USA > New York > To sacrifice, to suffer, and if need be, to die : a history of the thirty-fourth New York Regiment > Part 10
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"The New York Herald, whose circulation, with many others of a like character, has at last, thank heaven, been prohibited in this army, will probably kecp up a huge cry. All credit to Cæsar, whoever he may be, for the suppression of the New York Herald in these parts. Hereafter we shall look for something accomplished, and to see victory acknowledged when it has been gloriously won.'
March 5, grand review by Hooker. This was an imposing event ; but still not so overpoweringly grand as the review later on, when Mr. Lincoln visited the army. March 17, heavy cannonading off to the right. Supposed to be a rebel raid. On the 21st the same thing over on the left. Supposed to be another raid. We were always hearing about these raids; but, like the old darkey's trouble, "the most of it never happened." Occasionally, we get a peep at the sun. It's genial warmth steals along that densely-peopled height, bringing joy and glad- ness. No friend was ever more welcome. Homesickness vanished beneath that gentle touch, and lots of other troubles. Every sort of thing is resorted to by the men, when they have an idle hour, to keep themselves in spirits. Strangely enough, baseball with the men of the Fifteenth Massachusetts, was one of the popular pastimes. In those days the game was not played as in these scientific times. The ball was a soft one, and you plugged a man with it to put him out. Then, as now, it was a great sport. The pickets on the opposite sides of the river also relaxed their awful severity, although it was strictly "against orders." Little cornstalk boats would be floated with messages of friendly interest. There is no mistake about it, " visiting " of this kind is the most delicious diversion in the world. It took dread- fully stern orders to stop it. The men would be at it every chance they got. And more than one commissioned officer even lost his shoulder straps because he could not resist the temptation any more than the common privates, to indulge in this surreptitious pleasure. Think of these men, summoned together to shoot each other down, clasping friendly hands across that river every time they could do it and not get caught. Here, as on the Potomac a year before, there was the swap- ping of commodities, coffee, tobacco, newspapers, etc.
In spite of the reform in the weather, we find recorded, March 21 : " More snow ;" and on the 31st : " Still snowing." On April I General O. O. Howard leaves the division to take command of the Eleventh Corps, and General John Gibbon, succeeds him. Of course, General Gibbon had to have his Grand Review, like all the other generals, and so he looks us over two days later. He seems to like our appearance, and scatters around a number of compliments where the men can pick them up.
But you should have been there to see the Grand Review, April &, when the President and his family-his very own family-and his. official family likewise, were there. Up by the Lacy House, overlook- ing the city of Fredericksburg, is a great plateau; and here the review was held; or rather, we should say, the series of reviews. One dav it
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was all the cav- alry, under General Stoneman, and an- other day, perhaps the artillery; but on the 8th it was the infantry, our corps, the grand old Second, and the Thirty-fourth was just in it.
April 5, a series of resolu- tions was adopted on the occasion of the departure of our much-loved surgeon, Dr. S. N. Sherman, who had also been called to come up higher. He had been ap- pointed Medical Director at Nor- folk, and his new duties took him to the new field. Dr. Bradford S. Manly, who had joined the regi- ment as assistant surgeon the pre- THE COLORS-IS62 vious August, now became the surgeon, and we find his commission dated a month later. Dr. Edward S. Walker, who had been the first assistant surgeon, had resigned November 3, preceding, and gone home. He was succeeded by Dr. J. Hervy Miller. Manly and Miller thus remained our surgeon and assistant till the muster out.
