USA > New Jersey > The history of the Ninth New Jersey Veteran Vols. A record of its service from Sept. 13th, 1861, to July 12th, 1865, with a complete official roster, and sketches of prominent members > Part 33
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Later we were enlivened by a very picturesque and even romantic adventure on the Roanoke river. We went by rail to
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Newbern, took transports and landed at Plymouth, where we saw the hulk of the rebel ram " Albemarle " that the daring Cushing had blown up a few months before. There was an attack threatened on the town and we manned the fortifications determinedly every night for a week or more. Then moving out we pushed after the retreating rebels towards Weldon, winding up with a well devised camp at Rainbow Bluffs. It was a perfect stage piece, so far as accessories and incidents went. After supper we set out in light marching order, our tins and all manner of clinking things left behind, even our muskets had their cases on to keep the gleam of the barrels from the rays of the full moon, bright as a northern twilight sun. From seven o'clock till about two in the morning we marched like an army of spectres through woods and fields, over hill and dale, until finally, palpitating with expectation, we reached the forks of a road. Here we were formed in column and launched forward at a double quick: Down the road, in a deep gully, dozens of camp-fires gleamed, but when we got to them, to our unspeakable mortification, there wasn't · a soul ! We learned with disgust that a column co-operating with us was to have been in front when we reached the rebel rear. But it wasn't, and we had our march for our pains. There was no end of humor and broad fun on this march. We were accompanied by a regiment, I have forgotten the number, but it was from Massachusetts, and was heavy artillery. "Heavy" they certainly were. They were never on the ground when wanted, never quite got into the position assigned, they never knew how to manage themselves, and were generally so awkward and slip-shod that the mere sight of a group of them set the Ninth into roars of laughter and no end of sarcastic chaff. Most of the men of the " Heavies " were Ger- man, in fact, couldn't speak a word of English, we were told. They wandered about the country quite dazed, of no more service than so many deaf mutes.
The Rainbow Bluff movement had been designed to help Grant's left flank operations at Petersburg. For some reason it came to a sudden end. We were shipped to Newbern, and early in April began the campaign that ended the civil war.
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NEW JERSEY'S "FOOT CAVALRY."
Our advance lay along the bed of the Goldsboro railway, a route pretty well known to the veterans of the Ninth, for in 1862 they had made a brilliant and arduous march over the same ground. We did not know until we arrived at the bridge over the Neuse at Kinston that we were part of the Twenty-third army corps, under the command of General Schofield, now the commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States. At the Kinston bridge we saw, however, that there was something decisive in our movement, for we hung upon the enemy, fighting up to our waists in water for days. Stephen D. Lee had com- mand in our front, and his ragged battalions held on with a tenacity that made every step of advance cost.
It was on this march that my notions of the rights of property underwent a demoralizing evolution. The Ninth was noted all through the department as being " hell on foot," that is, it could cover more ground in a given time than any infantry regiment that ever marched with it. I don't know why this was so, but so it was. Day after day we made our thirty miles as regularly as clock-work ; this, too, counting the tedious delays incident to the passage of a long column over wild, bridgeless roads, and the exasperating halts of artillery trains and what not. Some- times, do the best one could, the rations allotted for a certain number of days would run out. Then the men kept an eye out for the casual pig, the chance cow, or delight of delights, an unconscious brood of poultry. A charge of rebel cavalry couldn't be more effectual than the sight of a cleared patch in the wastes of melancholy pines, giving promise of a still un- visited farm-house. The celerity with which the flying squad "went through " the housewife's stores, the instinct that led them straight to the stores of buried sweet potatoes, would have convinced the student of sociology that war develops certain resources in men, whether for their betterment or not I shall not undertake to say. One evening about dusk, the head of the Ninth, very tired, very hungry, and very impatient of distraint, came to a sequestered plantation, buried in the heart of miles of pine. A cavalry squadron had gone ahead and picked up the least guarded of the rebel provisions. We, however, soon brought out treasures tempting to hungry stomachs-mounds
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of sweet potatoes, peanuts in baskets, a few hams. It was my fate, in mousing about, to snoop into a barrel containing what I supposed at first cider, but on tasting made up my mind it was maple sugar, until a veteran of the Goldsboro march pro- nounced sorghum. This was a delicacy indeed, and we straightway had the barrel empty. The later comers, indignant at our luck, set up a wild search for more. Now, in the cellar I had seen a barrel with precisely the same surface, and in the utmost generosity I led a group thither ; the barrel wasn't a quarter full, so the first man that bent down to ladle himself a share fairly disappeared in the barrel, nothing remaining outside save his hips and legs. This was too much. for one of the waiting wags, so he lifted the poor wretch's hind quarters, and there he stood on his head in the barrel until two or three, choking with laughter, pulled him out. Such spluttering and profanity never was heard before or since. The man was nearly smothered ; the thick liquid ran down his face into his neck, leaving him a pitiable as well as convulsing object. When the shouts of laughter ceased long enough you may fancy the effect of the words : "Well, I wouldn't be such a darn fool as to take soft soap for sorghum." That's what it was, and any one who has seen the two can understand the blunder as well as the joke. The victim had his revenge, for he stayed there for hours and incited dozens of greedy, unsuspicious comrades to fill their canteens with the nauseous nectar.
