USA > New York > The Ninth New York heavy artillery : a history of its organization, services in the defe battles, and muster-out, with accounts of life in a rebel prison, personal experiences, names and addresses of surviving members, personal sketches and a complete roster, pt 1 > Part 3
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CHAPTER III.
THROUGH WASHINGTON.
While our newly-arrived soldiers were gazing with admira- tion and wonder on the nation's Capitol, their brothers, scarcely more than fifty miles away, were fighting the bloodiest single
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NINTH NEW YORK HEAVY ARTILLERY.
battle of the war, for the first day of the 138th in Washington was Wednesday, the 17th day of September, 1862, that year indissolubly associated with the battle of Antietam. Had our departure from Auburn been a trifle earlier, it is probable that the whole subsequent history of the regiment would have been very different. Our Camp Halleck predecessors, the 111th, reached the seat of war early enough to participate in the campaign and to make a part of General D. S. Miles's sad sacrifice at Harper's Ferry. A week earlier in Washington, and there might have been no 9th Heavy Artillery, at least for us, and a bloody baptism at Antietam, or a surrender at the scene of John Brown's foray, would have insured the retention of the nu- merals first assigned us, and we should have continued to be infantry in name as well as deed, as we really were when we went into active service. These are after-thoughts.
To the great majority of the rank and file of the regiment. the rising sun of the 17th revealed Washington for the first time. For many years a city of magnificent distances, she was in 1862 but a skeleton of her subsequent self. The avenues and streets, devised and laid out by M. L'Enfant, the French engineer, were all there and some of the grand public buildings were then as now but the finish. the end of the century knows was yet to be. Workmen were toiling on the uncompleted Capitol. Like pygmies, some of them were seen working at dizzy heights. Looking away from the great building, nearer terra firma, the prospect was not altogether entrancing. The canal connecting the Eastern Branch and the Potomac then, as it continued to do for years afterwards, dispensed an odor that was not altogether aromatic. What it may have lacked in the "two and twenty stenches," ascribed to the city of Co- logne, was fully made up by open sewers and the garbage freely consigned to the streets. Mud reigned supreme, and an army lost in Pennsylvania avenue was not so strange a hap- pening to those who saw this famous thoroughfare in 1861-65 as it might be to them who know it only in its present concreted condition. Our boys who had come so far to save the Capital were not a little disgusted at finding themselves debarred from its chief edifice on account of the exigencies of building. They did. however, walk around it, and unanimously agreed that it was considerably larger than the Court Houses of Auburn and Lyons, larger even than the Capitol in Albany, this being a
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THROUGH WASHINGTON.
long time before New York entered upon the most expensive building feat in America, if not in the world. They concluded that when the dingy surroundings should have disappeared. the structure would stand forth magnificently, an opinion fully justified in later years. The whole eastern space leading off towards Maryland was then scarcely better than a barren waste, broken only by soldiers' barracks, useful, but very far from ornamental. Greenough's "Father of his Country" was on the west side of the building; indeed, there was little then that the visitor now admires, and many a boy disappointedly wrote in his diary: "The city smells bad, and the streets are nasty." However, we were not on a holiday excursion and we knew it, still we had senses such as the armies of the old world never knew, and the ranks as well as the officers had studied enough to enable them to compare and to draw conclusions. Scores of these young men, just from the farm, office and school. if, unlike Napoleon's soldiers, they had not possible marshals' batons in their knapsacks, they did carry to the last day of their service diaries or journals in which they daily entered their thoughts and observations. Nothing like the average American soldier was ever bred save on this continent.
Notwithstanding the novelty of their situation there was no sorrow at the orders to depart, and in the afternoon the line of march was taken up towards the Potomac, the river that for a year and a half had been more often named than any other stream in America. "Old Potomac's Shore" and "All quiet on the Potomac" were in many minds as the boys marched towards the Long Bridge. At their right they could see the Post Office. the Patent Office, the Treasury, and the White House, where Abraham Lincoln was giving his life to the public weal. and nearer by, in a vast cattle corral, was the stubby column which years later was to become the tallest in the land, a monument to Washington. Out upon the Long Bridge we went, the same structure that had borne the soldiers going to Bull Run, and at the close of the day received the hapless, panting fugitives returning therefrom. Forts Jackson and Runyon guarded the Virginia end. Once across the regiment deflected to the right. and bore away towards Arlington, and at 9 P. M. went into camp, our first actual experience of out-of-doors soldiers' life, for hitherto there had been more or less of barracks to cover us. It is Camp Chase in which we find ourselves, thus named
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NINTH NEW YORK HEAVY ARTILLERY.
from Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, secretary of the treasury, one of President Lincoln's advisers. The location is a little beyond Fort Albany, and is on the eastern slope of Arlington Heights. Their first real march was simply a foretaste of what was to follow, but if those men of September, 1862, who paid ten cents each to sundry small boys and darkies for carrying their pursey knapsacks, could have looked forward two years and thus see themselves with the scant baggage of 1864, what smiles would have overspread their faces at the thought of what they now consider essential to their comfort, as compared with what they then found they could easily do without. They were very large bundles that, systematically packed, over- topped the heads of many a soldier, and they had scarcely more than the regulations demanded, but later every man learned to think for himself. As always happened in going into camp. there were marchings and countermarchings. Indeed, getting settled in camp was not unlike the conduct of a dog that in- variably turns around three times before lying down. It was nearer midnight than sunset before the 138th had a chance to really rest. There was a vast array of similar humanity en- camped within sight. and the illuminations from hundreds of camp-fires produced an ineffaceable impression. Tired, satu- rated with perspiration, supperless, our boys lay, for the first time, with knapsacks as pillows, upon their overcoats and under their blankets. Some very neat and careful soldiers, before they slept, stripped and thoroughly dried their bodies. and with clean underclothing next their person slumbered all the better, but there came a time when such care was quite im- possible.
Thursday, the 18th, dawned wet and drizzly, the direct re- sult, every soldier knows. of the terrible day at Antietam, for rain always followed great battles, but the dawn revealed the true character of our surroundings. An old deserted field meant much clearing up, and at it the soldiers went with a discreet lookout for copperheads and rattlesnakes, which all normally constituted northern boys supposed to abound in southern brush. One would like to know how many soldiers ever saw a poisonous snake in Virginia. Seldom did they find anything more startling than a swift. not half so disagreeable as a wood- tick, though it ran across his face as he rested in Old Dominion woods. Some with natural history tendencies noted turtles
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THROUGH WASHINGTON.
with expansive shells, and even found time and ability to catch a rabbit. We were then nearer the enemy than we had ever been before. While before us lay Washington and a sea of tents, in the other direction far-sighted soldiers declared they could see rebel pickets.
It was while drawing rations here that we had our first ex- perience with bullets in motion. A squad of men was standing near a pile of cracker boxes, when the missiles came pattering downamong them. Colonel Welling and Quartermaster Knowles were sitting on the boxes at the time. The colonel explained that a guard detail in a neighboring camp, unaware of our presence, were discharging their guns on being relieved. What- ever the effect in the adjoining camp, it was anything but a relief to us, and we wondered that men could be so careless with shooting-irons.
An inventory of one soldier's knapsack as he spent this day in full sight of Washington, is not out of place. Some men may have carried more, certainly many had less. The man, a pri- vate, was considerably older than the average in the ranks, unmarried, hence in his bachelorhood somewhat more partie- ular than the frisky youths around him. For the owner's com- fort this knapsack contained an extra pair of shoes, an old vest, a pair of drawers, two pairs of socks, a towel, two hand- kerchiefs, one-half quire writing paper, one pack buff envelopes. penholder, stocking-yarn for mending, two blanket-pins, awls, shoe-thread, pins, buttons, beeswax, one pound cheese, and a tin box of honey. This table of contents, when surmounted with rubber blanket. fly-tent, overcoat and woolen blanket, mnade about all that one man wanted to carry, especially when there were. besides, gun, bayonet, cartridge-box, haversack and canteen. Before that soldier again saw his native hills, he found he could reduce that stock very much and still retain a measure of happiness.