Along about April 20 came the ever-welcome Paymaster King, this time doubly welcome, for he was to bring us four months' pay. Another matter of importance claims attention just here. All through the winter certain companies had been nursing the hope the authorities would consider that their term of service expired on May I. No doubt the great severity of the winter, and the arduous duties and sufferings of the men, gave emphasis to this hope. It is no wonder, therefore, that when the first of May came round, there should have been a little trouble. Many of the men who were in the regiment at the first, enlisted in April, 1861, to serve two years. So read all their enlistment
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papers. The official record clearly reads that they were mustered into the state service May 1, 1861, to serve two years. On June 15, following, they were mustered into the United States service to serve two years. It is but natural that these men should think that their time was out May 1, 1863, for they had served the full two years. But the authorities did not so regard it. June 15 was their date. A few of the men stood out, claiming their time had expired. They were put under guard in camp, surrounded by a detail of the Fifteenth Massachusetts. A large detail from the regiment, among whom was the writer, came into camp on the forenoon of May I, and were greatly surprised to find things somewhat upset. During the day, however, General Gibbon, in command of the division, came over and addressed the men, advising them to make no resistance, but to return to duty, which they consented to do, and the trouble was over. We think every candid mind must admit that the men had a fairly good case. Some of these men had enlisted immediately after President Lincoln's call was issued, April 15, 1861, and as the regiment was not mustered out till June 30, 1863, they were really in the service two years, two and a half months.
But this little incident proved a bothersome thing to General Alfred Sully, who had returned, and was in command of the brigade. He reported to General Gibbon, very foolishly, that " it was not in his power to enforce discipline in his command;" whereupon General Gib- born immediately relieved him. It was shown afterward, by a court of inquiry, that his order relieving General Sully was a little previous, and not exactly justified by the facts ; but General Sully did not return ; but was sent west to fight the Indians.
LIEUTENANT JOHN OATHOUT-1863
But the spring had opened, and there was a stir underground and 'above it. As early as April 28, we began to notice large bodies of Union troops moving to our right. They were the Fifth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Corps of the army, making the initial moves for a position on the south side of the Rappahannock. The First and Third Divisions of our Corps, the Second, also disap- peared up the river; but the Second Division, in which was the Thirty-fourth, did not move until the night of May 2. All day on the Ist the air was full of the thunder of artillery. It came from the direction of Chancellorsville. Late on the night of the 2d, the Thirty-fourth, with the rest of the Division, proceeded to the heights
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opposite Fredericksburg, where we had lain at the time of the first crossing in December. Along in the middle of the night there comes a call for a lieutenant and twenty-five men, to go to the river for a storming party. Now almost any man with an able-bodied imagination can under- stand what kind of duty is expected of men under such circumstances. Such a call means business. And yet it did not take five minutes to obtain all the men wanted. Lieutenant James McCormick, of Company H, was the lieutenant. Colonel Byron Laflin, of the Thirty-fourth, is now in temporary command of the brigade, and GEN. ALFRED SULLY-1862 Lieutenant-Colonel Beverly, of the regiment. Colonel Laflin, in his official report, says : "One hundred volunteers were wanted from the brigade, to cross the river as a storming party, to dislodge the enemy in the town. The call was immediately and cheerfully responded to by 25 men from each of the four regiments in the brigade. Of the 25 volunteers of the Thirty- fourth Regiment, 18 were among the number reported as unwilling to serve longer than the first of May."
We think it is thus clearly shown that the handful of men, who, only the day before, had raised an honest point of order in regard to the date of their service, were not cowards. Although they were so soon to return home, they were ready for any service, however dangerous. Some people would be very much surprised at the quality and kind of men who will volunteer to face a danger of this kind. Who could, by sight, pick out the heroes in a regiment? Would you pick the men who- look the finest, bear themselves the proudest, have the most distin- guished relations at home? It is fair and true to say, that, if you figured it in that way, you would miss it. The men who volunteered on this occasion were, many of them, the very humblest men in the regi- ment ; men who were not after distinction, or commissions, or glory. They were just the common men. It did not seem to them that there was any special courage displayed in their action. They were wanted for some important duty, and out they stepped. It is probable that the whole regiment would have volunteered if there had been any call for it. But fortunately, as it turned out, those who did volunteer did not suffer for it. The bridge was completed without opposition, and on the. following morning we crossed at the same familiar point, and again entered the ill-fated city.
