USA > New York > Cayuga in the field : a record of the 19th N. Y. Volunteers, all the batteries of the 3d New York Artillery, and 75th New York Volunteers > Part 21
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Early in the morning our position was energetically attacked by a strong force of the enemy, who came up under cover of a fog, to the edge of a heavy piece of timber not sixty yards away, extending nearly to the railroad. The engagement lasted four hours. Half that time the rebels were within point blank rifle range, in the woods, and firing on the Battery, which had no other protection than that which was inherent in its ammunition. The enemy first tried a flank movement on Potter's right. Being repelled, they tried his left, but were driven by the reserve. The Battery was once left without infantry support and had to skir- mish for itself, which it did with excellent success, its cannister clearing out every rebel from its front. It did good execution. One of the guns laid low ten of the enemy with one shot, a spherical case, which is a shell filled with bullets. Bossler was slightly wounded during the fight and a horse waskilled. These were the only casualties in the Battery. The brigade lost So. Finding Potter invincible, the men in gray suddenly retired with ranks smaller by 100 killed and wounded for their pains.
Next day, the 8th, Gen. Potter had works made for Battery F's better protection.
It was no part of Gen. Foster's plans to remain so near the railroad and allow the rebels to work it day and night, under his very nose, with impunity. Off towards the left, in the direction of Coosawhatchie bridge, there could be made out, even with the naked eye, some very formidable works, built in the form of
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ON DEVAUX NECK.
four half moons, interlapping. It would not do to assault these works, but there was a way of rendering the railroad useless to the Confederates and steps were now taken to make it so. On the 9th, Battery F opened fire on the railroad, right and left, giving the guns a good elevation, while a large force of pioneers went forward in front and cut a wide slashing through the woods to unmask the railroad. The Battery fired off a large lot of damaged ammunition and kept at work till sundown, when the slashing was completed. Our pioneers in retiring provoked a charge from the enemy, which was repulsed with great loss. Thenceforward the railroad was under fire from our guns, and whenever a train ventured by, day or night, it was shelled. Sev- eral capital shots were made and cars and engines smashed thereby.
On the 10th, the horses of Battery F were unharnessed for the first time since coming on to Devaux Neck. It had not before been deemed safe to take their harness off, lest emergencies might arise requiring a sudden move. The men had slept at their posts. On this day, distant heavy booming of cannon was heard in the south and the army knew that Sherman had come down to the sea. He was indeed before Savannah. Ac- curate tidings of it reached Boyd's Neck on the 12th and Gen. Foster ran down on a gunboat to open communication with him by water, which he did next day.
About this time, Battery F received an accession of twenty- five recruits.
On the 14th, tidings came of the capture of Fort McAllister at Savannah the day before. All the troops turned out to cheer. The Johnnies answered from their lines with a screech.
As the investment of Savannah was in progress, it was more than ever important to break up all travel on the railroad. Gen. Foster brought two 30-pound Parrots and mounted them in a swamp battery in the Coosawhatchie. With these, and Bat- tery F, 3d Artillery, to use Gen. Sherman's terse expression, he "whaled away " day and night at the railroad and the bridge, and with good effect, for the passage of troops and supplies by rail to the relief of Savannah was stopped and the running of trains for any purpose was rendered more and more infrequent. And withal, the enemy was kept so stirred up with apprehension that 6,000 men were detained in Foster's front from rein- forcing Hardee at Savannah.
About the 15th, the remainder of Foster's column was brought up from Boyd's landing. Battery B, Capt. Mercereau command- ing, and Battery A, 3d Rhode Island Artillery, immediately re-
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lieved Battery F on the lines. The latter went to the rear a short distance for rest and was parked as reserve artillery. On the 17th, the Parrot " swamp angels " were moved to a position nearer Coosawhatchie bridge, and thereafter, with the assistance of Batteries B and F, who were alternately at the lines, the rail- road was effectually neutralized and travel broken up. The fact alarmed Gen. Hardee, in command of the garrison at Savannah, as to his safety in retreat, and materially hastened his evacuation of the city. He abandoned it to Sherman on the 20th.
The capture of Savannah was announced on Devaux Neck on the 23d. There was great excitement and cheering in all the camps.
