USA > Ohio > History One hundred and eleventh regiment O. V. I > Part 2
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After all, we are compelled to acknowlege that, that sort of circulating medium was rather tough. But, does any person imagine that those dried apple pies which we received in exchange therefor were not as tough as Erie & Kalamazoo ? Under any well regulated system of rewards and punishments, there is grave doubt whether any people who regard such pics a luxury, deserve any better circulating medium than that.
I have a curiosity to know how much of that money is still passing current in the South; and by the way, I think that money then was, and now is, as near par as Southern loyalty.
On the 22d day of September, 1863, we started on our march to Sweetwater, Tennessee, and when we got there, ascertained that we were needed at the other end of the line, and so marched back again. It seemed to be an experiment, to ascertain how many miles a column of infantry could march in a given length of time.
On the 13th of November the Rebel General Longstreet appear- ed opposite our camp at Loudon, with a force of about 35,000 men. At his approach we destroyed the bridge across the river, abandoned the fort and camp on the east side, and stood upon the defensive.
Under cover of his artillery he laid a pontoon bridge about two miles below our position, during the night, and at daylight next morning, the long-roll called us to arms, and we moved out to attack his advance guard. We met them ; drove them back under cover of the river bank, and reformed our line of battle through the woods skirting the river, with orders to be in readiness at 10 o'clock at night to assault his position.
Have any of you forgotten the rain and the darkness of that night? How gloomily we stood to arms while the cold, pelting rain wet us through and through? How when we started some camp tires down the ravine in rear of us, the Rebel artillery sent their compliments of shot and shell to persuade us that fires were a luxury? And how, from sheer impossibility of performance, the order to charge was countormanded ?
At day-break, next morning, we commenced our retreat to
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Knoxville. You remember how we moved back in line of battle over the open fields, and when about opposite Loudon we were ordered to halt and cover the retreat of Shield's battery, which was making very slow headway over the muddy roads; how that regi- ment of South Carolina sharp-shooters, deployed in close order as skirmishers, came down upon us at a double-quick with trailed arms; how their commander, mounted upon a beautiful white horse, challenged our admiration for his soldierly bearing, and how our well directed volley scattered them to the right and left; how the Rebels pushed their forces upon our right and left flanks and opened upon us an eufilading fire, from which our Company, I, suffered severely. We were at length ordered to withdraw from the field, and moved off like veterans, keeping our alignments as if upon parade. We pushed on to Lenoir Station and there felled trees and constructed a line of earth works behind which we hoped to be able to teach Mr. Longstreet's men that we were American citizens, who had pre-empted that territory, and intended to stay.
But Longstreet was a thoroughbred in the art of war. He knew better than to run a tilt upon earthworks when he could accomplish his object just as well without. He pressed on until he struck our picket-line, and then taking a diverging road that inter- sceted our line of retreat at Campbell's Station, he commenced moving his masses of troops to our rear.
General Burnside was on the ground and had early intelligence of the Rebel General's movement. He threw out a strong force to intercept and contest Longstreet's advance, and ordered our com- mand to immediately evacuate our position. The roads then leading to Knoxville were almost impassible for loaded teams. The fall rains had made the sunken roadbeds sluiceways of mud. We were ordered to join our baggage teams to the artillery teams and destroy our baggage, and the quartermaster and commissary stores of our trains. I remember that out of my baggage I saved a sash and an extra coat by wearing two instead of one.
We chopped down our wagons where they stood, ripped open the coffee sacks, knocked in the heads of sugar barrels, tore open boxes of army clothing, mixed it all together, and then set the ruins on fire, and it was all done just about as quick as it takes to tell it. Then, without taking a thought of how we might retrieve our loss, we commenced a long night race with Longstreet for Campbell's Station upon roads running nearly parallel. During the balance of
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that long, tedious night, we struggled on -- "horse, foot and dragoon," artillery and ambulance trains, mixed together in an undistinguish- able mass.