The enemy had been a good deal fuddled over this dividing of the Union army, and heavy operating on both wings; but Lee was not to be caught napping, and had a good strong force in and about Fredericks- burg, ready for whatever might happen. And so all these movements. on our part were conducted under a heavy fire from the rebel artillery, posted on the heights back of the city. While there was some damage done, none of the Thirty-fourth men were hit. Not so fortunately fared
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all the other bodies. As the morning dawned, fair and bright, a brass band, belonging to one of the regiments, went marching gaily down from the Lacy House, playing a stirring air, intending to cross at the pontoon bridge, when a shell from a rebel battery exploded in their midst. It broke up the band right then and there. Long years after- ward, an officer of the regiment to which the band belonged, told the writer that the shell went right through the head of the bass drumn. There was a good deal of maneuvering about during the forenoon. We finally drew out of the city to the west, the Thirty-fourth leading the column. Our movement was along the river, with a wide plain between us and the rebel lines. Across this meadow from where it tapped the river above a wide hydraulic canal. As our movement was perceived, a column of rebel infantry moved westward from its side, the column keeping parallel with ours. The canal flowed between. It was a strange sight, those men in gray, and those men in blue, in parallel moving columns ; and only a little distance apart. Not a shot was fired on either side. But over us, and all around us, screamed and burst the rebel shells. Between those two lines, eyeing each other like cats, each ready for a spring, was the grave of Washington's mother. Not now as in '76, are the North and the South banded together against a common foe ; but facing each other as enemies, and with deadly intent. Have we any quarrel with these men? None whatever. But a short time ago we were fraternizing with them across the river. We thought they were splendid fellows; and so they are. Why now do we thus menace each other? One single note of alarm from either side would set both those columns on fire in an instant ; would cause that thin, gray line to melt, and this blue one, too. But that single note is never sounded. Slowly the lines creep forward, each still watching every movement of the other. Not a gun is fired ; only the artillery being too far away to feel the suppression of the painful suspense, keeps on with its booming; and men behind us, in other regiments, are falling ; for every shot finds a place where it can break through the ranks. Then the thin lines creep back again, back, into the city, and the movement is over. But now it transpires that while we are thus drawing the enemy away from the center to weaken it, another portion of the army has broken through the rebel lines, and is occupying all their heights. And this was Sedgwick's plan. Though we did not fire a shot, we were help- ing in the battle just the same. Now we pass out upon the heights our- selves, south of the city. Through avenues of the dead and dying we pass. Here are a lot of cannon that could not get away in time. Our men were too quick for them. And here are a lot of prisoners. On close acquaintance, a rebel looks much like any other man. Out on the far heights we go, till the view north and south of the river is most noble and commanding. Night comes down, and in the gathering dusk we pass the One hundred and twenty-first New York, which has been gathering glory at Salem Church. There is just time for a hand clasp with a brother in that other regiment, and to make eager inquiries for the living and the dead. Then there is a halt; an ominous one. Then about we face, and back we go, through the city; yes, and over the
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bridge, and up the Heights to the Lacy House; and back of the Lacy House, where we halt and stay. The army is all streaming back over the river. The battle of Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Salem Church, or whatever else you choose to call it, according to the place you happened to occupy, is over; and so ends the second attempt of the Army of the Potomac to get to Richmond by this route.
There are no lists of killed and wounded, or missing, nor any casualties, in the Thirty- fourth in this engagement. Such are the fortunes of battle. A regiment might be placed in a most dangerous position, and still have no losses; and then, in a moment, it might become the focus for a most deadly fire, and have enormous losses in just a few moments. Every regiment has to take what
comes. Never for a single moment can it determine what its fortunes will be. There is no use waving a flag of glory over the great losses of one regiment, and then pointing with disdain to the small losses of another regiment. The cour- CAPTAIN BENJAMIN H. WARFORD-1863 age and stamina of the different regiments probably averaged about the same. Each went where it was sent, and took what came when it got there. The focus of greatest danger was constantly shift- ing, and there was no telling where it might turn up next.
This time we do not go back to our "old camp ground;" but to a new site back of, and just north of, the Lacy House. Here we are to remain until our final move, which will be toward home. Only a few steps from our new camp brought us in full view of the pretty little city lying along the river on the opposite side; the most conspicuous feature of which was always the house on Marye's Heights, with its colonial, columned front. The comrades will recognize it in the pic- ture we give. In spite of its being so many times at the focus of the fire, the present occupant told the writer, at the time he took this picture, that it bore but one wound, and that a trifling one.