No further forward movement was made by Gen. Foster for several weeks. On the 16th of December, Gen. Halleck had placed him under the command of Gen. Sherman, and as that officer was resting, reclothing and refitting his victorious army in Savannah, preparatory to his great March to the North, no ac- tive operations were for a while desirable. Foster's forces quietly held | their position on the Neck, improving the op- portunity to obtain the rest they too so urgently needed. From time to time, a skirmish took place, and Batteries B and F were both called on, on several occasions to reply to guns the rebels brought down on the opposite side of the Tullifinny to disturb our camps. The Batteries invariably gave the enemy all they wanted, and more too. Rebel deserters came in every day in great numbers. Once, on January 14th, a Ist Lieutenant and Surgeon came in and reported that their Colonel would bring his regiment in, if assured of pardon. A lot of President Lincoln's proclamations of pardon were accordingly tied to a ramrod and fired over by a gun of Battery F. The only reply, however, was a bullet. The regiment had undoubtedly been withdrawn from the rebel lines. The supposition was confirmed at night by the sound of the wagons and artillery of the enemy moving towards Charleston. Next morning no pickets of the enemy were visi- ble. Our pickets were pushed out to reconnoitre. They soon sent back intelligence that the enemy had retreated from our whole front. Several regiments were immediately thrown for- ward and the enemy's powerful works on the railroad, with the railroad and bridge, were seized and held. A regiment was also sent out on the road to Charleston, and at the little village of Pocotaligo, six miles away, formed a junction with the 17th Corps, under Gen. Blair, which had come up that day from Sa- vannah, by way of Beaufort and Port Royal Island.
Sherman was now mustering his army for his "great next.'
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SHERMAN PREPARING FOR HIS "GREAT NEXT."
His 17th Corps was at Pocotaligo. The 15th Corps now marched up to Cooswhatchie. The main body lay at Savannah ready to march at the word of warning. January 19th, Sherman wrote to Gen. Foster, turning over to him the city of Savannah and forts dependent, and indicating in general terms the course he intended to pursue, which was to strike out for the heart of South Carolina and smash things generally in the State and then direct his march on Raleigh. Foster was to remain on the coast and advance on that cradle of treason, Charleston, and capture it, a disposition of matters most congenial to his feelings.
Foster prepared at once to enact his part of the drama of the March to the North. A portion of his forces were sent to Morris Island and Bull's Bay under Gen. Potter, to operate from that direction and amuse the enemy with demonstrations. The rest, abandoning Devaux Neck as no longer a position of any use, he concentrated under Gen. Hatch at Pocotaligo. Amongst the former were Battery B and Battery F, 3d New York Artil- lery.
The grand movement began February Ist. The 17th and 15th Corps advanced from the vicinity of Pocotaligo ; the 14th and 20th from Savannah. Gen. Hatch took the wagon road to Charleston and marched to the river Combabee, holding in check the rebel left wing, while Sherman "smashed things" in the interior. Here, by the order of Sherman, he waited till the latter had reached the vicinity of the city of Columbia, mean- while entertaining the force of rebels on the opposite bank by demonstrations of a desire to cross. About the 17th of Febru- ary, he pushed his way across the river with two brigades and Lieut. Clark's section of Battery F, and by slow but steady marches advanced to Charleston. He found the city evacuated. The rebels had fled in precipitation without waiting to give him battle.
Lieut. Titus's section of Battery F and Battery B crossed the Combabee on the 20th with Hatch's rear guard. They reached the Ashepo that night, and the Edisto on the 21st, passing through a beautiful region, full of magnificent planta- tions. The troops foraged freely on the country. Chickens, honey, fresh beef and pork and fruits were the almost daily bill of fare. The day had gone by to be punctilious about subsist- ing on the enemy, and Sherman's bummers were not more suc- cessful in searching out the good things of the land than the men of his Coast Division under Gen. Hatch, "It is a war right old as history," said Sherman to Grant in extenuation of the
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practice. The quotation is respectfully referred to Gen. Patter. son of the old Army of the Shenandoah for meditation. On the 22d, still on the march, the army passed the house of a rebel paymaster, from which the men obtained $75,000 in Confederate money. On the 23d, coming up with the head of the column at Rantoul's bridge, Battery F was consolidated again.
Next day, Lieut. Titus took twelve teams to Willstown, on the Edisto, escorted by a detachment of the 25th Ohio, to bring in some light artillery found in deserted rebel earthworks there. They had been abandoned hurriedly ; not a gun was spiked, a rammer carried off, nor a carriage disabled. Titus brought away four 6-pound rifles and two 24-pound rifles. Several large ones were left for lack of transportation. The enemy had the best and strongest works, facing the Sea Islands in all direc- tions. Lieut. Breck, the same day, visited one of them on the Stono and brought in its guns.
