehead, from which he died a few days after in a rebel hospital, deeply regretted. But though the line was broken on their right, and the enemy penetrated to their rear, the. Fifteenth held their advanced and isolated position till midnight, when with- out loss they followed the rest of the army to the new line some two miles to the rear. The situation was very hazardous, and many believed the regiment captured ; so close was its proximity to the rebels that the men heard their conversation with case.
It was two o'clock, a. m., May 7th, when the regiment came into the new line. It had stood its ground when others fled and panic prevailed on either side; and now, determined still to hold its posi- tion, began entrenching at daylight. By ten o'clock, a. m., the works were very strong, and though the enemy felt the line in front and drove in a part of the skirmish line, by which three men were
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395
THE FIFTEENTH REGIMENT.
wounded, and John Brogan, Company A, killed-no real advantage was gained. At dark the regiment marched by the Fredericksburg road to Chancellorsville, and thence to the point where Grant was now concentrating.
The morning of Sunday, May 8th, was intensely hot, and exhausted by the fatigues of previous days and the march of the past night, the men fell fainting by scores from the ranks. Accord- ingly at ten o'clock, a. m., a halt was ordered. The Fifth Corps were at this time in advance, and firing was heard at the point where they struck the enemy. About noon the Fifteenth reached the field of action, about half a mile from Spottsylvania Court House, meeting many of the Fifth Corps going in squads to the rear. As the command came up the road at Alsops, General Warren rode into the ranks demanding, " What brigade is this ? Where is the commanding officer? I want to move this brigade forward at once. I must have this brigade." Colonel Penrose, now the ranking officer, commanded the brigade, and soon after, ordered by General Warren, moved to a designated position, and held the ground firmly under the artillery fire of the enemy. But the real object of our advance in that direction was not attained. General Warren had failed to reach Spottsylvania Court House in time to hold the roads which concentrated there-which was his real object in the advance-the possession of this point being considered of the greatest importance to a successful issue of this part of the campaign. At eight or nine o'clock on the morning of May 8th, a small body of Union cavalry were in possession of the Court House, but at ten o'clock, a. m., when the head of the Fifth Corps emerged from the woods and crossed the open space near Alsops, they were greeted with a furious discharge of musketry from the troops of Longstreet, whose column had entered Spottsylvania Court House, driven out the cavalry and now came pouring into the place regiment after regiment. It was a critical moment when the Fifth Corps received the first discharge from rebel infantry. As yet only the head of Longstreet's force had reached the Court House, though every moment swelled the number of his forces. The veterans of the Fifth, surprised at the
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NEW JERSEY AND THE REBELLION.
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397
THE FIFTEENTH REGIMENT.
sudden onset, were thrown into confusion, and the advance was checked until a stronger and more orderly assault might be delivered. This was attempted, a charge was made, and somc advantage gained; but the delay of half an hour lost us Spottsyl- vania Court House, and was followed by the bloodiest contests in which the Army of the Potomac ever engaged.
During the following day, the 8th, the Fifteenth was not engaged, but at six o'clock in the evening, the order came for the brigade to advance-the Fifteenth to charge the works on the right flank and the other regiments on the front. The Fifteenth at once moved gallantly forward, charging at double-quick, but without firing a gun -the enemy also reserving his fire. Soon, the assailants, reaching a marsh, were exposed to an enfilading fire, which swept their ranks in three directions, but though whole companies seemed to melt away, the gallant Jerseymen plunged straight forward through the soft, spongy marsh, forced their way through the fallen timber and over every obstacle until they mounted the crest and standing on the parapets fired on the rebels in their own ditches. So pitiless was the assailing fire that the enemy speedily gave way, and had the Fifteenth been properly supported, or in greater numbers, the victory must have been complete. But now, back in the woods, a drum beat the assembly, and perceiving the weakness of the attack- ing force, the rebels rallied from all sides to beat back the meagre remnant of the brave little regiment. Thus overwhelmed, the Fifteenth slowly fell back, having lost in all one hundred and one men; but it had performed one of the most gallant achievements of the campaign, and in that thought the survivors found some compensation for their sufferings, as, exhausted and worn, they withdrew from the scene of combat." The Tenth Regiment, which
" Chaplain Haines says of the scenes after this engagement:
" With Doctor Hall, our brave and good Surgeon, I found a place in the rear-a little hollow with green grass and a spring of water-where we made hasty preparations for receiving the coming wounded. Those that could walk soon began to find their way ' in of themselves, and some few were helped in by their comrades as soon as the charge was over and a portion withdrawn. It was a terrible thing to lay some of our best and truest men in a long row on the blankets, waiting their turn for the Surgeon's care. Some came with body wounds, and arms shattered, and hands dangling. With the hospital attendants, I began ripping the clothes and dressing the wounds of the slightly wounded, while Doctor Hall attended the more dangerous cases. At ten
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NEW JERSEY AND THE REBELLION.