But in the haste and confusion there had been a serious blunder. The evening before, Lieutenant Omer. P. Norris, with Sergeants Beal, Bowles, Hunter, Swinchart and 48 enlisted men of our Com - pany B, had been posted upon the picket line upon the route over which we had just retreated. It was the duty of the Officer of the Day . to form his pickets into a line of skirmishers and follow the command. He failed to notify these. men of the movement of the troops, and in the gray of the morning they were cooped up in the bend of the river and captured. By this blunder, we lost from our effective force 52 as good men as ever carried arms in any army.
The little village of Campbell's Station sits in the center of a little valley, about ten miles south of Knoxville. Upon either side rises a sharp range of hillsrunning parallel with the Holston river. As we neared the village we became enveloped in the smoke of the battle, which was raging (with terrible odds against us), for the preservation of the outlet into that valley for our tired troops. With but a few minutes to spare, we passed the junction of the two roads ahead of Longstreet's advance, and then rapidly formed our infantry line from hilltop to hilltop across the valley. Our artillery was inassed upon a sugar-loaf hill in the center of the line, and our regiment was advanced a short distance in front and ordered to lie down to avoid the fire as much as we could, coming both from front and rear. Soon Longstreet's veterans uncovered from the woods to the south, and with three lines of battle stretching across that valley, silently advanced to the assault.
Then from twenty Parrot and Napoleon guns, and from five thousand rifles went a storm of shell and ball which sent the veterans in confusion from the field. But we soon found that they had only "let go to take a better hold," for now with horses under whip and spur came battery after battery of rebel artillery, sweeping to the right and left of the central line of attack, and rapidly delivering their fire as soon as they got into position. Then came again the rebel masses of infantry, line after line, with their hated stars and bars pictured against the brown woods beyond. Here and there their lines reeled and staggered under our fire, but still advanced to close range, and then taking such cover as the ground afforded, gave us volley for volley.
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You can well remember how, back and forth like shuttles in the loom, flew those shot and shell above your heads, how those bar-shot as long as a soldier's arm came on, end over end, with their "whew- wew, whew-wew," sending a sensation down your backs, as of some reptile crawling over you, and how a shell occasionally plunged into the sloping hillside among you, and bursting, threw a man or two sprawling in the air; how the enemy failing to force our position directly, sent a flanking column to our rear, which, pouring over the hill-top, went charging down obliquely upon the rear of our line; and how surprised that rebel brigade seemed to be when the. One Hundred and Eleventh Regiment rose from the weeds in rear of them and delivered a volley in their backs at easy range, which sent the survivors over the hills in disorder. We had been retired for that purpose just in the nick of time.
After stubbornly contesting every hill and valley of that two miles of battle-field, until we had used up the day, we again pursued our retreat. When we passed inside of the entrenchments around Knoxville, on the morning of November 17th, we threw our knap- saeks on the ground, and, utterly exhausted, sank to sleep. For three days and three nights you had been upon your feet; human endurance could stand no more fatigue. Never before in the history of the war, had men earned a better right to sleep. Three long days and nights, with the odds against yon, of over two to one, you had been contesting the right of precedence in the order of march to Knoxville. And those days and nights, were as precious to that army and to the Union cause in East Tennessee-as was the march of the gallant General Granger from the left to the right of General Thomas' beleaguered line on that memorable last afternoon at Chickamauga. 5,000 soldiers, citizens and negroes, with pick and spade were turning a giant furrow around the rim of the basin at Knoxville, in which when completed the Army of the Ohio was to be planted.
Just within this line you halted on the morning of your fourth day from Loudon. The bugles soon sounded the "fall in," and drowsily you staggered through the deserted streets to the eastern line of fortification.
The quaint idea of "blessed be the man who first invented sleep" was well enough in the mouth of Sancho Panza, but it seemed to us
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just then, that the right to use it, was covered by a patent to some other fellow, and those other crooked brass inventions were perpet- ually sounding, "fall in, fall in," when we would have traded off anything we had, except our loyalty, for a twelve-hours option to fall out.
During the 18th of November our cavalry were engaged within cannon range of our westerly line of entrenchments with Long- street's advance, with the purpose of delaying his call upon us, until we could put our house in order to receive him. In this engage- ment the gallant General Sanders was killed, and the fort upon our line of defence was named Fort Sanders in honor of his memory.
