USA > New York > The history of the Forty-eighth regiment New York state volunteers, in the war for the union. 1861-1865 > Part 13
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T HE regiment landed at Gloucester Point, on the York River, Va., on April 23, 1864. It now belonged to the Second Brigade, Second Division, Tenth Corps, Army of the James. The respective commanders were as follows : The Army of the James was commanded by Major-General Benjamin F. Butler: the Tenth Corps, by Major-General Quincy A. Gillmore ; the Second Division, by Brigadier- General John W. Turner: the Second Brigade, by Colonel William B. Barton ; the Forty-eighth Regiment, by Lieute- nant-Colonel Dudley W. Strickland. The troops composing the Tenth Corps were mostly our old comrades, with whom we had been associated in the Department of the South.
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ARMY OF THE JAMES.
The Army of the James was organized for the purpose of moving westward up the James River, and if possible taking the cities of Richmond and Petersburg, at the same time that Grant moved southward from the Potomac by way of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania against Lee.
Lieutenant-General Ulysses S. Grant had now assumed the supreme command of all the Union armies. Hencefor- ward they moved like clock-work in obedience to his will. until the final overthrow of the rebellion. The right man had been found at last who could lead his country's armies
GENERAL GRANT.
to victory ; a quiet man, who had come by way of Donaldson and Shiloh and Vicksburg, and whose military genius will rank in history with that of Marlborough, Hannibal, and Napoleon ; a man of relentless and inflexible determination. whom disasters could not dismay, and who in the hour of final victory could be magnanimous as in the hour of fiery battles he was unshaken.
General B. F. Butler, to whom Grant had intrusted the command of the Army of the James, may not have been a great soldier, but he was a conspicuous politician and military governor, and his care for the lives of his soldiers, the writer
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feels, has never been fully appreciated. His career in New Orleans had been magnificent ; he had coined the word "con- traband," and he had quelled the riots in the city of New York by his very presence. If he was not, therefore, a great military genius, he was a conspicuous figure in the war. The writer first saw him as he stepped on board the steamer City of New York, which reached Fortress Monroe on April 17, 1864, with 400 exchanged prisoners from Mayo's Prison Hos- pital in Richmond. His quaint and well-known figure, gor- geously uniformed, strode up and down the decks, and at the sight of the emaciated bodies of the starved and frozen men, some in the first stages of idiocy, whom the Confeder- ates had sent back to the Union lines, he stamped his foot in wrath, muttering, "Damnable ! damnable!"
General Turner, the division commander, proved himself a brave soldier ; our own Colonel Barton, the brigade com- mander, had long ago demonstrated to us at Olustee and Fort Wagner that he knew no fear.
On April 30th there was a grand review of all the troops at Gloucester Point by General Butler, accompanied by the corps and division commanders. It was an imposing array of 30,000 men, and occupied the entire day from eleven A.M. until night. The army marched in review " in column by division." The bronzed veterans from the Department of the South won hearty cheers. It is noteworthy that we were destined to meet as our immediate antagonists in the battles on the James River our old enemies in the South. Beauregard still commanded the Confederate army that op- posed us, and Colquitt's Georgians, who had defeated us at Olustee, fought us again and again in the battles in Virginia.
On May 4th, the Forty-eighth embarked on the steamer Delaware, and sailed down the York River to Fortress Monroe, and up the James to Bermuda Hundred ; there we landed on May 6th. Bermuda Hundred is the name of an irregular triangle of land at the mouth of the Appomattox. and lying between it and the James River. Here Butler hastily threw up a line of intrenchments from river to river,
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while the gun-boats in either stream completely covered each flank of his army. Thus, in twenty-four hours after the ex- pedition started, it had gained a commanding foothold within fifteen miles of the city of Richmond in a straight line, and not more than eight miles from Petersburg. The movement was a surprise to the Confederates, and caused great conster- nation at Richmond. The rapid and vigorous advance either upon Petersburg or Richmond at that time, it is now known, would have succeeded in taking either city. It was Butler's
BUTLER'S LINES AT BERMUDA HUNDRED.
lost opportunity. But Beauregard was an agile antagonist. With remarkable energy, he rapidly concentrated a respecta- ble army to oppose us, and on the very next day after our landing (May 7th) gave us battle at Chester Heights.
