USA > Ohio > The Forty-first Ohio veteran volunteer infantry in the war of rebellion. 1861-1865 > Part 2
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The destination was Nashville. Nelson's division marched to West Point and took steamers down the Ohio and up the Cumber- land river. The country along the lower Cumberland was flooded. In many places the channel of the river was only to be guessed at, and the boats were tied up to the tops of submerged trees at night. to avoid running over the sunken forests.
Of course, it was known before arrival at Nashville that the enemy had passed on. The steamers came up to the levee and the troops debarked and marched up into the town. A solitary Texas
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DOWN TO THE FRONT.
cavalryman was found in the St. Cloud Hotel, where he had lingered under the influence of deep potations. This was the first armed foe the regiment had seen. Passing along High street, Gen. Buell him- self riding at the head of the column, a woman came out from one of the better residences, and advanced to the sidewalk shouting for Jeff Davis. That house was taken for a Union Hospital.
The Forty-first was marched out of the city and took position on a height along the Franklin pike. During the day, a commo- tion was seen on a distant road running along the river; and later it was learned that a detachment of Southern cavalry had ridden down that road to the levee and burned a steamer. Camp report had it that this exploit was done by the Texas Black Horse Cavalry. It may be difficult to understand how the color of cavalry horses can give military renown; but it did so at that time. The Texas Black Horse Cavalry was much talked about, but the Forty-first never knew that it got nearer to that force than it was on the day the squad burned the steamer-too far away to see and admire the awful prow- ess of the black steeds.
The regiment finally went into camp on the grounds in front of the Ewing house, on the Murfreesboro road. Some notable in- cidents occurred during the stay at this camp. The first of these was a night alarm, very soon after the arrival. Nelson had had at- tached to his division a squadron of very new cavalry, and a battery of artillery almost as fresh. A detail of this cavalry was sent out a mile or so on the pike, toward Murfreesboro, as a picket, with a vidette a little distance further on. A section of the artillery was posted, guns unlimbered, on the pike in front of the Forty-first, whose camp was laid out parallel with the pike. Between the regi- ment and the pike was a high stone wall,-the artillery being outside the enclosure, on the pike, the regiment inside, facing the pike. The troops of the division were not camped in line. The first or second night after this marvellous disposition of force was made, while everybody but the sentinels was soundly sleeping, a single carbine shot rang out on the midnight air from the direction of the cavalry picket. An instant later there was a little fusillade in the same direction, and then,a tremendous clatter of hoofs on the pike 2
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THE FORTY-FIRST OHIO INFANTRY.
and coming toward the camps. The regiment was on its feet in a moment, the men hurriedly clutching their arms. The common thought was, "The Black Horse Cavalry!" The clatter on the pike was as if a thousand horsemen were thundering down upon them, and the companies got into line before commands could be given. The next thought was to form square against cavalry, and instantly it was done. Meantime the lieutenant-colonel and the major were hastening to mount their horses, which they accomplished just as the square was complete. Some thoughtful friend had given the major a pair of holster pistols, and no sooner was he in the saddle than he drew one of these from its holster. The lieutenant-colonel's horse was standing with his head close beside the major, when the major's pistol, by some accident, was fired. It was the first gun of the war for lieutenant-colonel's horse, and he promptly dumped his rider on the ground, while the major made his way inside the square. The clattering cavalry on the pike were close at hand. On they came, pell-mell, till they encountered the artillerymen's guns on the pike, which they failed to see until they had tumbled over them, horses and riders together. But when the cavalry outpost was in, the pike to the front was once more silent; no enemy followed. It turned out that the vidette in front of the outpost was sitting on his horse polishing his carbine, when he carelessly discharged it, pointed backward toward the outpost. The men there took the shot for an attack, sprang to their saddles, fired their carbines down the road and started back at a run. They had been stuffed with the imminent deadly hazard of outpost duty until they could see enemies anywhere in the darkness, in full tilt at them. There was no enemy near, nor was it likely there would be one. We can laugh at such incidents now, knowing that the men who figured in them abundantly proved themselves afterward on a score of fields. And the incident shows that rawness was not confined to the rank and file, but sometimes got into high official places. Gen. Nelson, it should be said in fair- ness, was an accomplished naval officer, but quite out of familiar lines in the army.