Breakfast came late; the hour from 9 to 11 o'clock would have suited better a city night prowler than these active coun- try boys, and when they did get it they could not help contrast- ing the food with that had so recently in Philadelphia. Musts and sour bread. said to have been brought from Auburn, corned bref and a bit of cheese made up the bill of fare. Some fastid- jous lads went hungry rather than eat it. They grew less par ticular as they continued to wear the blue, and long ere they
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NINTH NEW YORK HEAVY ARTILLERY.
had laid it off, this forenoon's spread would have been thought daintiness itself. There was green corn on outlying farms, and some of the boys went for it, and returned at 5 P. M. to find the camp desolate, their comrades having recrossed the Potomac. Creditable work had been done in clearing up the pro- spective camping-place, when at 3 o'clock P. M. the regiment was ordered back to the District of Colum- bia, with Fort Bunker Hill as the objective point. Again industrious civilians are ready to earn an honest penny in carrying overburdened knapsacks, for the march, begun at 4 o'clock, was hot and dusty. Day had long since departed when these soldier tyros filed along the streets of the capital; weary and reekingly hot, they were ready to camp whenever and wherever they got the word. It seeming to be impracticable to reach their destination that night, a bivouac was ordered in the streets on the northern side of the city. There being near by a public square or park. in which, fortunate- ly, Washington abounds, this was utilized, along with the pave- ment, as resting-places. This day's work with that of the pre- ceding had begun to tell on the men, and some, overcome by heat and fatigue, were borne into a neighboring school-house, which thus became a temporary hospital. This edifice, con- spicuous in our records, was probably on the corner of 8th and L streets.
The night, though long, had an end, and morning found the boys making their toilets in a most decidedly public place, viz., the street. Just one week before, the regiment had left Auburn. and the 19th of September was to be noteworthy in the annals of the organization, for at 9.30 A. M. occurred the first death among these more than 1000 men. Porter V. Palmer of Com- pany I.whohad enlisted in Auburn, succumbed thus early to the exactions and privations of a soldier's life. The physicians said the cause of his death was congestion of the brain. He was only nineteen years old, and his life of patriotism was ended almost before it began. The sad tidings circulated rapidly, and with hushed breath one comrade passed the statement to the next. Only two days before, at Antietam, more than 2000 brave boys in the Union army had fallen in fierce conflict, yet that loss did not have the effect upon these ranks that this one case from our own number had. Death was present. and his grim figure struck terror into hearts that otherwise feared
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CAMP LIFE AND ROAD-MAKING.
not. The regiment passed on, and just one body was left be- hind. later to be sent north, there to impress upon sorrowing friends and the public generally the fact that war is no play- spell. The remains were buried from the Baptist Church, Au- burn. September 28th, in the North street cemetery, the exer- cises being the most impressive of the kind that Auburn had, as yet. beheld. The funeral procession was led by the band of the famous Dan Rice, whose circus was then in the city.
Though death is present, the living must eat. Yesterday's rations help along, and by running the guard extras may be purchased. Watermelons at twenty-five cents each are tooth- some, and many are sampled. At 11 A. M. the line of march is again formed, and at 1 o'clock camp is pitched at Bunker Hill. It does not take long to dig a well, and to put up our tents. All agree that the water and the place are improve- ments on Camp Chase, and in Camp Bunker Hill our Wayne and Cayuga boys may be considered as settling into genuine military life.
CHAPTER IV.
CAMP LIFE AND ROAD-MAKING.
The 138th New York found itself on high ground with no less than six forts in sight, and with several camps, similar to its own, near by. Letters written here were usually headed, "Camp Bunker Hill."
Though, as stated, wells were dug the soldiers soon learned to like better a neighboring spring, whose waters were worth making the journey for. The first night in their new quarters was broken by distant cannonading. which the boys at first thought to be thunder. Considerably startled, the slumbers of certain ones were effectually ended, and so crawling out. a real ramp-fire, their first one, was formed, around which stood the colonel and others. Very likely the sound came from Lee's re- treating forces. followed by the Union army after Antietam. Morning brings the reveille, and the many calls incident to vamp life. Breakfast is had from bread and coffee; some have to do guard duty. Naturally, with the battle of Antietam so urar and so recent, sentinels are nervous, and imagination sup-
-
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NINTH NEW YORK HEAVY ARTILLERY.
plies what the situation lacks. One man, standing on the edge of a wood, thinks that he hears and sees something in a neigh- boring bush. Getting no response to his challenge, and sus- pecting the immediate proximity of ubiquitous rebels, he fires his gun and follows up the discharge with a vigorous thrust with his bayonet, whereby the latter implement of war is broken short off. Though the camp is in commotion at once, really nothing more serious followed than on the part of the nervous sentry a severe attack of an illness supposed to be incident to the summer months.