was sent in about the same time as the Fifteenth, participating in the charge on the front, scattered very soon after becoming engaged-Lieutenant-Colonel Tay, however, leading forward three or four companies until they came up to the works, when he. Captain Snowden and several other officers and a large number of men, after maintaining a short, unequal contest, were forced to surrender. The remainder, escaping, came out of the contest greatly disordered, without an officer of experience to command them, and were consequently placed under charge of Lieutenant. Colonel Campbell, of the Fifteenth.
At noon of the 9th, the Fifteenth again moved, marching to the right, but did not become actively engaged, though three companies were stationed on the skirmish line, and the whole command was much exposed.8 On the 10th, the regimental position was no less ex-
o'clock, with the drum corps, I sought the regiment to take off any of our wounded we could find. On my way, met some men carrying Orderly Sergeant Martin Van Gilder, of Hamburg, mortally wounded, in a blanket. With his hand all blood he seized mine, saying, 'Chaplain, I am going. Tell my wife I am happy.' Then came my loved friend, young Sandford Simmons, of Lafayette, with many others. The enemy held the ground where the charge was made, and I was not permitted to advance far beyond the picket-line. Once, with James D. Baylor, I crawled out so far that we could hear the conversation of the rebels, and the order, 'fall in,' as they relieved their skirmishers. I made several trips between the regiment and field hospital. At two o'clock, a. m., I laid down amid a great throng of poor, bleeding sufferers, whose moan; and eries for water kept me awake. At four o'clock, got up and had coffee made, and going round among the wounded found a Pennsylvanian who had lain at my Teet dead. A few feet further off lay Sergeant Seudder, of Somerville, dead. "Setting out for the skirmish line, I found the regiment, and in the half hour of quiet made out a lis: of losses from the Fifteenth Regiment, one hundred and one in all. Among the missing was Captain Lewis Van Blarcom, and among the dead, Seargeant Lucien .1. Voorhees, Company A."
8 " At ten o'clock, a. in., of the 9th, a sharpshooter from the rebels was posted in = tree on the right. He seemed to fire with unerring accuracy and is said to have de- stroyed twenty lives. As the regiment was being relieved, he caught sight of our colors, and as Sergeant Samuel Rabadon rose, a ball struck him in the breast. He Was taken to the hospital and expired in a few moments. General Sedgwick came forward a little later and was struck by a bullet in the face, probably from the same shar; shooter, and died in half an hour.
" At noon, (9th,) the regiment moved off to the right. Doctor Hall went with the hospital attendants, while I retained five drummers to bury Sergeants Schenck and Rabadon. We found a spade, dug a grave where the hospital had been, and laid the ::: side by side in the rough hole. A number of men from several regiments were tillin. their canteens at the spring. I asked them if they could come for a few momen :- around a soldiers' grave. Most of them came and uncovered their heads. I repeat : some passages of Scripture and offered a short prayer. Drum-Sergeant Kline filled 1 .; the grave, nailing to two posts which he planted a piece of cracker box, on which i cut the names of the dead. While he was doing this, with my other men I gathered
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THE FIFTEENTH REGIMENT.