Though foraging of this sort was to some extent against orders, the officers of the Ninth were, of course, too much engaged in the more serious affairs of the campaign to remark these little infractions of discipline. Many's the time H's boys saved some of their loot to enliven Colonel Stewart's table, for he was adored by the company, who to a man thought him the handsomest, bravest and most delightful fellow in the whole army. Other officers came in, too, for a share of devotion and forage, and there was a chivalrous contention among the men as to whom should fall the honor and privilege of sharing with the favorite officers the first fruits of the "bummer " brigade. On a long march, when his own supplies ran low, Colonel Stewart would sit down to his table and affect immense surprise at sight
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of a rasher of bacon, a large cut of fresh beef, or a juicy cutlet from a pig that had been snooping about the fields an hour before. Then the darkies-they never seemed to have a morsel about, but after diligent coaxing it was wonderful the reserves they could be made to bethink themselves of. The pone- never did the crisp crust of French bread seem so great a delicacy as the homely pone-kneaded in water and baked under our longing eyes in the hot embers. If an army travels on its belly, the Yankees ought to make the best soldiers in Christendom, for they can find more to eat where there is less promise than the Esquimaux or the South Sea Islanders.
For more than a week we were under fire, day and night, but Petersburg had taught us how to shield ourselves, and I think the casualities were far in disproportion to the ferocity of the combats we maintained in the dark woods, in the bed of a running stream, where we stood for hours to our middle in water and mud. Everybody knew that the end was near. The reports from Petersburg all pointed to one denouement. Finally Stephen D. Lee broke from before us and we were launched forward with a rush. Darius N. Couch was in immediate command, though I think Innis N. Palmer commanded the department. A few miles from Goldsboro we were startled by the distant booming of cannon; we heard it distinctly the whole day. When we reached Goldsboro, March twenty-first, 1865, we learned that it was Sherman's columns attacked by Joe Johnson at Averysboro. We didn't know that we had heard the last guns of the civil war, but we had. The Ninth went into quarters in this pretty town ; the Ninth acting as provost guard where all the armies of Sherman and Schofield met in rendezvous. Then came in swift succession the tidings of the last episodes in the rebellion. First, one morning, it was March twenty-third, as we were preparing coffee, long lines of ragged, slouching veterans came swinging in from the south and east. Presently a group of horsemen appeared. There were frantic shouts from the ragged ranks. " Hurrah for old Sherman !" . It was he-the commander of the western armies -red haired, grim, with quick, searching eyes and the most careless disregard of state which we had ever seen in an
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officer of rank. With him rode the handsome, soldierly Slocum, commander of the left wing ; Blair, Logan, and I think, Howard. We remained at Goldsboro, luxuriating in the delicious spring weather-war alarms softening into the sure promises of peace. Great news came daily-the collapse of Hood under 'Thomas' Napoleonic blows-the dispersion about Richmond, Five Forks, and finally, the end-Lee's surrender at Appomattox. This was shouted by a courier, hastening to Sherman, and unable to keep the inspiring news to himself. It had been expected for days, but when it came the solemn pines, the dark forest recesses, re-echoed to shouts so long, so tumultuous, that the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, must have been bewildered at the new phase of man. Presently we were in Raleigh, the lovely capital of North Carolina-sheltered under blossoms, hidden under stately elms-which made the city a sylvan paradise. Then, to soothe Sherman under Stanton's villainous affront, rather than to disgrace him-as the war office had intended-came Grant. He was not looked upon with much favor, for the men believed him jealous of his over- shadowing lieutenant. But