Batteries B and F reached Ashley river on the 27th to find that the infantry had already ferried across. They lay on the bank that night. Next day, towards night, they crossed, Bat- tery B in the advance, and moving down into the city, they camped on the spacious green of a long, imposing, castellated building, called the Citadel, or the Southern Military Academy.
Since landing on Boyd's Neck, the Batteries had been three months in the field without camp or garrison equipage ; had fought many battles ; fired over 3,000 rounds of ammunition each, and marched two hundred miles in the enemy's country. The men showed the effects of hard campaigning in their sun- burned faces and rather ragged uniforms, but were healthy and in the best of spirits, and ready for more fighting at any moment.
It may be interesting to note, that the road over which Gen. Hatch had advanced. to the capture of Charleston, was the scene of many hard marches and some hard fights of the Revo- lution. The British General Patterson came up by this route from Savannah in 1780, to join the siege at Charleston. At Rantoal's Creek, and other places upon it, Tarleton, Marion, and Col. William Washington had fights.
The first artillery in Charleston was a detachment of Battery B, which, by Capt. Mercereau's order, had remained at Fort Shaw, Morris Island, since November, to act as its garrison and to take charge of the camp and garrison equipage of the Bat- tery. During the night of February 17th, the glare of an exten- sive conflagration caught the attention of our sentinels on Morris Island and the blockading squadron. Soon, tremendous con- cussions from the city told the tale of exploding gunboats and
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IN CHARLESTON.
the destruction of military stores. About 7 o'clock in the morn- ing, an orderly rode into Fort Shaw to state that the rebels had evacuated, and ordered Battery B to report immediately at the forts at the north end of the island. The men got there at 10 A. M. They embarked on small boats, supplied by blockaders, and were rowed up the harbor to the city. With what thrilling feelings did they now look up to the old flag floating once more over Fort Sumter, as they passed by the sloping heaps of broken masonry that had once been its walls? Reaching the city, the detachment marched to Citadel Green, took possession there and went into camp, and was joined there a few days later by the rest of the Battery.
The desolation of the once proud capital furnished a theme for curious observation and comment to the 3d Artillery boys, who strolled all over it to see its scars and ruins. It was one . of the saddest spectacles of the war. A large tract in the wealthiest and handsomest quarter lay in blackened and smok- ing ruins. Towards the river, in every direction, the buildings were scarred and smashed, and the streets torn up by heavy shells. Grass grew in the streets. Docks were dropping to pieces from decay. Some of the docks, built during a happy peace, once thronged with shipping, were now deserted by com- merce and given over to great grim earthworks and engines of war. The population of the city had been reduced in four years from 65,000 to 10,000, principally by the terror inspired by the shells thrown in from our batteries on Morris Island.
Gen. Hatch gave his artillery a short rest only on Citadel Green. In the course of a day or two, he moved it out to a line of intrenchments west of the city, extending across the peninsula on which it was built from the Ashley river to the Cooper. Here, Batteries B and F remained for a long time, their presence on the lines being precautionary only. The men enjoyed a good rest, and had an opportunity to erase the stains of travel from their equipments and armament and restore them to that state of neatness, proverbial with the 3d Artillery in whatever depart- ment it served.
April 9th, salutes were, fired by the Batteries in honor of the fall of Richmond and Petersburg. The 14th was the day of the formal flag raising on Fort Sumter, the identical flag that Major Anderson had hauled down in 1861, in token of surrender, being hoisted once more with impressive ceremonies, Henry Ward Beecher making an address at the Fort. National salutes were fired by Batteries B and F, as also by the forts around the har- bor, under the direction of Col. Stewart L. Woodford of New
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York, who was in charge of the details of the celebration. After the salutes, our officers went down to the Fort. A few days later, the mournful minute guns were fired on account of the as- sassination of the beloved Lincoln.