The troops had turned in all their heavy camp equipage and superfluous baggage before leaving Gloucester Point, and were now in light marching order : each man carried his piece of a shelter-tent. his blanket, overcoat, and whatever he needed upon his back. The roads on the line of our march from Bermuda Hundred soon became littered with
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blankets, tents, and clothing of all kinds, which the men had thrown away ; fifty pounds on one's back soon gets heavy after a few miles of marching, and whenever we halted for a rest the men would examine their knapsacks and throw away whatever they could spare. Knapsacks that had been packed full at the start soon were well-nigh empty.
The skill of Gillmore's soldiers in throwing up the earth- works at Bermuda Hundred caused much laughter. Gill- more's achievements in engineering, and the victories he had won in the Department of the South by the skilful using of the spade, caused those useful utensils to be facetiously named "Gillmore's rifles." "Spades were trumps" in the hands of the veterans from Morris Island.
Butler was not yet, however, quite "bottled up" at Ber- muda Hundred. The Army of the Potomac had found that their march from the Potomac to Richmond straightfor- ward met some obstructions which detained them, and But- ler not being ordered to move against Richmond on the south until he should hear the noise of battle from the north side of the James, was compelled in the absence of definite orders to determine his own course of action ; perhaps un- fortunately, he did determine to stand largely upon the de- fensive, and to occupy himself chiefly in destroying the communications of Richmond on the south, and preventing thereby reinforcements from reaching Lee. The first effort he made in that direction after he found his armies securely intrenched at Bermuda Hundred was on May 7th.
The Richmond and Petersburg Railroad was, on the aver- age, about three miles in front of his line of intrenchments. He determined to destroy it, and started out bravely enough on the 7th. Beauregard, however, had succeeded in throw- ing troops into Petersburg the night before, and when Tur. ner's division reached Chester Heights they found the Con- federates in some force in their front. A skirmish ensued. which was indeed on the part of the Forty-eighth-as well as some other regiments who found themselves in the hot- test of the fray -- a square stand-up fight. The regiment lost
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thirty-nine men ; and the Forty-eighth was the only regiment that succeeded in reaching the railroad, and crossed it to a mound beyond. They also destroyed the railroad for some distance. The total Federal loss was about two hundred and fifty; we gained some advantage in the skirmish, but finally withdrew. It was subsequently learned that had the attack been made with more vigor, not only the railroad but the city of Petersburg might have been captured.
On May 12th Butler pushed a still heavier column for- ward, General " Baldy" Smith marching up the turnpike to the right in the direction of Fort Darling, and the left un- der General Gillmore following the line of the railroad farther westward. The Confederates fell back behind Proc- tor's Creek, and occupied a fortified line-one of the out- works of Fort Darling. Gillmore, however, turned the right of their line, and by a brilliant dash carried their position ; he secured also a large number of prisoners ; but the resist- ance was stubborn, and our losses were considerable.
And now occurred the battle of Drewry's Bluff. The cross- purposes of two opposing generals were never better illus- trated. Butler, feeling his way, had determined on the morrow upon a general attack upon Beauregard. Beaure- gard, on the other hand, had resolved to crush Butler by assaulting his lines. Both Butler and Beauregard com- manded their armies in person. The sun set clear and the sky was bright on the evening of May 15th, but during the night a most impenetrable fog arose. Under cover of the fog and the darkness in the early morning-at 3.30 o'clock- the Confederate columns made a furious assault on the right of Butler's lines, and now occurred a most remarkable battle : the rebel columns swept through the Union lines on the right, but in the fog soon became thoroughly mingled with them.
Butler had been poorly prepared for the unexpected as- sault, and unhappily his weak point was on his right, where Beauregard struck him. Between Butler's right and the river there was a piece of open country for a mile, which
10
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was only picketed by a single regiment of negro cavalry. Beauregard seems to have discovered this the night before : at any rate he took advantage of it that early morning and turned Butler's right successfully, and drove his forces back. The fog, however, which had served his purpose so well in masking his attack, now thwarted him ; for, as already said, his forces became mixed with the Union troops so that the greatest confusion ensued. You did not know friend from foe, yet the Confederates pressed on in their efforts to seize the road leading to Bermuda Hundred, when, happily, the One Hundred and Twelfth New York and Ninth Maine (two regiments which Gillmore had sent to reinforce Smith) met them with such stubborn resistance, that the astonished rebels, unaware because of the fog of the fewness of the men who opposed them, first halted and then withdrew. Thus the fog in turn served both armies.