CHAPTER XIII
GOING HOME
B UT it was written in " the purple testament of bleeding war," that the fighting days of the Thirty-fourth were over. While & number of officers and some privates had been home on fur- lough, yet, of course, sick or well, by far the greater number had not seen home in the more than two years since they left it. And so now all thoughts turned that way with a great long- ing. The three-years' men, recruits in the regi- ment, were transferred to other regiments. Some of these went to the Eighty-second New York. Here we find the two Wolvers, and Ezra Wright, the former of Company K, and the lat- ter of Company H. A good many men had been transferred to other branches of the service, at different times. On February 17, 1862, there had been a call for volun- teers for the Western Gunboat Flotilla; and all these men were lost sight of at the final mus- ter out, in Albany.
ADJUTANT JOHN KIRK-1863
But we must not be too fast. We are not off
for home yet. About the first of June there was some kind of a move- ment perceptible among the enemy over on the heights. And still the grand reviews keep up. May 23 there was a brigade review ; May 27 a battalion drill ; May 28 another brigade review ; May 29, though hot and dusty, a division review, by Major-General Hancock. June 5, Colonel Ward, commanding the Fifteenth Massachusetts lying next to the Thirty-fourth, wrote in his diary: "This morning we discovered the rebel camps to be evacuated, and everything seemed to indicate that they were off. This afternoon our troops commenced crossing. Sedgwick's corps began crossing about dark."
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Finally, June 9, this same officer wrote in his diary: "This morn- ing the New York Thirty-fourth left for home, their term of service having expired. It seemed like losing a friend, for they had been with us over twenty months." And it was even so. The Thirty-fourth was off for home. And even as we started, began that northward move- ment of the northern and southern armies, which was to terminate so eventfully at Gettysburg, a month later.
But we must not drop the war part of this brief narrative without at least one little glance at the future. The "Herkimer County Regi- ment" has struck its tents for the last march, and that march is toward home. Now its arms are
stacked; its flag is furled ; its
fighting days are over. But it is suggestive to take a very brief glance ahead. Within three weeks from the time we left our last camp occurred- Gettysburg. What would have been our fate had our term of enlistment expired a month later ? If you go down to Gettysburg, and stand in front of the great bronze volume, which indicates the "High Water Mark of the Rebellion," you will find your- self standing very nearly where the Thirty-fourth would have stood had it been present at that engagement. Just beyond, along the avenue, which is now more frequently thronged than any other on that great historic field, are the markers, which indicate where the brigade stood on that eventful third SURGEON SOCRATES N. SHERMAN-1861 day of the battle, when Pickett's Division emerged from yonder woods, and made its auda- cious march across these level fields. How brief appear the lines which mark the standing ground of whole regiments. Near the Emmettsburg road, it was that Hancock, the Superb, on the second day, dashed up to the line, demanding, in his imperious way, "What regiment is this?" in the same instant ordering the First Min- nesota to assault the advancing column of the enemy, now nearing the "clump of trees." And here, in no more time than it takes to write these lines, the grand old regiment lost eighty-five per cent. of all its men ; all our old friends and comrades in that regiment going down
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with the rest. Was it for this that the First Minnesota was being saved up at the Battle of Antietam, where it scarcely lost a man? It was here, at this Battle of Gettysburg, that the Eighty-second New York captured five stand of colors. It was here that the men of the Nineteenth Maine, and all the other regiments of the brigade, covered themselves with glory. And it is here, without a doubt, that the Thirty-fourth New York would have left the most of all that was left, had its term of enlistment expired three weeks later. For, as all the world knows, it was the Second Division, of the Second Corps, that re- ceived into its breast the heaviest blows, and the deadliest wounds in- flicted by the desperate enemy. Many years after, the writer of this went down to Gettysburg in company with a comrade of the Twen- tieth Massachusetts. This comrade searched the whole field long and unavailingly for some trace of his regiment. The next day he in- formed me sadly that he had found it at last. It was encamped under the trees, in the beautiful National Cemetery. And that is where the Thirty-fourth would be to-day, had it been in the service only a little longer. But notwithstanding all this, we venture to say that there is not a comrade of the Thirty-fourth now living who does not regret that we were not in that battle.