On the 23d, information having been received of the armistice agreed upon between Gen. Sherman and the rebel Gen. John- ston, Lieut. Breck, with fourteen mounted men of Battery B, carrying twelve days' rations, rode out into the interior with a flag of truce to communicate the fact to the rebel commandants in our front. He got back on the 26th. The unwelcome tid- ings of a resumption of hostilities came on the 28th. Our Gen- erals being in duty bound to inform the enemy of the fact, Lieut. Titus,.with fifteen of Battery F and some staff officers acting as volunteers for the expedition, was sent out with another flag of truce, to announce the fact. He went to within sight of Orange- burg, meeting various parties of rebels on the way, and keeping a sharp eye out for rebel fortifications with a view to gather use- ful knowledge for future use. He saw none however. The enemy seemed paralyzed by events in the North and were not making efforts to prepare the country for defense. Titus de- livered his message and started back at a gait that would have done credit to Tam O'Shanter, having been warned to return rapidly lest the unscrupulous Johnnies should halt and capture his party. The whole eighty miles was made in less than twenty-four hours, forty rebels riding hard after the detachment down to our picket line at Charleston.
May Ist, Lieut. Crocker and Lieut. Clark, in command of sections, accompanied an expedition of two brigades towards Orangeburg to bring in some railroad rolling stock. Several other scouts took place, one of them, attended by Lieut. Breck with fifteen men, who came back May 27th with Gov. Magrath of South Carolina, a close prisoner, having taken him at Co- lumbia.
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GENERALITIES.
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XIII.
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WITH BUTLER.
Generalities-H and M go to Virginia-Butler Wants More Batteries-E and K Sent to Him-Major Schenck-The Advance on Richmond-At Bermuda Hundreds-E Shells Fort Clifton-Tearing up the Railroad-On to Richmond -Fight at Half-Way House-On the Lines Before Drury's Bluff-A Tele- graph Put to Good Use-The Army of the James Surprised-Charge on Battery E-A Bloody Fight-Out of Ammunition-Ashby Down-Driven Back-The Losses-Butler " Bottled Up"-M at Fort Powhatan and Wil- son's Landing-K at Spring Hill-Has a Fight-Gilmore's Attack on Peters- burg-Smith Attacks-K Shelling Batteries No. 11 and No. 12-The 18th Corps Carries the Works.
The reader of these pages will have discovered by this time that there is very little unity of action amongst the component parts of a regiment of artillery, no matter how great its unity of feeling or how distinctive its reputation as a regiment. In the infantry, the regiments fight en masse, in compact bodies and under their own several battle flags throughout the war. With rare exceptions, the history of any part of any individual infan- try regiment will comprehend the experience of the whole. It is different with artillery. To bring a regiment of artillery-espe- cially one of the magnitude of the 3d New York-into action, would require battles like Gettysburg and campaigns like that of '64 in Virginia. It is never done. A regiment of artillery is too large for the purpose. It is a brigade of itself ; and, as in brigades of infantry, regiments go hither and thither at times
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3D NEW-YORK VOLUNTEER ARTILLERY.
away from the main body, on special service ; so in artillery, bat- teries go from the main body continually and share in operations in numerous departments. It is seldom that as many as three or four of the same regiment fight on the same field. The regimental flags are never carried into battle, but remain at head- quarters and seldom stir thence except to grace a dress parade. The history of an infantry regiment, considered in all its rela- tions as a part of a whole, may be the history of great campaigns. That of an artillery regiment may be the history of a great war. That of the 3d New York comprehends an important part of the War for the Union. Had we chosen to write it with the copiousness of historians who love to go down to the roots of things and relate all the causes of its campaigns, near and re- mote, this work would have expanded to twice its present size. Such a treatment of the subject in a regimental history, however, would be inappropriate, and we have made only sufficient ex- planation of the causes and objects of campaigns, to give the reader of this history a proper understanding of the specific services of the 3d New York.
The connection of this regiment with the campaigns of '61 in Virginia, and of the whole war up to 1865, in North Carolina, with the siege of Charleston and Sherman's great march, has already been told. These pages are yet to relate the important part performed by a battalion of four of its batteries in the siege of Petersburg and capture of Richmond.
And now let us follow the fortunes of the 3d Artillery in Vir- ginia.
In July, 1863, arose the necessity for a General of great vigor to command the Department of (lower) Virginia and North Car- olina. Gen. Foster was on the 11th appointed to that command, and at once proceeded to Fortress Monroe, headquarters of the Department, to enter upon the discharge of its duties. He suc- ceeded Gen. Dix. In August, the 18th Corps, comprising the troops in North Carolina, was enlarged by the consolidation with it of the 7th Corps.