Then Beauregard turned his attention to the forces occu- pying the breastworks at Drewry's Bluff, and massing his columns hurled them three times in succession in desperate assaults against Gillmore's position ; but with unflinching steadfastness the veterans of the Tenth Corps, who remem- bered the lessons of Fort Wagner and had learned the ad- vantage of defending earthworks as against the peril of as- saulting them, three times drove them back. The first two of those three assaults were immediately upon our front, the third was to our left. The following extract is from the pen of Mr. O. G. Sawyer, a war-correspondent of the Tenth Corps :
" The enemy hurled their column upon Turner's division, which held the right of the Tenth Corps, joining the Eighteenth Corps. They formed in a beautiful manner and moved steadily on Barton's brigade. on the right of Turner's division, advancing as if upon parade, and not firing a single shot. Waiting until they had reached a good distance for effective range, the brigade poured into their lines such a terrific fire that the line melted away ; and the thinned and broken ranks, after vainly endeavoring to advance against a storm of bullets, fled, with ter- rible loss, to the woods in their rear. The volleys were as continuous and heavy as the musketry of a brigade could well be, and such as no
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living beings could stand against. The rebels were scattered like chaff, and broke for the woods in a disorganized mass. After great exertion the line of attack was again formed, and again a brigade advanced in splendid style against our line. Again did they receive the terrible fire, and pushed steadily on until a fourth of them lay killed and wounded on the field, when they broke and rushed quickly to the cover of the woods. Our boys gave them hearty cheers, and sent a volley after them. The rebels fought with more than their usual dash and bravery that day, as they seemed determined to crush our army as the only way to save Richmond. They met with a bloody failure. Our men fought splendidly, and the Tenth Corps has established a reputation for fighting qualities that will equal that of any in the army. General Gillmore displayed high qualities in the field, the division commanders also. There were many parallels between this battle and the battle of Inkerman in the Crimea-the hour, for instance, at which the attack was made, the fog, the surprise, the overwhelming numbers of the assailants. the sturdy resistance they encountered, the ' reinforcement of the besiegers, and the final repulse of the enemy. Then there were bayonet charges, hand to-hand encounters, and deeds of heroism around which Obscurity will forever fold her opaque mantle."
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The battle lasted for thirteen mortally contested hours. Butler's loss in the entire engagement was about three thousand ; that of the enemy was much greater. When the rebels tried their hand at assaulting earthworks strongly defended by infantry well armed, they found it as difficult to carry them as we had done.
The Forty - eighth was in the very heart of the battle of Drewry's Bluff, and it acquitted itself with the same steadfast courage in defending fortifications which it had demonstrated in assaulting them. Beauregard subsequently succeeded in driving back Butler's right; that made the intrenchments occupied by Gillmore untenable, since the enemy could flank them ; our forces therefore were com- pelled to withdraw. This was done successfully, and Gen- eral Butler retired behind his fortifications at Bermuda Hundred.
Beauregard, however, was grievously disappointed in his endeavor to demolish Butler's army. The fault was laid to
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the rebel General Whiting, who had been ordered to strike Gillmore heavily and cut off the Union line of retreat, and who failed to accomplish his task. Beauregard insists that Whiting's failure was all that saved Butler's army from an- nihilation.
It had been but ten days since the Forty-eighth Regiment had landed at Bermuda Hundred, yet it had already par- ticipated in one heavy skirmish and one desperate battle, in both of which it had acquitted itself with honor. It had lost three officers and seventy-six men. Captain Moser of Company C was shot through the heart.