Sunday, the first in camp, brought a sermon from Chaplain Mudge, and the Bible class begun in Auburn. It is delightful to note that one good soldier, who had volunteered to stand on guard this day, finds time and disposition to state that while the soil is good, it is more clayey than that in Wayne county, and the prevalence of pine trees with chinquapin and other bushes is especially mentioned. Monday, the 22d of September, begins a routine of work on roads and fortifications, which, however useful and necessary, is particularly distasteful to the members of the regiment. To their minds the work they were doing was better performed by laborers specially hired for such purpose, but the obligations taken at enlistment held them to complete obedience to orders, and they thereupon became knights of pick, shovel and wheelbarrow, with only inci- dental recurrence to military drill supposed to be their legiti- mate province. The purpose of the government to surround Washington with a cordon of forts, and to connect them with excellent military roads, was a wise provision, whose utility was apparent in 1864, when a battalion of this same regiment had the privilege of defending the capital against Early and his men, but the labor of preparation is not enjoyed by one of these soldiers, though they are thereby exempt from the direct danger of bullet and shell. The casual reading of a soldier's diary kept then at this late date, makes one believe that the writer thought of little beside his stomach. The bacon was wormy and the pork rancid; the bread was sour. or there was not enough of it; rarely were the rations and the stomach just fitted to each other.
In a letter home a writer gives this graphic bird's-eye view of the forts about the city: "Having the capital as a centre, with a five miles' radius, describe an oblong circle; then draw inner
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CAMP LIFE AND ROAD-MAKING.
ares with radii considerably shortened. On the outermost line the forts are one mile apart, on the next inner three-fourths of a mile; while the innermost has forts at intervals of one- half mile. Ranges of rifle-pits and occasional batteries con- nect all the forts, which are built to mount fourteen guns." This was a view in 1862. Of course the system was consider- ably modified in subsequent months, but the presentation is quite clear and comprehensive.
On the 22d of September, the president issued his Proclama- tion of Emancipation, and the thinking character of our sol- diery is evident in the comments made. It is on record that one soldier (there may have been others), Sergeant James F. Ames of the 5th New York Cavalry, deserted to the enemy, and became one of Moseby's men, known thereafter as "Big Yankee," dying finally in his boots, thus acting because of his disgust that the war was to be one, as he said, only for the "nigger." No such sentiments were heard in the 138th. On the contrary, these men who had been accustomed to discuss if not to settle all national questions at the village grocery gave to the president's action the most thorough approval; in fact they thought it a more direct means towards ending the war than their wheelbarrows. One veracious chronicler sets forth, in glowing terms, the serenade by the Marine Band, which he heard at the White House in honor of the Proclama- tion, and his pleasure at hearing and seeing the president. There were many representatives among these soldiers of fathers who had long maintained stations on the famous Un- derground Railroad.
As enlisted men, free Americans are called upon to perform many tasks, seemingly menial, hence our boys have to swallow no little rancor when they form a part of sink-digging details, or secure brush to make more comfortable some officer's quar- ters. Of course they do it, but ever with the thought that only the oath compels. Late in the evening of the 24th, seven days' rations are issued, and the boys think there is a chance to exchange their implements of husbandry for those of war. Alas! it is only a canard, and long ere their rations are con- sumed. the possessors are warned, by the sense of smell, that their camp is not supplied with refrigerators.
On the 25th, through the afternoon, cannon are fired. at half- hour intervals, in memory of General Joseph K. F. Mansfield, 3
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NINTH NEW YORK HEAVY ARTILLERY.
killed at Antietam. As yet our boys have not learned the best way of keeping up their camp cuisine, and every man is going it alone or with his tent-mate. The first record of boiled beans is found on the 26th. The New York soldiers never acquired the New Englander's facility in preparing this most useful article of food. The latter baked beans to a turn, and to this day claims that not even those at home began to equal the beans baked under the coals in camp. We New Yorkers took ours in soup or porridge, wholly ignorant of the possibilities dwell- ing in this leguminous object, produced so bountifully upon our own farms.