The journey home was a joyful, but an uneventful one. To Waslı- ington ; thence to Philadelphia ; where we were most handsomely treated by the ladies of Philadelphia in the famous Coopershop Restaurant, where all the regiments passing north and south were most bountifully fed ; thence to New York, and thence to Albany. Arriving at the Capital city, June 12, without notable incident, we again put up at the same quarters from which we had departed on the 3d of July, 1861, namely the Industrial School Barracks. Here the regiment was met by a delegation from Little Falls, headed by Hon. Judge Hardin, who, until his very recent death, just as we were considering, at his urgent instigation, our monument enterprise, had ever remained the steadfast friend of the memory of the regiment. This delegation had come down to tender us a grand reception at Little Falls, and to make the necessary arrangements. These were soon completed. Immediately on arriving in Albany, and once at liberty, the men, scorning the hard tack of the government ration, proceeded to distribute themselves around among the boarding houses and hotels of the city, and to provide themselves with citizen's clothing. The photograph galleries were greatly over- worked by both men and officers. Nine-tenths of all the old portraits presented in this volume were taken at the Albany galleries during these first days home.
Now each of the various companies, as it returned to its native county, was given an enthusiastic reception by the citizens. There was as great an output of oratory as there had been two years before. We should be glad enough, were we able to describe each of these re- ceptions in detail. We know that Colonel Laflin went up to West Troy, and took part in the exercises attending the reception accorded to Co. A. Captain Oswald, who had previously returned home. man-
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aged the whole affair. The following autumn the citizens of that dis- trict sent the Captain to the lower branch of the legislature. Later the citizens of Steuben County treated Captain Brundage in the same way. But it was at Little Falls that the "Herkimer County Regiment" was accorded a glorious welcome home.
Saturday, the 27th of June, was a great day in the annals of Little Falls, and a great day for the old regiment. People had assembled from all parts of the county, and from the other counties represented in the regiment, from Albany, Essex, Clinton, and Steuben. The weather proved fine, and that increased the turnout. The regiment left Albany by an early train, and reached Little Falls about ten o'clock. Eastern Park, in the old town, now a city, was the headquarters for the gathering. Here the speeches were delivered, the songs sung, the wel- comes delivered, and the feasting done to a finish. Then there was a great parade, through the principal streets on both sides of the river. It could not be said to be a parade of the greatest military precision. Every man, woman, and child, who had a friend in the regiment, and who didn't? considered it his unspeakable privilege to march beside him. It was a proud day for the youngsters, and for the best girls, and they were all there, to take advantage of it. The first regiment out to service, and the first regiment home, did surely have a most royal welcome. Those whose engagements compelled them to be absent, and there were many such, were bitter over their misfortune.
Toward evening the regiment returned to Albany, and on June 30, two years and two months from the time of muster into the State ser- vice, the regiment was mustered out. Thus passed into honorable his- tory one of the noblest, bravest, and most patriotic of the volunteer regi- ments which the great Empire State furnished for the War of the Re- bellion.
Its arms are stacked, its flag is furled, Its fighting days are over, But some we never shall forget, Far in the southland linger yet. They come not, heed not song or shout, Nor answer at the muster out; Their days on earth are over.
Their lives are now a story told; Their fighting days are over.
For them no jocund crowds shall come, To celebrate the welcome home; But Grief shall sit till life shall close, Weeping in darkened homes for those
Whose days on earth are over.
-L. N. Chapın.
THAT WESTERN FLOTILLA
A N examination of the roster will remind the comrades of the call that was made in February, 1862, for volunteers for the West- ern Gunboat Flotilla. We have tried to trace the history and fate of the men who went from the Thirty-fourth, but have not had any great success. Comrade Philo Bell, however, who went from Co. H, probably knows more about that service than any other man, and we have asked him to tell about it. He has furnished us with quite a narrative, all of which we wish we could publish ; but are not able to do so. But we give it in part :
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