USA > New York > Clinton County > History of Clinton and Franklin Counties, New York : with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 27
USA > New York > Franklin County > History of Clinton and Franklin Counties, New York : with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 27
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The writer's authority for withdrawing the regiment never was questioned.
We rested the second day, and the whole army reor- ganized for the third.
Grant desired to drive the enemy from his seeond line.
At four A.M. of the 3d he intended to make the attempt, and issued his orders aceordingly. By that hour on the 3d the 18th Corps was formed for the charge in three lines : first, a heavy skirmish line ; seeond, a line consisting of regiments deployed ; third, a line formed of regiments in solid column doubled on the eentre. The 98th was in the third line. The whole army advanced together at sun- risc.
The corps lay that morning in order of battle from right to left,-the 9th, the 5th, the 18th, the 16th, the 2d. Wil- son's cavalry was on the right, and Sheridan's on the left, towards White House and the Chiekahominy.
Within twenty minutes after the order to advanee had been given one of the most sanguinary battles of the war, " quiek, sharp, and decisive," had transpired, and ten thou- sand of the Nationals lay dead or wounded on the field. By this battle the Army of the Potomac gained nothing, but the 18th Corps captured and held a projecting portion
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HISTORY OF CLINTON AND FRANKLIN COUNTIES, NEW YORK.
of the enemy's breastworks in front. The 98th knew well the ground that it helped to capture, for there lay its dead left on the night of the 1st. Within a few yards of the line lay privates Strickland, Osterhouse, Drury, Lownds- bury, Thomas, and others, victims of Gen. Devens' blun- der. One day's sun had turned them black.
The men at once began the construction of a breastwork, using their hands, tin cups, and bayonets. Later, they procured picks and shovels. They laid the dead in line and covered them over, and to build the breastwork used rails, logs, limbs, leaves, and dirt. The enemy's shells, solid shot, and rifle-balls all the while showercd upon them and hit every limb and twig about or above them. Noth- ing saved us but a slight elevation of the ground in front. A limb cut by a solid shot felled Gen. Marston to the ground. Three boyish soldiers, thinking to do the State service, picked him up, and were hurrying him to the rear, when he recovered his consciousness and compelled them to drop him. He soon walked slowly back to the front.
In this advance, and during the day, our regimental flag received fifty-two bullet-holes, and the regiment lost, killed and wounded, sixty-one. Col. Wead rose to his feet an in- stant on the captured line, when a rifle-ball pierced his neck and cut the subclavian vein. He was carried back to the barn beside the road, where he died the same day.
Frederick F. Wead was the son of Samuel C. Wead, the business partner of Hon. William A. Wheeler. He was in stature about five feet five inches, of light complexion, firmly knit, and strong. Naturally intelligent, shrewd, quick of apprehension, he promised to become one of the most reliable and efficient officers in the army. At the time of his death his regiment was one of the largest, best- drilled, and best-handled in the 18th Corps. Heckman, Weitzel, Devens, Brooks had rested their arm upon it for support. Young, ambitious, hopeful, the patriot will drop a tear on his grave. None gave his life more bravely and freely than he.
The army constructed three principal lines of breast- works, varying from twenty to fifty yards apart. These lines were connected by deep zigzag ditches or approaches, furnishing secure passage back and forth to the different parallels. They were all filled to overflowing with troops, and by the 5th were sufficiently strong to defy assault.
Though the effort to advance ceased on the morning of the 3d of June, the firing was maintained, uninterrupted, by both armies for several days.
On the night of the 4th the 98th moved from the second line through the approach to the front line, and relieved the 118th New York and the 10th New Hampshire. It had barely time to take its position when the Confederates made a night attack along our whole front. For twenty min- utes before the rain of shells and balls was terrific; the mis- siles tore and screamed and sang and howled along the air. Every branch and leaf was struck ; every inch of the trees and breastworks was pierced. Then the firing ceased along his line for a few minutes, while the enemy crossed his breastworks and formed for the charge, when
" At once there rose so wild a yell, As all the fiends, from heaven that fell, Had pealed the banner cry of hell."
But no living thing could face that " rattling shower" of ball and shell which poured from our lines upon them. They fell to the ground, they crept away, they hushed the yell of battle. The horrors of that night assault baffle description. One may as well attempt to paint Niagara or a conflagration, Waterloo or Gettysburg. The roar of our cannon and redoubled volleys surpassed the thunder of heaven.