From the morning of the 18th of November until the 6th of December we were in the trenches of Knoxville, or, moving from one part of the line to another, to reinforce points where assaults were being made. On the 29th of November, in the gray of the morning, the enemy during the night having massed in front of Fort Sanders, a desperate assault was made to carry the key of our position. Our men had cut the oak grove in the front of the fort and laid the trees in windrows, tops out, thus forming an abbatis. They had twined telegraph wire from stump to stump over all the front thus forming a tight rope, on which many a Virginia veteran was soon to perform the last time, to a very crowded house upon the the hilltop.
The masses of rebel gray moving up through the underbrush, were not distinguishable from the mists enveloping them, until with in a few rods of the skirmish line, whose scattering shots and simul- taneous retreat to the earthworks skirting the fort, was the first signal of danger.
Our infantry snatched their rifles from the stacks and the artillery men stood to their guns, and none too soon. Longstreet's men were busy tearing aside the tree obstructions and our volley was answered back by the shrill staccatto of the rebel charge. On came the charging columns firing as they ran. The invisable tele- graph wire caught their soldierly alignment and resolved it into its original elements, and those elements were standing on their heads. The hillside was all aflame. Benjamin's twenty pound Parrot's ยท swept the field with cannister; but the tide behind pushed on the broken ranks in front, and filled the ditch around the fort. Then, when the guns could not be depressed to reach them, the artillery-
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HISTORY 111TH REGIMENT
men lighted hand grenades and tossed them over the works. This overmatched their iron discipline. The tide receded as rapidly as it came. "The clouds of smoke lifted from the field, the sun shone out, our Union rainbow still arched the fort." War bad taken its hasty breakfast, and to Longstreet's flag of truce was given the fragments. In this assault Longstreet lost about one thousand men, while our loss was only forty-three.
The days wore on. The enemy's shot and shell were playing tennis in the streets. Famine threatened. Our horses, mules and cattle were dying from starvation, and as the carcasses floated down the Holston, were greeted with rebel cheers.
Private supplies of provisions in the city, had been seized, and rations were issued to soldiers and citizens alike. You remember bow the soldiers told the commissary that he had to hold his cattle up, while the butchers knocked them down. How rations of field corn were issued to you, and when parched formed the only courses of many a soldier's meal. It is related of Marion that during our Revolutionary war he invited a foreign officer to dine with him, and when dinner was announced conducted him to an adjacent log which served the purpose both of seat and table, and upon which the only provisions consisted of roasted sweet potatoes. The guest upon being informed that such was the usual fare of the Continental army in the South, and the soldiers were contented with it, predicted the success of our war for independence. Marion's log garnished with sweet potatoes would have risen to the dignity of a banquet, during the siege of Knoxville. On the 5th of December the advance of Granger's corps of Sherman's army opened communication with us from the east side of the river, and Longstreet prudently raised the We pursued him to Blain's siege and moved off up the valley. Crossroads, from there to Strawberry Plains, thence to Dandridge, then back to Strawberry Plains, followed by the rebel army, skirmishing here and there and seeing much hard service. Some of our men made these marches without shoes over frozen ground. The balance of our East Tennessee campaign consisted in broaden- ing our occupation, making rapid marches and countermarches in such manner as to exhibit our forces to the best advantage and discourage attack. During this campaign our brigade was com- manded by General Julius White.
We finally went into camp at Mossy Creek where we remained until the 26th of April, 1864. The memories of our pleasant days at
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Mossy Creek will long remain as among the happiest of our soldier lives.
' Mossy Creek rises at the foot of the mountains, separating the waters of the Holston and Frend Broad Rivers and flows northerly into the Holston. The stream rises in a spring of wonderful volume, whose waters pour through a channel 50 feet wide making a suc- cession of leaps over lime stone ledges, a distance of about fifteen miles to the Holston. Nature had surpassed itself in creating an ideal tront-stream, from the channel of which, the surface ground rose gently in grassy slopes, with groves of trees here and there forming altogether the most enjoyable and reposeful camp grounds we could have hoped for.