he took great pains to mark his confidence and admiration for the victor of Atlanta, and the men, perfect children in likes and dislikes, soon gave him a share of the idolatry they lavished upon the erratic genius of the march to the sea. The end of the army-so far as solidarity came-when in the presence of all the great captains, Grant took his place under the magnificant elms in the wide park-like street of Goldsboro to review the heroes of the "bummer " campaign through Georgia and the Carolinas. But the event that stands out most vividly in my memory was the news that fell upon the army-like a thunderbolt a day or two after. It came from Grant's headquarters, and was officially announced to us. Lincoln had been murdered in Ford's theatre ! There was but one cry, rage, and then revenge. Every man asked to be led forward at Johnston's army, then a few miles to the westward of us at Durham's station. It was a. most curious revelation of the power of character on men. Lincoln was beloved in a vague way by the rank and file. There was a feeling, that he, alone of all
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PEACE, GREAT PEACE.
the politicians, meant well, that he had a tender, compassionate nature. The men loved him, and they mourned him at Raleigh.
Then followed weeks of tedious waiting. The Ninth was sent to Greensboro, and here Company H was detached to form headquarter guard for the Twenty-third army corps, General J. D. Cox commanding. Ruger succeeded Cox, and still the regi- · ment lingered. But peace had come. We were in a land of milk and honey-the serene mountain table-land of western North Carolina. The debris of Jeff. Davis' flight was accumu- lated in the place. I remember seeing boxes of " blue backs," the rebel currency, scattered in the streets. Every man in the command became a "millionaire," if he chose. Johnston's artillery was packed near the town, and the men had great diversion examining guns that had scattered death among our ranks, from the heights of Mission Ridge to the last fight at Averysboro. In July we were embarked on the most rickety cars I ever saw, and, at a rate of not more than five miles an hour, began our last campaign-Trentonward. We were delayed a day and a night at Danville, camping in a pine grove, then resumed the snail train-passed through the already grass- grown lines of Petersburg, and arrived in time at Trenton.
It will be observed in this memoir that the more serious the crisis in the regiment's life, the less chance there was for indi- vidual observation. In action no man can give anything like a minute history of what is going on about him. A battle is an agony of passionate effort, in which the individual, at first terror stricken, gradually warms into a heedless rage, bent only on making use of the appliances of slaughter within his reach. Curiosity may to some extent enable a man to keep track of the main current of incidents going forward about him, but everything tends to confuse and warp his judgment. In the most fatal encounter the Ninth ever bore, the battle near Drewry's Bluff, I think curiosity enabled me to see all that a private soldier with his wits about him ever can in battle. I saw the gradual decimation of my company, the wounding of Colonel Zabriskie, the fearless insistance of Colonel Stewart in holding his wing of the regiment in place, the manful constancy
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of all the old and some of the new men of the Ninth, in upholding the splendid traditions of the organization. But I saw skulking and cowardice as well. This, to the credit of our regiment and our country, was exclusively among foreigners, who had joined the army from the emigrant ship. Many of these afforded the veterans a good deal of amusement, for when we were coming under fire they were suddenly seized with the most unaccountable paroxysms which, while disabling them to advance, seemed to be no impediment to a fleet move to the rear. If every man of the Ninth will set down his recollections as frankly as I have herein set mine forth, sparing himself in no wise, the Ninth's memorial will be a volume of interest ; for it will give a picture of the emotions of the men, as well as a record of the part the regiment played in the fields assigned it. HENRY F. KEENAN.