Lec's effort failed ; the battle died away. How his army got back and with what loss history has never written. His wounded crawled back to his lines, and a long. gray swath of dead men lay before them in the morning.
During the 5th an assault was made on the left. On the 6th, Burnside and Warren were transferred from the right to the left of the army, when another night-attack was made on the right. During these efforts the enemy shelled and fired upon our front with more than his accustomed energy.
On the 7th, Grant's line was extended to the Chicka- hominy, near Bottom's bridge, where the enemy was found in force.
On the night of the 5th the 98th was relieved by the 21st Connecticut, and ordered to the third line in the rear. Since June 1st we had lived among the dead and breathed the putrid air. There, for the first, we had an opportunity to eat, to sleep, to wash in running water, to change our raiment and feel clean. We compared ourselves to the young Shunammite, whom Elisha raised. During those five days no surgeon came near us. The writer, with Josiah Cook, hospital steward, and brother of Sydney G. Cook, of Sodus, held the regimental sick-calls in the trenches under fire. Some of the sick were sent to the rear, others were allowed to lie down in the shade where the breastworks were securest and highest.
June 7th, the 98th returned to the first line, where it remained until the evening of the 10th, when it was re- lieved. On the 12th it was marched back to White House. Embarking on the 13th, it arrived in the old camp at Ber- muda Hundred on the 14th.
During the twelve days at Cold Harbor the regiment lost one hundred and twenty-one officers and men killed and wounded. It received the highest praise from its brigade and division commanders.
Capt. L. A. Rogers died of his wound July 9th, at Wash- ington. He was a brave and efficient officer. His courage and administrative ability were at a premium. Flattering positions were several times offered him on the brigade and division staffs.
CHAPTER XXIII.
MILITARY HISTORY-(Continued).
The Ninety-eighth Regiment-(Continued).
JUNE 14TH finds the battle-scarred regiment back to Ber- muda Hundred. In the afternoon of the 14th we re- ceived an order to cook three days' rations, supply the men rounds of ammunition in cartridge-boxes and twenty in pockets, and be ready to march in the morning at four
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MILITARY HISTORY.
o'clock. The rations were drawn, and the cooks set to work. We subsequently learned that we were to go to Petersburg, this time up the right bank of the Appomattox.
The reveille sounded on the morning of June 15th, at three o'clock, front division headquarters, and far and near, in wood and dell, on field and hill, the call was repeated upon bugle, drum, and fife. The men hurry for wood and water; a thousand kettles for coffee and meat soon hang over the blazing fire, and the cavalry and artillery horses are soon eating from their hanging nose-bags the forage of oats and eorn. The rank and file pack their tents and bag- gage and carry them to central places for store and guard. Near four o'clock men and animals have finished their morn- ing meal. Another call issues from headquarters, and the regiments begin to take form and line. The men laugh and joke and sing, as if a hunt were up. Orderlies and staff-officers riding recklessly in the greatest haste, scatter over the fields and through the woods and openings, and designate the order of march. All are soon on the way ; the cavalry first, the infantry next, and the batteries last, then
" March the heavy mules securely slow, O'er hills, o'er dales, o'er crags, o'er rocks they go."
We crossed the Appomattox on a pontoon at Point of Rocks, and, turning to the right, took the river road to Petersburg. As we aseended the right bank of the river, a wide prospect of fine, well-tilled farm lands lay before us, extending to the James, and the morn, in russet mantle elad, walked over the dew of the high eastward hills.
The object of the movement and the nature of the ground determine the order of march for an army, the kind of troops in each column, and the number of columns.
The advance- and rear-guards are usually light troops, infantry and cavalry ; their strength and composition de- pend upon the nature of the ground and the position of the enemy. They serve to eover the army and to hold the enemy in check until the commander has time to make his arrangements and dispositions. The Austrian Gen. Neiperg, who fought against the Great Frederick, in Silesia, was dis- tinguished for the manner in which he surrounded and con- cealed the movements of his army by clouds of light troops and skirmishers.
On our marches, not in presence of the enemy, the troops marehed en route by the flank. They were allowed to talk and smoke, and sing, and carry their arms at will, but not to leave the ranks. No honors were paid, no salutations made on the march.