On the 26th of April we again took up our line of march to the southward. Thence come the memories of mud, dead mules to windward, objects along the line of march seen so often in our marches and countermarches as to have become not only nninterest- ing but hateful to us. We passed by that log cabin camp at Loudon, which with so much labor and care, we had built the fall before. Goldsmith's deserted village was a bee-hive by comparison. The ruins of the bridge where Charlie Rump stood guard, demanding of every native a chew of tobacco for the privilege of passing: and when the plug was innocently produced, bit off a chew and handed it to the native, and put the plug into his own pocket. One of the redeeming characteristics of a soldier is never to take the last thing a man has. We moved into position at Redclay, Georgia, and there formed the left of the line of Sherman's grand army, equipped for the Atlanta campaign.
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CHAPTER III.
ROCKY FACE AND RESACA.
For a better understanding of the Atlanta Campaign, upon which we are now entering, I import into the account the general situation of the Confederate and Union forces.
General Joseph E. Johnston commanded the Confederates, who were posted on both sides of the railroad leading from Chattanooga to Atlanta. The railroad passes through a rocky palisade at the gorge known as Mill Creek Gap. Roeky Face is the portion of this narrow, precipitous mountain lying .northward of the gap. The same range of substantially the same character extends southerly from the gap to the Oostanaula River, in the vicinity of Resaca.
Johnston occupied Rocky Face north of the gap and the moun- tain to the southward of the gap, thus forming a line nearly north and south on the top of the mountains and also occupied a line nearly east and west, the left resting on the mountain north of the gap, and extending east across the valley to the railroad which run- ing southward from Cleveland, in East Tennessee, intersects the West- ern and Atlanta R. R. at Dalton, a town about ten miles southeast of the Confederate position.
There is uneertainty as to the force of the Confederate com- mander, even when the enemy's accounts are alone relied upon, but it seems probable that Johnston had over 50,000 men in the lines described. His natural defenses aided by the most complete field entrenehments, made his position substantially impregnable against attack from the north or west. He evidently did not fear an attack from any other direction, as such an attack would expose our depot of supplies and communications.
The Union army was composed of the Armies of the Cumber-
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land, Tennessee and Ohio, aggregating about 100,000 men. The Army of the Ohio, in the initiative, faced southward from the left of the Union line; the Army of the Cumberland from the center faced south and east and the Army of the Tennessee from the right, faced eastward.
When the position of the enemy was developed these positions rapidly changed. Each command, or part of command, adapted itself to the work before it.
Here we take up our partienlar movements without special reference to the part borne by other commands.
Having been given the post of honor in the advance, you pushed the rebel skirmish line along the eastern base of Rocky Face and back into their main line. Then came the order to unsling knapsacks and prepare to charge the enemy's works. Major Norris had advanced his skirmishers within a stone's throw of a rebel battery to the right of our front, while before him stretched a double line of battle behind earthworks sufficiently strong to have resisted a siege. The enemy were standing to their guns awaiting the attack, and a moments reconnoisance satisfied us that without artillery support a charge would be very disastrous. The order was countermanded, we quietly withdrew and Johnston lost an opportunity.
General Harker's Brigade of Newton's Division was then fight- ing on top of Rocky Face, some where between us and the sun, at two o'clock in the afternoon, balancing like flies skirmishing for possession of the back of a knife blade. The northern fly got one end of the blade, but Hardee's men with rugged tenacity hung on to the handle.
Countermarching we passed around the northern spur of Rocky Face, then down along its western side, passing Buzzard Roost, Dalton and Villanow, through Snake Creek Gap, and plunged into the jungle in front of Resaca.
The night before, fifteen miles to the northward we had seen the .mountains lit up with the incessant flashes of musketry and cannon. Now, as the darkness settled upon us, we saw the rebel camp fires in our front. Our march from London southward to Rocky Face had been over a country new to us and therefore interesting, and when the day's march had become wearisome it needed only a few notes from fife and drum, of "The Girl I Left Behind Me," to put
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HISTORY 111TH REGIMENT
elasticity into your step, to bring the straggler to his place in ranks, and then while the natives stared with open mouthed wonder, you would break out with-
We are coming from the east, we are coming from the west, Shouting the battle cry of freedom,
And we'll drive the rebel crew, from the land we love the best, Shouting the battle cry of freedom.