October 24, 1888.
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CORPORAL KENYON'S REMINISCENCES.
CORPORAL FRANCIS A. KENYON
Was born in New York city, March . fourteenth, 1847, enlisted in Company B at the age of sixteen years, joining the Ninth at Gettys Station in February, 1864. He participated in all the engagements, and by gallantry in battle and kindness to his comrades in bivouac and camp, won the esteem of all. The following reminiscences furnished by him will be read with interest :
DEAR CAPTAIN DRAKE-Your circular letter of November twenty-fourth, in which you invite contributions of scenes and incidents coming under the notice of the survivors of the old Ninth, is received. It has suggested a thought which, at this moment, impresses me most singularly, and impels me to reply to your invitation. Should you observe an undue frequency of the pronoun I in my contribution, permit me to state that it is employed in no spirit of egotism, but rather to avoid verbosity and circumlocution.
There is a strange fatality which follows some men when exposed to peculiar dangers, while a power both remarkable and mysterious seems to surround and protect others. This proposition finds its best illustration in the experiences of the late war, and, for that purpose, I will recite a few incidents which may not only show me as belonging to the latter and more fortunate class, but prove to be interesting matter for your book.
I received my first baptism of fire at the first and second days' battle of Port Walthall Junction. Then followed Swift Creek, after which we turned our faces towards Richmond. I passed through these hot engagements unhurt, notwithstanding two of the seven recruits which formed the party with which I joined the regiment were killed outright, and Acker, of our company, was shot through the shoulder and incapacitated for further service. But it was at Drewry's Bluff where this unknown power, which protected me through so many dangers, first
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asserted itself. Here the enemy, as you are aware, rushed down upon us in overwhelming numbers, line of battle following line, 'as wave follows wave and breaks upon the shore. Few of us escaped unhurt, while many were killed. Our noble commander -the lamented Zabriskie-fell mortally wounded not ten feet in rear of me. I was between him and the enemy, directly in line of the storm of bullets, one of which struck him. Imme- diately in front, two of my companions were killed while firing from behind a stump, and at my right, the man with whom I touched elbows, a German, whose name I forget, had part of his left sleeve torn from his blouse, while one or more bullets passed through his hat. I came through without a scratch.
But the best illustration of this thought, which, in short, is what is popularly known as the ill-luck or good-luck which followed our boys, is furnished in the case of the Dennis brothers, which shows up both sides of the question. At Cold Harbor Dan, the younger of the two, had strayed away from the regiment without leave and was lost for several days during the maneuvering in the enemy's front. This was a serious offence, but no one attributed it to the cause of cowardice, for Dan was known to be recklessly brave, having often exposed himself foolishly. He had always, apparently, been indifferent to danger. He turned up as suddenly as he disappeared. We were in the advance line of works when he joined us and gave an excuse for his absence that he got lost and joined a battery, serving it as a powder "monkey." His appearance went far to prove his story, as he was the impersonation of Mars himself. His torn clothes and face blackened with powder suggested that a bath would be more of a necessity than a luxury. The captain, however, while no doubt believing him, could not overlook this breach of discipline, and ordered him forthwith to take a position in one of the "glory holes" in our front. In order to do so he was obliged to mount the breastworks in full view of the enemy and cross an open space of about a hundred yards, fully exposed to their fire. Ordinarily it was certain death to poke one's head above the works. But Dan bore a charmed life. The enemy saw him mount the works, cross leisurely over the open space to the "glory hole," while their
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bullets whistled around his head as thick as hail. There were bullets enough fired at him to fill a Gatling gun. They did not disturb him, however ; at any rate, they did not cause him to accelerate his pace in the least. He took his position in the "glory hole," and seemed to suffer no more inconvenience than . does a good man going to church on a pleasant Sabbath. Dan seemed to take battles as a matter of course, and survived them all. But how different was the case of Charles ! He was a fine specimen of rugged manhood ; brave as a lion, yet modest and cautious, and wholly without bluster. One evening, while in the advanced line at Petersburg waiting for darkness, under the cover of which to withdraw to the rear as was the custom every second day, Charles was sewing a button on his panta- loons, while at the same time engaged with me in conversation. I was leaning against the breastworks, gun in hand, when, suddenly, a stray bullet went tearing through his neck, severing the jugular vein, and he fell dead at my feet.