A second incident was of a very different character. An en- listed man had been into Nashville one day and found too much to drink. On his return he was halted by the camp guard, and some
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DOWN TO THE FRONT.
words ensued with the corporal on duty there. At last the tipsy man struck the corporal. Of course he was instantly overpowered and placed in confinement. The division general thought this was a fit time to give a lesson in army discipline. He had the tipsy man court-martialed for offering violence to "a superior officer"-over- looking or not knowing the fact that the word "officer" in the army regulations means a commissioned officer, and does not therefore include corporals. The court-martial sentenced the man to be shot, and Gen. Nelson, approving the finding, and not sending it up to army headquarters as he should have done, proceeded to carry out the death sentence. He posted his division on sloping ground that all might see, and placed the firing squad with the condemned man in front. The official murder then took place. The guns of the firing squad were loaded for them, the men being told that one piece was charged with only a blank cartridge, and none knowing whose piece it was that was thus charged. Each man can in this way aim at a vital part, as he sights the gun at his comrade, and thereafter may console himself, if he can, with the belief that his piece contained the one blank cartridge, and so it was not his bullet that did the kill- ing. In this instance, any one of four or five bullets that pierced the unfortunate would have killed him, had no other struck him. The effect of this exhibition killing was not good. Rather, it was remembered with horror, not with a heightened sense of duty and respect for authority.
Still another incident of the stay at Nashville was a marching pilgrimage to the Hermitage, Jackson's old home. It was one of Gen. Nelson's freaks one day to take his command out to this place. The march was not arranged with Gen. Buell's skill. Nelson put a favorite regiment in the lead, and exercised no control over its pace. The leaders of a marching column can always quickly wear out those who follow, if their movement is not controlled. It happened so in this instance, and the day was a most fatiguing and uncomfortable one. So far as military exercise was concerned no benefit came from the expedition: on the contrary, it was hurtful to the marching habit of the men. The General was a Kentuckian and a great admirer of Jackson; but the people where the Forty-first came from had not canonized Old Hickory. The political significance of this toilsome
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THE FORTY-FIRST OHIO INFANTRY.
and hurtful pilgrimage-it had no military phase-was distasteful to the greater number.
At Nashville, as at Camp Wickliffe, there were many changes among officers and non-commissioned officers; but, this over, such changes were less frequent.
The Forty-first marched from Camp Wickliffe February 14th, and reached Nashville on the 27th of the same month. About the middle of March the army began the march to Savannah, on the Tennessee river, to join Grant's forces near that point. The first part of the march was through a beautiful and well cultivated coun- try. Coming to Duck river, it was thought necessary to bridge it, and that work was given to the division in advance of Nelson on the road. After several days of waiting for the bridge, impatient Nelson offered to ford the river with his division, and did so, the men strip- ped up to the waist and holding their arms aloft as they waded. This movement put Nelson in the lead on the march to Savannah. Get- ting farther down into the country, it became rougher, until the roads were so bad that heavy details were necessary to bring the trains along. Apparently bottomless mud made hard marching, and it was very exhausting to the details with the trains. These early experiences seem now never to have been outdone by later ones. Certainly the regiment was very much worn with marching when, on the 5th of April, it bivouacked two miles from Savannah, with the trains still miles in the rear struggling through the mud. This was on a Saturday. Next morning began Beauregard's assault on Grant's army in position on the other side of the river some miles above.
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SHILOH.
CHAPTER III.
SHILOH.
Saturday night, the 5th of April, 1862, came to the Forty-first in as weary a condition as it had ever known. The road passed over during the day was deep with mud, and the latter part of the long march from Nashville had been pressed a little harder than before. The wagon train was away back on the road when the regiment bivouacked near Savannah, and the men went quickly to their rest. Sunday morning broke fair, and officers and men thought of a day spent in putting things in order after the late hard work. But the morning had scarcely come when there was a sound of firing some distance up the river. Hazen with his staff rode on to Savannah, to the little tavern where Grant was sitting on the porch. Hazen was convinced, by the increasing din of firing in the distance, that a general engagement was on between Grant's forces and the Con- federates. All others were soon convinced to the same effect.
A guide was furnished, and the whole division started soon after noon to march to a point opposite Pittsburg Landing, which was the landing for Grant's position on the other side of the river. Through the low and marshy bottom lands near the river the troops made their way, sometimes slowly, and did not finish the march till late in the afternoon. Coming out from the forest path they had been following, and approaching the river bank, the troops heard over their heads, from the high bank opposite, some whistling bullets and a shell or two. During the march the sounds of battle had swelled and lulled at intervals, and every one knew that a severe and pro- tracted battle was in progress. There was a steamer in waiting to cross the troops. Hazen's brigade was the second one taken over. The night was near at hand, but the scene on the farther shore was distinct enough as the boat slowly made her way across. The bank down to the water's edge was covered with fugitives from the battlefield, and as the Forty-first moved off the boat and up the bank, the men picked their way among the crowds of runaways. All of them belonged to regiments which had been "cut to pieces" in the
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THE FORTY-FIRST OHIO INFANTRY.
battle-so they said. Pretty large pieces some of them had been cut into, it seemed. At the top of the bank, the Forty-first was deployed and moved forward a few yards; but the battle was just ending for the day, and the regiment was not engaged. In front, and sweeping around toward the river above and below was the line of artillery which enclosed the foothold left to the Union forces on that side of the river. It looked small to hold an army. It is not attempted, with reference to this matter, to give measurements and accurate data-only to set down appearances as they showed to the newly- arrived troops. Neither is there in this narrative an indulgence in denunciation of the fugitives on the river bank, since those men, under more experienced leadership, afterward became thoroughly reliable soldiers and made an honorable record on many a field.