The batteries of artillery moved with the divisions to which they belonged. The field-trains and ambulances followed at the rear of the corps, and the baggage with the rear-guard. Artillery, trains, or troops halted on the road, formed in file on one side, and infantry arriving at their destination formed in close column, and took their place in order of battle. Halts to rest and reform were frequent, and the orders given at the head of the column were re- peated in all the organizations.
Three or four miles out, we comprehended and ascertained the disposition of our advancing forces. Gen. Martindale with one division took the right along the river, at his left was Brooks' division, then Gen. Hinks on the left of Brooks,
and, last, Kautz with his cavalry on the extreme left. The colored brigade of Gen. Hinks was in the front, deployed. A thin line of Confederate skirmishers fell back before his advance. From them he captured an incomplete line of rifle-pits and two brass field-pieces. Inspirited by this sue- cess, we pressed forward with vigor, and by ten A.M. had driven the enemy within his intrenehments before Peters- burg. We spent the rest of the day in taking and leaving positions, skirmishing, and pressing closer to the enemy's works. Had Gen. Smith, who was in command, ordered us forward, we could have captured the city at onee.
The enemy had a strong line of works garrisoned by a few militia soldiers.
Smith waited for Hancock, who had crossed the James the day before, below Harrison's Landing, with the 2d Corps, to come to his support ; and as the van of the Army of the Potomac, the divisions of Gibbon and Birney approached, near six P.M., he ordered his line to advance.
Marston marched backwards and forwards behind his regiments, stopped every rod or two, and counseled his men to keep steady, saying, "Don't be afraid; we are ten to one of the enemy." We advanced, and in ten minutes captured four redoubts, two and a half miles of the enemy's intrenchments, fifteen guns, and three hundred prisoners. In this encounter Napoleon Parikee, John McCann, Stephen Premo, and Daniel Finnigan of the 98th were wounded.
At sunset we stood in the fortifications, and Smith lialted for the night, though the moon rose full and clear. Had Smith pressed forward he could have captured the city, but this delay was the turning-point of the campaign. Grant said in his final report, "Smith, for some reasons that I have never been able to satisfactorily understand, did not get ready to assault the enemy's main line till near sun- down,"
From ten until six the whole army stood in line with loaded rifles and shotted guns, waiting the order forward. We all became nervous, weary, exhausted, discouraged. To ourselves we appeared hesitating, intimidated, while the enemy fortified and reinforced ; but when the order came our artillery opened with all its thunder, and the whole line advanced at the double-quick with a shout. In ten minutes the victory was won.
We slept on the reverse of the captured intrenchments all night, heard in our front the sound of moving troops and trains, and in the morning a different class of soldiers confronted us ; for, during the moon-lit watches, Lee's iron- sides, crossing the James below Richmond, had hurried into the defenses of Petersburg.
Early in the morning the 98th was advaneed a few hun- dred yards before the picket, along the near edge of a large eorn-field, and on the farther bank of a stream about twenty feet wide, which ran to the Appomattox, a hundred rods to the right.
When the gray of the morning melted into daylight, the bayonets of Longstreet's grand division glistened before us through the corn-field in the rising sun. We sent to the rear for shovels, and at onec began the construction of a breastwork. In a few hours we covered our frout, and felt sceure. During the day the Army of Northern Virginia entered the intrenehments around Petersburg, and the
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whole Army of the Potomac, with Smith's troops at its right, beleagured the Confederates.
The enemy fired at us from his pickets at intervals, and we lost during the day, killed, Corp. De Gray and Pri- vate Henry Otis; wounded, Serg. Graves and Private Rob- ert Zoller. As Corp. De Gray was lying down on the ground a ball entered his shoulder, and passing the whole length of his body under the skin, came out at the ankle in his shoe.
Near four P.M. the brigade of Gen. N. M. Curtis came to our support, and formed on the left. He subsequently figured at the capture of Fort Fisher.
At six P.M. of that day, the Army of the Potomac was ordered to charge the Confederate lines. Meade had re- ceived the order at two P.M., but it was near sundown be- fore Hancock's, Burnside's, and Warren's corps could make the advance. The foe was behind earthworks, which were often sheltered by deep, primitive woods.
Then again occurred one of the severest and most sanguine battles of the war. The result was an advance of the Union lines, but at fearful cost. From our position, on the top of an old barn at the right of the regiment, we could command about a mile of the battle-field ; we could see our troops run to the charge, and hear them yell and fire. Three times we saw them advance and retire.