One night at Cold Harbor we were in the act of advancing our line of battle, when a battery on the enemy's right fired two enormous shells which burst in the trees directly over our heads with the most deadly effect. Scarcely one of us escaped without being hit by the falling branches or fragments of shells. Yet I was unhurt, and went fleeing in wild disorder, with the maimed and slightly wounded, over the breastworks immediately in our rear. A Massachusetts regiment lay sleeping quietly behind them when they were rudely awakened by our feet landing on their bodies or in their faces. They not only aroused to the occasion but literally "swore like troopers." The enemy's range was perfect, but, for some unknown reason, they ceased firing. Had they continued, half a dozen shells of the same size would have utterly annihilated us. Order being restored, what was left of us fit for action resumed the advanced position and were soon employed with tin cup and bayonet in throwing up another line of works. While digging, my cup- the very cup in which I afterwards cooked many a dinner of bean soup and boiled many a cup of coffee-caught in the clothing of a dead soldier, either Union or Confederate, I could not tell which, because of the darkness. He had been killed
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in the battle a few days before and his body was buried there during a truce.
On another occasion I escaped, most miraculously, instant death. It was in the pits before Petersburg. It was not only a very dramatic episode, but serves also to furnish a subject which justifies one in indulging a sort of grim humor. On an unusually quiet day, from a military point of view, when the sun was shining from a clear midsummer sky, and the stillness was broken only by the firing of the celebrated " Petersburg Express," which had sent its messenger of death into the doomed city for so long a time, at regular intervals of fifteen minutes, and as we had become so accustomed to it as to rarely · give it a thought, our inclinations naturally, under the circum- stances, led away from thoughts or scenes of war, four of us were engaged in a game of euchre. There was a hand played in that game which swept the board ; it contained no " joker " either. A shell bursting so far away as not to attract our attention sent a part of itself, about the size of an ordinary saucer, in a sort of playful mood, to join our game. Its ways, though dark, were not the ways of Bill Nye, for it stood not back for aces or bowers. They had no chance. It came thundering down between us within six inches of our heads, tearing up a hole as deep as a sugar bowl in the very spot where we played our cards. Had it struck either of us there would have been, at that moment, a sudden death in the Ninth. As it was we all passed immediately out of that game.
This brings to my mind still another game of cards played under peculiar circumstances. On the day of the mine explosion in front of Petersburg, four of our company were engaged in a game of poker. (I mention this incident, with the full knowledge that not an officer of our regiment knows what that is or ever heard of the game.) We used sutler's tickets for chips. At the time the game was on, the battle had been fought and we were repulsed. The enemy still kept up desultory firing, his bullets occasionally whistling over our heads, but not near enough to disturb the game. During our playing General Grant, accompanied by an officer of high rank, whom we took to be General Meade, passed down the line
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GRANT STOPS A GAME OF POKER.
within three feet of us. They took no notice of us, however. We had a good view of Grant, who was smoking a cigar, and from his facial expressions and general manner seemed as unconcerned as a gentleman strolling through his garden. But who can fathom the disgust with which he must have viewed the situation ? It was a most magnificent example of great expectations failing to materialize. Some one had blundered, but not the men who charged into the crater. They never failed to do their duty. Grant's presence caused a cessation of the game for but a moment, when he had passed on out of sight and it was resumed. I sat on the left of comrade Hess. I was not in the game but looking on. My right arm was thrown high up over his back, my right hand resting on his right shoulder. In his left hand he held his cards while his right hand rested carelessly on his right leg. That game, too, came to a sudden and dramatic end. An interloper which stopped not for aces or royal flush caused the excitement to run high. It was a Minie ball which pierced Hess's right hand, passing at the same time through the fleshy part of his leg. The wound in the hand was a painful and serious one, disfiguring that member, if not, to a great extent, destroying its usefulness for life.
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