The Union for ever, hurrah boys, hurrah,
Down with the traitors, and up with the stars,
While we rally round the flag boys, rally once again, Shouting the battle cry of freedom .-
When were you too weary to join in that chorus? Now, as you moved up through the dense woods upon the rebel position, the voice of music was hushed, every one talked in an undertone when it was necessary to talk. Every man felt that there was desperate business on hand, and melody would have rasped the nerves like a neuralgia.
On the morning of the 14th of May, 1864, we were under orders to attack the rebel position in our front. Between our skirmishers and the rebel entrenchments upon a course nearly south ward, Camp Creek ran on its way to the Oostanaula.
About sunrise I rode to the top of the ridge, where our skir- mishers were posted, and delivered orders to be followed during the attack, by the officer in command. Taking a rifle from one of our men, I fired several times, at working parties of the Confederates, who were just finishing their intrenchments. The object was to determine the distance between the lines. At each discharge of my gun the commotion among the enemy indicated that the bullet reached them. I returned and reported to Colonel Bond that the ridge was a commanding position for our artillery, and ought to be occupied before the charge was made. At his request I rode to General Haskell's headquarters and repeated the report to him. With an indifferent manner he replied that probably General Judah would attend to the matter, and I then returned and reported his reply.
Some hours afterward our lines were massed upon the ridge overlooking the rebel intrenchments, and within long musket range, and without artillery support we moved to the attack. As soon as we nucovered from the woods we were saluted with a storm of shell, followed by grape, canister and musket balls; we dashed forward and jumped into the creek hoping to obtain shelter from the dread-
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ful fire. From the channel of the creek we delivered our fire, but when the men set their guns on the ground to push home the next cartridge, the guns were forced into the yielding mud, covering the tubes with water so that they would not discharge. In a few moments most of the guns were disabled. Efforts were made to ad- vance, and here and there along the line, soldiers, single or in groups, rushed forward to the apparent cover of stumps or trees, but our advance had placed us under an enfilading fire, which searched out every corner of the field.
At length we were ordered to return to the top of the ridge, where we reformed our lines, and again advanced to the charge, only adding to our casualties without the power to do the enemy any injury. General Judah, then commanding our division, came forward to our line on foot, and finding it impossible to carry the works, ordered us to retreat.
We had been made the victims of an inexcusable blunder. The ridge from which we charged was much higher than the opposite ridge occupied by the enemy; and had our artillery been placed upon it, could have silenced the rebel guns, covered our charge, and probably, given us victory instead of defeat. General Judah stated that he had sent out his staff officers in the morning to inspect the position, and they reported that the ridge was inaccessable to artillery, and hence no effort was made to get the guns in position. Within a half-hour after the disaster, the artillery was posted on the hill, but the charging columns lay in broken fragments in the valley.
A General of Division who does not personally inspect the field of a contemplated battle, and look critically over every point of advantage for his men, which the topography affords, is not fit to command troops.
Our regiment went into that action with over five hundred muskets, and came out of it so crippled that we were able to muster only 107 guns when we rallied on the ridge.
The upturned faces down the hill side, in the valley, and the bodies floating in the muddy water of the creek accounted for some of them. The ambulances and stretcher-bearers reported others. There were some who in the confusion of the. charge and counter charge had been swept off the field by the retreat of other commands. During the evening many absentees reported in camp. After dark
HISTORY 111TH REGIMENT
I went down upon the field with Major Norris and could distinctly hear the suppressed voices of rebel soldiers, busy in front of their lines, robbing our dead and wounded. We ventured out far enough to reach some of the foremost of our dead, and there among the rest lay the adjutant of the - Michigan, dressed as for a reception, his new dress coat buttoned from chin to waist, his hands were in close fitting kid gloves. His face was to the ground, his drawn sword under him, his body rigid in death. We readily raised his slight form, and making a stretcher of his sword scabbard, bore him off the field.
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