posed, but the command bravely held its own against the onsets of the enemy, losing in all twenty men.' During the 11th, both armies manœuvered for position without any general engagement, but on the 12th hostilities were renewed with unsparing violence. The First Brigade, being moved at half-past three o'clock, a. m., to the front on the left of the corps, was sent forward to assail some of the game works it had assaulted on the 10th-other brigades parti- cipating in the movements, and sharing in its perils. Few charges of this memorable campaign were more difficult, or more grandly executed than that made at this time by the Jersey Brigade. They had not only to force their way through a pine thicket, and then
the muskets and accoutrements left by the wounded. Laying the muskets with the muzzle on a stump, one heavy stamp of the foot bent the barrel, broke the stock and made the piece useless. The accoutrements we heaped together and threw on the fire, and with hasty steps sought the regiment. The enemy's batteries opened at two o'clock, p. m., and with Doctor Hall and the hospital attendants I went to arrange a hospital. Colonel Penrose rode by and informed me the rebels were nearly around us, and, indeed, it seemed by the shots fired they were on every side. Summoning our attendants, we moved up a ravine on the right nearer the front, but protected by a roll of ground from musketry fire in our rear. Five minutes after, Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell rode back with three companies from the Fifteenth and stationed a skirmish line. Fearful work was all around us. The din and horrors of war exceeded deserip. tion. At nine o'clock, p. m., several of our wounded were brought in. We dressed their wounds, and loading two ambulances with them, sent them back on the Freder- icksburg road. A message came to me from Colonel Penrose, and finding his head- quarters, he told me it was impossible to reach Colonel Campbell and the rest of the regiment that night, but in the early morning he would give me an orderly and wished ine to find thein. Near midnight, laid down. Picket firing all night."-Chaplain Haines' Notes.
' "Tuesday, May 10th, sixth day of campaign. Rose at daylight. The orderly came, and a mile to the left we found Colonel Campbell and half the regiment, being the extreme line in that direction. The enemy's fire was very annoying, and the position, as the day advanced, was one of great danger. In time, the Second Division, Second Corps, under General Mott, came up on our left, but waited a whole hour before they relieved our men. An anxious period to me, when I was aware that at every discharge our own men were being struck by the bullets of the foe. At last the Third Regiment, Excelsior Brigade, a New York Regiment, were ordered to relieve them. The rebels saw their advance, and slackened fire till they came to our line and our men rose to go out. Then they poured a volley into them, and at once they broke and ran. The men of the Fifteenth received the onset of the enemy, who came out of their trenches to pursue, drove them back and came out in order. But it cost us twenty men. One wounded man crawled out (Corporal Van Cleef, Company E, ) whom I found, and with our only stretehier and some of the men I brought off. One bullet had passed through his thigh, and one entering at the shoulder, had come out at his side near the waist. These made five bullet wounds that he had received since he came into service. The three companies followed to a little hollow, where there was water, and we remained there three hours. I dressed as well as I could the wounds of Van Cleef and sent him to the rear, to be put in an ambulance. He informed me that William C. E. Gulick, Company E, my attached friend, and one of the bravest and truest that ever carried a
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forming, dash across an open space, but to do so in the face of a deadly-concentrated fire which no ordinary line could resist. But the Jerseymen were equal to the occasion. Bidding his men reserve their fire until they saw the foe and knew that every shot would tell, Colonel Penrose steadily pushed forward the brave command. A thousand men soon lay lifeless, or wounded and bleeding, upon the ground, but still the line swept on. The Fifteenth, dashing through the abattis before the rebel works, swept over a portion of the breastworks, which for a time they stoutly held, driving out the rebels, or bayonetting those who tenaciously clung to the posi- tion. Some threw down their muskets and lifted their hands in
musket, was shot and he believed dead. I resolved to bring him off, if possible, dead or alive, and so waited for three hours, hoping the enemy would retire and we might reach him. But waiting did not afford the opportunity, and though six men volun- tecred at all hazards to bring Gulick off, I gave up every hope when the rebels advanced a skirmish line and threw up rails to begin a breastwork.
" While we waited, the men found the body of John W. Smith, who was shot last night. I sent six men, who brought the body, and we dug a shallow grave with sharp- ened sticks, the men scooping out the carth with their hands and dinner-plates. I summoned the men of the three companies on the ground, and we laid the body in, all standing with uncovered heads, while two offered prayer amid the loud din and roar of a sudden charge of the foe on our front. Before we could fill the shallow grave an orderly dashed over the hill bringing the order for the men to hurry up and hold the crest of the hill. Knowing I was of little use there, after they got in position, with bullets flying thick through the pines over my head, I rode back to find the quarter- of last night, get something to cat and prepare for the work of the hospital for to-night. I succeeded in getting a feed of oats for my horse-the first he had for two days. At four o'clock, p. m., a corporal and six men came in bringing a wounded man on an old door. To my joy it was Gulick. He had succeeded in crawling amid the confusion of the several charges to a place where our men found him. But poor · fellow, he had a mortal wound, as I think, through the bowels. I told him I thought he must die, but with a clear voice he said : 'Chaplain I am not afraid to dic. Ifeel my peace is made with God.' While Doctor Hall dressed his wound, I found an ambulance', and putting Gulick aboard, started it for the corps hospital. One warm grasp of the hand, as I stood on the ambulance step, and I and my friend had parted to meet, doubt. less, no more in this world. Hc behaved gallantly and was nearer the rebel works than almost any man who took part in that charge.