When Butler found himself back in his intrenchments at Bermuda Hundred he devised a plan to cross the Appomat- tox and march against Petersburg ; before he was ready for its execution, however, he received orders to detach one corps of his army and a division of the other, and send them to reinforce the Army of the Potomac, now approaching Richmond from the North. It was deemed that the re- mainder of his forces were sufficient to hold the intrench- ments. This was a grievous disappointment to Butier, de- priving him of all power for further aggressive movements ; and his complaint to General Grant (which gave to his posi- tion at Bermuda Hundred its quaint name) contained the phrase, "The necessities of the Army of the Potomac have bottled me up at Bermuda Hundred." Butler selected the Eighteenth Corps (" Baldy Smith's ") and our division (Turn- er's) of the Tenth Corps to form the reinforcement to the Army of the Potomac ; temporarily, therefore, the second division of the Tenth Corps was united with the Eighteenth Corps. On May 28th we marched to City Point, embarking on the steamer Delaware on the 29th, and proceeded down the James River, landing on May 31st at White House, on the Pamunky River, marching nearly all night and all the next day through terrible heat and dust, and joining the Army of the Potomac on the battle-field of Cold Harbor. late in the afternoon of June Ist.
Meanwhile a convalescent camp had been left behind at
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Bermuda Hundred, in which were a number of the Forty- eighth who had been unable to make the hard march. They were assigned, nevertheless, to picket duty daily in front of the intrenchments.
Here the writer rejoined the regiment in the latter part of May. Ten months had passed since his separation from them on the parapets of Fort Wagner; for nine months he had been in rebel prisons-in Charleston and Columbia, S. C .; in Libby, on Belle Island, and at Mayo's Prison Hospital in Richmond. The most of those who had been taken prisoner with him on the bank at Wagner had perished in the Con- federate prison-pens. But few ever returned.
The picket-line at Bermuda Hundred had an adventure one night that deserves a passing notice. The Confederate lines in our front, being found weakly defended one day, were carried easily by assault. They were held for one night, and the videttes thrown far forward in their rear. The writer was one of them, and he remembers spending that night hiding behind a tree, watching out for " rebels" in the woods half a mile away. He recalls vividly also their countercharge in the morning, and the way in which, from his advanced position on the vidette line, at loss of cartridge- box, musket, and all accoutrements, and only by the most strenuous use of sterling legs, he succeeded in escaping a trip to rebel prisons again. The enemy retook their earth- work : indeed, there was no attempt made to hold it.
Meanwhile the regiment was once more engaged in a ter- rible battle at Cold Harbor. Within half an hour after they had reached the battle-field, they were ordered forward to the attack. [The writer adopts the name Cold Harbor, usually used in Federal reports of the battle ; the proper name, how- ever, is Cool Arbor, the word being derived from the name of a tavern in the woods, which had been a well-known resort to citizens of Richmond since Revolutionary times.]
When General W. F. Smith, with the Eighteenth Corps and one division of the Tenth from the Army of the James. reached the battle-field he was assigned his position on the
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ยท
right of Wright's corps; Smith's forces numbered sixteen thousand. The two armies of Grant and Lee now confronted each other on the old battle-ground which Lee and McClel- lan had contested two years before. Although Smith's troops had made a forced march of twenty-five miles, no sooner were they in position than they were ordered to advance. Between the two armies at that point was a broad, gently undulating field, then a thin line of woods, beyond which,
POSITION AT COLD HARBOR.
and in front of a denser forest, the rebels occupied a line of rifle-pits. Over this open field, at four o'clock in the after- noon, forgetful now of their fatigue from their long and dusty march, Smith's forces rushed, making a most furious charge, and in the face of a murderous fire captured the first line of rifle-pits, taking about six hundred prisoners. Then they pushed on. assaulting a second and much stronger line ; but the rebels held it firmly till night came on, and the strug.
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gle ended. In those two desperate assaults our forces lost fully two thousand men; but they held every inch of the ground they won, and bivouacked that night at the advanced point which they reached. They were partly in the shelter of the thin woods, but they found little rest that night, for the enemy made many desperate efforts to retake their lost rifle-pits, and annoyed us throughout the night by a con- stant fire.
The part of the regiment in those famous assaults was a gallant one. Colonel Barton, the brigade commander, was wounded, and in the absence of superior officers the com- mand of the regiment ultimately devolved upon Captain Nichols. Lieutenant Ingram was shot at the very moment of taking the rifle-pits. Among the prisoners there was found a female officer of artillery, and it was in the struggle for the second line of rifle-pits that Color-Sergeant Porch was shot, and the colors of the regiment were lost.