The horrors of Cold Harbor were re-enacted ; all night long the battle lasted, and all night long we stood to arms. In the woods and fields, along the fences, hedges, all that summer's night roar of volley and crash of shell were in- cessant.
"Tumultuous murder shook the midnight air."
Orpheus in the shades never heard such shrieks, saw such sights, or sinelt such sulphurous odor.
From ditch to fence, from field to wood, from rank to in- trenchment, leaped the live thunder. Charge after charge was made, battle after battle was fought, the earth shook and trembled, and the noise of the tumult ascended to heaven. What pen can describe, what painter delineate the deeds of heroism, the pains, the anguish, the horrors of that summer's night ? Twelve years have not cffaced from our memory the vision. Imagination stops to trace the scene, and the field is repeopled before us. We see them form and run to engage the foe ; we see the fire ; we see the dead fall to the ground and writhe in agony ; we see the wounded fall to the ground and rise on their hands and knees, or straggle slowly to the rear; we see the serried ranks, the long line of fire, advance; we see them hurled back in defeat and disorder.
On the 17th, Brooks' division was relieved by a portion of the 6th Corps, and sent back to Bermuda Hundred. Butler and Terry had attempted to cut the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad at Port Walthall junction ; but Pick- ett's division, marching from Richmond to Petersburg, had fallen upon Terry and compelled him to retire.
Grant, foreseeing Terry's extremity, relieved Brooks' division, and sent it back to Butler. All day the 17th, and nearly all night, we marched to join Terry. On the 18th, Terry, thus reinforced, advanced and made for Pickett. But Pickett had fortified and rendered his position impreg- nable. The wise, shrewd, and sagacious Terry, deeming
discretion the better part of valor, retired. All that day the division marched, countermarched, took positions and abandoned them, filed through the woods, debouched on the fields, lay down by the fences, or squatted among the bushes, hoping to draw the enemy from his position, or to surprise any straggling troops on their way to Petersburg. When night came, tired, faint, hungry, sleepy, completely dragged out, we sprawled back to camp.
We returned to the right of the Army of the Potomac, along the Appomattox, on the 20th, and learned that the position it then occupied had cost ten thousand men,-from the 16th to the 20th ten thousand men.
We have seen how, by successive extensions of its left, the Army of the Potomac crossed the Chickahominy and reached the James. The 2d Corps, Hancock's, was ferried across that river June 14th, at Wilcox's Landing, a few miles below Harrison's, and immediately marched to co-op- crate with Smith before Petersburg, while the remainder of the army crossed, during the 15th and 16th, on a pon- toon, at Windmill Point, below Wilcox's, three thousand five hundred and cighty feet long, and wide enough for twelve men or five horses to go abreast. About one hun- dred and thirty thousand men, with their long lines of regi- mental wagons, commissary wagons, ambulances, and artillery, successively and without confusion passed the stream. Burnside's corps, composed partly of colored troops, crossed first, and a vast drove of cattle last. During three days the procession continued ; it resembled those northern hordes, somewhat, that crossed the Rhine or Danube, that supplied their wants from an ever-shifting base, and subverted the Roman Empire. Heroes of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North Anna, and Cold Harbor, from their ranks the old, the feeble, have been stricken out, and bloody, terrible, firm- paced and slow, like the tramp of destiny, they move along.
From the 5th of May to the 20th of June the Army of the Potomac had lost sixty-four thousand men, and the Army of Northern Virginia about thirty-eight thousand. The failure to take Petersburg closed the first period of the campaign on the south side of the James ; and the siege of Richmond and Petersburg began when Lce entered the defenses of those two cities, and connected them by a con- tinuous line. On the 20th of June, Lee had about seventy thousand men, and Meade and Butler one hundred and fifty thousand.
If the reader will look at the military map, he will see that Petersburg is the centre of many converging roads ; that from the south there approach, from the Appomattox, below the city, to the same river above it, the City Point Railroad, the Norfolk Railroad, the Jerusalem plank-road, the Weldon Railroad, the Vaughan road, the Squirrel Level road, the Boydton plank-road, the Southside Rail- road, and several others. All these roads figure in the his- tory of the summer's campaign. In August Grant's left lay along the Jerusalem plank-road, and Lee's lines had reached the Weldon Railroad. The defensive works from the north side of the James, a prodigy of labor, and the admiration of military men, reached, subsequently, a de- velopment of more than forty miles, to the vicinity of Hatcher's Run.