"Ten o'clock, p. m. All is quiet now, though the setting sun witnessed the fiereest fighting we have experienced yet. The carnage has been terrible on both sides. Am- bulances came up in numbers to take off the wounded. As far as I can judge, the advantages are favorable to our side, at least so far as this particular portion of the line is concerned. Our troops charged again and again, taking a part of the enemy'- works and capturing one thousand prisoners, who are resting a few yards from us.
"May 11th. I learn that our brigade, in connection with Colonel Upton's, charged last night at dark, and obtained possession of a portion of the rebel works, which they held three hours. They were left unsupported, and the desirable position af? : all was yielded. Several of the Fifteenth are missing. The Third New Jersey lo- nearly one hundred men, though some are coming in constantly. The enemy his- made his battery on our front very formidable."-Diary of Chaplain Haines.
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THE FIFTEENTH REGIMENT.
token of surrender and lay crouching in the ditch, only, however, to resume their weapons when their captors were more hardly pressed. Lieutenant Justice, of whom Colonel Campbell said, " He was to-day as brave as a lion," as he rose on the breastwork, waving his sword and shouting to his company, was shot by one of these skulking rebels, who was in turn run through with the bayonet by a man of Company A. Captain Walker was shot through the head at the first exposure to the enemy's fire. Captain Shimer was killed. Lieutenant Vanvoy was wounded, and while moving to the rear, was again struck and expired in a few moments. . Captain Van Blarcom received several terrible wounds, but survived with the loss of a leg. Lieutenant Fowler was wounded and captured, and after a painful experience of the hardships and cruelties of Southern prisons, made his escape, and by a romantic series of ad- ventures and deliverances in the mountains and swamps, at last reached the Union lines in Tennessee.
The tenure of the salient was brief. The line to the right and left was broken, and an enfilading fire from a long distance on the right, swept through the thin ranks. The enemy had an inner line of breastworks from which he poured a deadly fire. It was impossible to hold the captured bank so long as it was swept by the works yet untaken. Accordingly, the regiment fell back, and when Colonel Campbell gathered his shattered battalion, only seventy-five were found.
On the left of the ground where the regiment charged, the assault was renewed again and again through the day by other troops, and the musketry fire was prolonged all night. So fierce was the in- cessant shower of bullets that the bodies of the dead were riddled, and great trees cut away a few feet from the ground. Within the alient the dead were literally piled in heaps, and the combatants fought over a mound of their dead comrades. Few points, if any, on the broad theater of the war witnessed greater carnage than this. Forty bodies, or near one-fifth of the whole regiment, lay on the breastwork, in the ditch or the narrow, open space in front. Numbers had crawled away to expire in the woods, and others were carried to the hospital, there to have their sufferings prolonged for
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a few days more, and then expire. No experience during the whole time the Fifteenth was in the service was more destructive than the half hour from ten o'clock to half-past ten, of the morning of May 12th.10
On Saturday, the 14th, the brigade moved to the left of the army near the Anderson House, and came upon the enemy about noon. The Second and Tenth Regiments were thrown forward as skirmishers across a stream, where they were surprised and over- come before they could be reinforced. Subsequently, however, the rest of the brigade was thrown forward and the position retaken. From this time until the 24th, the regiment was moved backward and forward, from the center to the left of the army-occasionally skirmishing with the enemy and losing a few men. Never did the command so realize the horrors of war. Blood and death were on every side. The regiment had broken camp on the 4th with fifteen officers and four hundred and twenty-nine muskets, and now was reduced to six officers and one hundred and thirty-six muskets. From May 21st to June 1st it was kept most of the time in motion. with an occasional loss on the skirmish line, being present at the battle of North Anna and other places of conflict. On the 1st it reached Cold Harbor about noon. At three o'clock, p. m., the
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