Our relations with the distinguished secretary of state, Wil- liam H. Seward, were ever most friendly. As early as on our march to Camp Chase, this most courtly gentleman, in a car- riage, rode along our lines. On the 25th he came to Camp Bun- ker Hill, accompanied by an English officer, possibly Lord Lyons, then British minister in Washington, and was extreme- ly cordial in his greetings, even alluding to us as his family and children. Naturally his interest in any regiment coming from his own home would be great, and reasonably it became greater in our case, since his son, his namesake, was second in command. As he often visited us, there need be little wonder that the 138th New York early acquired the nickname of "Seward's Pets."
Sunday, the 28th, was a day of rest in civil life, but it was the soldier's cleaning-up and odds-and-ends day, and we were settling down to something of a routine. So far as known, this day has the record of the very first blood shed in our annals, not on the battlefield, but in simple, prosaic guard duty. William H. Bovee of Company K found his gun loaded. and in some way, by means of this same gun, managed to lose three of his toes. While it left, upon one foot, only two of these useful pedal members, yet with their aid he was able to stub around during the remainder of his term of service. Chaplain Mudge preached in Company E street, Later came the dress- parade and Bible class. In the evening a real old-fashioned re- vival service was held, addressed by a rousing preacher from Cayuga county. Two captains of the 138th also proved their former occupation by preaching. There were from ten to fif- teen forward for prayers. It may not have been at this very meeting, but it was at one of the series that John L. of Com-
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CAMP LIFE AND ROAD-MAKING.
pany F, a Dutchman of the most approved pattern, won im- perishable renown, so far as his comrades were concerned, in a brief speech, which secured for him complete exemption from all religious participation thereafter. It is said that John was present by invitation, and in the experience portion of the ex- ercises, it was very natural for his captain to ask him for some expression of his feelings. To our worthy German, the whole meeting had been nothing but Greek and his notions of religion were exceedingly vague at the best, but he was not the man to refuse an invitation to speak, so removing a large chew of tobacco from his mouth, he quite electrified his hearers with his words, thereby certainly producing the sensation of the evening. He spoke as follows, looking very stern and solemn, "Vel, I haf not mooch to speak mit you, but von dings I vish, and dat ish dat de repels all go to hell right avay, and dat ve all get pack home, pooty damn quick." No one disputed John's sentiments; possibly they had an echo in the hearts of many listeners, but somehow they seemed to lack the familiar relig- ious flavor.
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On the 29th came rumors of a change of base. and everything, except tents, was packed with the expectation of moving, it was said, to Frederick City, in which case we should have gotten into the rear of the Antietam campaign, and had we followed the course taken by the regiment which went in our place. we should have been at Gettysburg, at Chattanooga, and later with Sherman in his march to the sea. But Colonel Well- ing and Lieutenant Colonel Seward made a trip to Washington, and on their return said that the 137th New York would go in our place. The subsequent career of that organization is out- lined above. Prices current for breadstuffs are indicated in the following entry for this day: "Traded bread for pie, eight loaves for one small pie."
The camp continued restless, for the air is full of rumors of moves, and on the last day of the month came orders that a part of the regiment should march the next day to Fort Kear- ney. During our stay here considerable work was done on Fort Totten, a little to our northeast. Here also was performed our Brat picket duty. Lieutenant Freehoff returned to his company, "I." one day from headquarters, and in the street called out, "I want twenty-five men to volunteer. Who has pluck to go with me on picket?" The wait was short, for in a twinkling the street
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NINTH NEW YORK HEAVY ARTILLERY.
was full of men, all anxious to go. "By Shimminy," remarked the German officer, "you all has pluck, I guess;" and he takes bis men from the nearest tents to fill his detail, and reports. There must be the first experience in all lines of life as we go through it, and the solemn charge that an attack from guer- rillas was expected and that consequent extra vigilance was necessary, did not tend to lessen the nervousness of these men on their first trial in this line. All through that long night they heard the veriest crackling of the dry underbrush in the woods, occasioned by mice or weasels, and whippoorwills' cries were sadder than ever, but nothing more serious than the rounds of the picket officer was encountered. When, however, they returned to camp with their labor done, what stories they had to tell; vastly more thrilling than when, two years later in the valley, they really stood within the rebels' reach.
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