Needing more artillery at Fortress Monroe, Gen. Foster or- dered a grand review of the 3d New York, at Newbern, before Lieut. Stanley of his staff, Acting Inspector General, so that the latter might be enabled to pick out two of the best Batteries to send him, the purpose of the review, however, remaining a se- cret. The review came off October 18th. On the 23d, the Adjutant read orders on dress parade, for Battery H, Capt. Riggs, and Battery M, Capt. Howell, six guns each, to go to Fortress Monroe.
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REORGANIZING THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.
The departure of the Batteries, a few days later, with the 3d New York Cavalry, and some infantry, which had also been summoned to Virginia, was the sensation of the hour. Not a man in the regiment failed to envy their good fortune in going to a field where there was a prospect of more active service than North Carolina promised just then.
They took boats to Elizabeth, N. C., and marched overland, via the towpath of the Dismal Swamp canal to Portsmouth. Battery H and the 3d Cavalry had two skirmishes with guerrillas on the way, at Camden Court House and in the Swamp. A few shells sent them flying on each occasion. Contrary to expecta- tion, the batteries had no active service for some months. H. reporting at Fortress Munroe, was stationed at Newport News, and remained there till March, when it performed outpost duty at Bowen's hill, Deep Creek, and Getty's Station, and, in May, took position till June 30th, near Fort Hazlitt, on the inner line of fortifications at Portsmouth. M did outpost duty at Curri- tuck, Great Bridge, and around Norfolk, Suffolk and Portsmouth till May, being, in the spring of 1864, reorganized as " Veteran Light Battery M."
November 13th, 1863, Gen. Foster, by order of Gen. Halleck, went to Tennessee to relieve Burnside. He was succeeded at Fortress Munroe by sturdy old Ben Butler, probably one of the best Generals and the worst hated by rebels in the United States Army. Ben always had an irrepressible tendency to make him- self disagreeable to rebels, and when, in the spring of 1864, Gen. Grant took command of the Army of the Potomac, for the pur- pose of inaugurating a campaign against Richmond, this tendency overcame him to an extent that he applied for authority to co-operate in the movement. Nothing better suited the wishes of Government, and he was empowered to organize a column, to be called the Army of the James, to move upon Rich- mond, in accordance with a plan proposed by himself, by way of the James river.
April, 1864, found Gen. Grant reorganizing the Army of the Potomac on the banks of the Rapidan, and consolidating it into the 2d Corps, Hancock's ; 5th Corps, Warren's ; 6th Corps, Sedgwick's ; and 9th Corps, Burnside's. It found Butler, strengthening and fitting out the 18th Corps, Gen. W. F. (Baldy) Smith's, at Yorktown, and preparing for the arrival of the roth Corps, Gilmore's, which had been ordered up from South Car- olina to reinforce him.
Needing more artillery, Butler sent his Chief of Artillery, in April, to Newbern, to pick out a couple of the best Batteries 0
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there for service in the 18th Corps. A review being held, Bat- tery E, Capt. Ashby, and Battery K, Capt. Angel, arrested attention by their superior discipline, and received orders forthwith to proceed to Virginia. They came up on ocean trans- ports, and on the 16th, by the commanding General's direction, joined the 18th Corps at Yorktown. They pitched their camps amongst the others of the Corps, which were scattered around the town in every direction.
Butler had now a full battalion of four Batteries of the 3d Artillery in Virginia, the best battalion of the regiment, by the way, comprising 500 splendidly drilled veterans, with 22 guns and 450 horses. A field officer to serve with it was wanted. Major Schenck happened along on the 22d, just in the nick of time, then being on his way to Newbern after successful recruit- ing service at home. Butler stopped him at Fortress Munroe, and sent him to Gen. Smith, and he was assigned to duty as Chief of Artillery on the staff of Gen. W. H. H. Brooks, command- ing the Ist Division, 18th . Corps. The Major remained on Brooks's staff nearly two months. He was with him in all the battles on the peninsula, until after the Drury's Bluff affair, win- ning the warm friendship of his confreres by his soldierly and gentlemanly qualities. He was then ordered to report to Gen. Kautz, commanding the Cavalry Division of the Army of the James, and was with Kautz as Assistant Inspector General on his staff, until after the surrender of Lee at Appomattox. At his own request he was then relieved and ordered to duty in the 25th Corps, on the staff of the ist Division, as Acting As- sistant Inspector General, Gen. Kautz commanding. He was afterwards transferred to the staff of the Corps, as Acting As- sistant Adjutant General. When the Corps went to Texas, the Major, by order, repaired to Syracuse, N. Y., for muster out of service, July 15, 1863.
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