It may be doubted if in the whole history of the Forty- eighth a more gallant deed will be chronicled than that of the death of Porch. He had been falsely twitted with cow- ardice at Drewry's Bluff, because he had taken the colors to the rear when ordered to do so, when our forces retired ; some one, who did not know that he was but obeying orders, had accused him of showing " the white-feather." No charge could have stung his noble soul more keenly. Porch was a gentleman and a hero. He had been a student at Penning- ton Seminary, N. J., in 1861. and had enlisted under Captain Knowles -- the first to write his name on the roll of Company D. He was an educated, well-to-do boy from New Jersey, and his death was a spectacle which his comrades ought never to forget. Tantum was his bosom-friend, and just as our men reached that second line of rifle-pits, that bristled with bayonets and swarmed with rebels, Tantum cried to Porch, " Now, Billy, show them that you are no coward." To mount that bank was instant death, and yet without hesitancy and without a word Porch leaped up it alone: he was shot dead by a score of bullets, and throwing his arms
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around his flag, fell with it into the midst of the foe. Not another man followed him. He was left alone there in the keeping of his flag and of glory.
So hot was the fire that day, that not only Porch but every member of his color-guard was shot down. The loss of the colors, although that was caused by the high valor with which they were borne, was a serious blow to the regiment. To lose your colors in battle was esteemed a reproach ; in our case it was, on the contrary, a high honor. That was rightfully recognized at headquarters, for although a general order had been issued, that a regiment losing its colors should not carry them again for three months, yet a special order was issued permitting the Forty-eighth to carry colors immediately.
And now followed days and days of fierce fighting, of charge and countercharge, of holding rifle-pits under the fatal fire of sharp-shooters, and of individual deeds of valor which the writer greatly regrets that he has not space or time to note.
" Baldy" Smith's forces from the Army of the James, vet- erans as they were from the South, and now for the first time merged into the great Army of the Potomac, were yet a distinct portion of it. They did the fiercest fighting at Cold Harbor, and won the only victories of the Union army there. Perhaps they remembered that they were fighting now under the eye and command of the greatest soldier of the war, and in association with an army which was immortal. The high honor was reserved for them to cover the move- ment of the Army of the Potomac to the left, when Grant's final great march by the flank transferred his army from the front of Richmond to the front of Petersburg.
On June 2d the Forty-eighth held a portion of the rebel line on the left of that which had been captured on the night of June Ist. That night Lieutenant Barrett was again wounded-a wound still more serious than that re- ceived at Wagner. The casualties of the regiment dur- ing the first twenty-four hours at Cold Harbor were five
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officers killed, four wounded, and eighty enlisted men killed. wounded, and missing. On June 3d the regiment was moved from point to point along the Union lines; hard fighting was constantly in progress. On June 4th it was moved to a still more exposed position. On June 5th, 6th, 7th, Sth, and gth it was constantly in the rifle-pits, un- der a fire that never ceased by night or day-first on the right, then on the left, then at the front; and everywhere it sustained its reputation for valor and efficiency.
The ground between the lines of the contending armies was strewn with dead and dying soldiers of either side, but so incessant and so hot was the firing that it was certain death to attempt to reach them. The crash of artillery, the ceaseless rattle of musketry, the 'glare of flashing guns by night and day, the "yells" of the Confederates and the " cheers" of the Federals, were constantly heard. Indeed it was a succession of battles-none of them decisive.
On the night of June 1Ith special precautions were or- dered, from which the men at the front inferred something definite was now about to occur. The next day rumors were current that once more the Army of the Potomac was to change the base of its operations. At dark that night the Forty-eighth relieved the Seventy-sixth Pennsylvania in the rifle-pits on the left, and as they moved to the place as- signed them they were informed that Burnside's Ninth corps had already gone, and that " Baldy" Smith's forces from the Army of the James were to hold the lines until Meade's army should get away. The fear was not unwar- ranted that they were to be sacrificed for the salvation of the Army of the Potomac.
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