On the night of the 20th, while we were marching to
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MILITARY HISTORY.
our old position, on the right of the Army of the Potomac, and along the right bank of the Appomattox, a mile and a half below Petersburg, Butler threw a pontoon across the James at Deep Bottom, and with Foster's brigade effected a lodgment ; at the same time, Grant, with the 2d and 6th Corps, attempted to seize the Weldon Railroad, but was driven back with a loss of four thousand. At the begin- ning of the war, in the days of Big Bethel and Ball's Bluffs, what a wail and a howl this loss would have caused ! Grant does not even mention the affair in his report.
About this time Gen. Stannard, of Vermont, was assigned to command the division.
On the 21st we entered the trenches along the Appo- mattox and those extending towards the left, at right angles to the river trench. The river was about five rods wide, the right bank nearly thirty feet high, while the opposite bank, in possession of the enemy, was low and level, and stretched away in meadow-lands and corn-fields far as the eye could see. The spires of a few churches in Petersburg were visible, and a few trains arriving and departing on the Richmond Railroad. Behind us the country for half a mile sank in a valley, then rose in a ridge, on which were the headquarters of the 18th Corps, and the redoubts and earthworks which it captured on the 15th. There also was a battery, belonging to our division, of twelve-pounder rifled Parrotts, which constantly threw shells over our head into Petersburg.
All set to work at once, digging, burrowing, making bomb-proofs and abatis. The enemy's batteries across the river had an enfilading fire upon us, and compelled us to build the breastworks very high, and traverse them every ten or twelve feet with high cross-works. Looking at our lines from the rear, they appeared like a long succession of stalls. The enemy fired at us constantly from rifles, mor- tars, and cannons.
We had five lines of breastworks, which, eighty rods to the left, were contracted into three; and the corps from right to left lay in the following order, the 18th, 6th, 2d, 9th, and 5th.
Gen. Marston became sick and went north ; Col. Cullen took command of the brigade.
On the morning of the 24th the enemy concentrated upon the division a large force, and apparently all his avail- able artillery. For three hours he poured upon it a perfect storm of shot and shell. The men kept under cover, lay flat on the ground, never fired a gun, while the shells tore through the breastworks or exploded over their heads. Cullen, with drawn sword, and bare head, raged and shouted, yelled and hallooed, flamed and tore along the line of his brigade. He said, " When the enemy stops firing he'll charge upon us. He'll think he has killed us all. Then rise and stand firm. Only be courageous. Don't throw away your fire; draw a bead on them. Don't let a man flinch, but up and at 'em, and by the living God we'll hold the line !" His brigade was along the river-bank, and at right angles to it on the extreme right, and he felt the im- portance of his position. But louder, deeper, heavier, and more destructive grew the enemy's fire. Before it the loose and recently built carthworks were crumbling and leveling fast. The men were killed and wounded by scores. Cullen
fainted away, and was carried on a stretcher through the zigzag approaches to the rear.
The fire at length ceased; the foc leaped over his breast- works, and started on his charge. The division, massed five lines decp, rose up behind its intrenchments, and upon seeing the thin line of the foe that approached, yelled and shouted, " Come in, Johnnie, and we won't fire !" About one hundred and fifty came in, and the rest fled away to their breastworks, and the battle ended.
The 98th lost eight men wounded and twenty-eight taken prisoners. They were on picket down under the bank along the river.
We remained in these trenches holding that line five days in and two days out, until the 30th of July.
Every night from eleven until three the enemy shelled us from his guns in front and across the river, and our casualties were from one to ten a day.
One night a flaming, blazing, hissing shell dropped behind the intrenchment where Corp. Hinman and about a dozen privates were standing. Hinman seized the shell and threw it in front over the parapet, where it soon after harmlessly exploded. Hearing of it we sent for him, complimented him, gave him a note, and sent him to Gen. Stannard. Stannard looked him over as he stood before him, tall and lank, black and begrimed with the dirt and smoke of ser- vice. "I like such men," said Stannard. " He is made of the same material as Arnold Winkelried, Putnam, and Boone. They add romance to the routine of marches and battles. Their living, self-denying courage gilds even the horrors of war. Corporal, here is a pass for five days ; show it to your commander, and then go where you please."
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