Darkness had fallen, and all was still on the ground where the battle ended, when the Forty-first was moved forward to take its place in the line of battle formed for the next day's operations. All common landmarks on that field were obliterated; it was only a stretch of ground covered everywhere with wagon and artillery tracks coming from all directions and going everywhere. The night was dark, and locating the troops was slow and very wearisome work. At last, after many a wait and some turnings, the Forty- first was halted and faced to the front. It was in a thin wood, the ground trodden and cut up, though this could be only felt, for the intense darkness permitted no man to see his next fellow's face. The men lay down where they stood when halted, and made them- selves as comfortable as they could. Now and then some one stumbled over the dead body of a soldier, and moved a yard away to lie down for the night.
In the first sleep of weariness, the men were aroused by the roar of a heavy shell flying high overhead and crashing down through the forest in the distance. For hours during the night this was re- peated at intervals sufficiently short to break up the night's sleep into fitful spells, and in the morning leave a feeling as if no sleep at all had been had. No one knew at the time what this firing meant, but afterward it was known that the shells came from a gun-boat anchored in the river-our own of course-and were intended to fly toward the ground the Confederates were supposed to occupy,
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SHILOH.
and so keep them uncomfortable and unresting throughout the night. That was the effect on the Union soldiers, however it was with the Confederates. This firing was one of the early stupidities of the war-a most annoying blunder.
The regiment stood to arms before daylight, in readiness to receive attack. None came, and finally the command, bedraggled and unsatisfied of rest, was started forward in line of battle, skir- mishers out. Everywhere about was the wreckage from yester- day's battle. On a bare spot just outside a clump of bushes lay the lieutenant colonel of an Illinois regiment, flat on his back, sword as it dropped from his hand, a bullet hole in the forehead above the staring eyes and ghastly cheeks. A little beyond this, the skir- mishers drew the enemy's fire, and then a solid shot from a field piece came bowling along the ground straight toward the advanc- ing line. The men in the front rank saw it and stepped aside, but it struck a soldier behind them. The battery which fired it was located in a heavy wood on the left front, and kept up its fire for some time, with solid round shot. The skirmishers advanced to the fence of an open lot beyond which was the battery in the wood. Later in the war, those skirmishers would have made short work of that artillery. Mendenhall's battery came up and sent some quieting shells into the wood on the left front, and there were sounds that indicated the coming up of troops on the right.
Finally, the regiment, with the others of the brigade, was called to attention and started to charge the Confederate line in its front. Gen. Buell, anxious for the conduct of the men in their first en- counter, rode with his staff close behind the line of battle as it started forward. The start was from an open wood; then came some un- derbrush and then open ground. The brigade crossed this at a dash, and the Confederates' first and second lines gave way before the onslaught. But the command was inexperienced, and tlie move- ment quickly went beyond control in a headlong pursuit; all for- mation was lost, and the enemy, with fresh troops, seized his ground again, driving back the scattered assailants. The Forty-first was speedily reformed on ground in the rear, and, although it had suf- fered severely, was in hand for any duty. But its first battle was ended.
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THE FORTY-FIRST OHIO INFANTRY.
Three hundred and seventy-three officers and men (one com- pany, G, was back with the wagon train) were present for duty on the morning of that day. In the fight, which lasted hardly more than half an hour, one hundred and forty-two were killed or wounded, and none were missing-total loss, thirty-nine per cent. of the num- ber engaged. This was a greater per cent. of loss than was sus- tained by any other regiment in either Buell's or Grant's army in that battle, except the Ninth Illinois infantry, which lost fifty per . cent. Three officers and three enlisted men, who at different times bore the colors of the Forty-first, were killed or wounded. The killed and the mortally wounded (dying soon after the battle) to- gether numbered forty-four, an unusually large per cent., due to the square standup fighting at short range when the enemy was first encountered in the charge. The prolongation of this fighting was due in large measure to the ineffective guns of the Forty-first, which, inflicting on the enemy less execution than he was doing, enabled him to stay longer in the fight.
The distinctive feature of this engagement was that neither force was in position, but advancing, when the firing began. The Con- federate troops were coming to attack, or were getting into position, when the charge of Hazen's brigade was ordered; and the charge was ordered on the theory that raw troops would have a better chance when moving to attack than when standing to receive an attack on an unprotected line. Whatever the merits of that theory, the Forty-first was never again so handled in action.
The regiment went into position on the night of the battle on the Tan Bark road, this being on the left of the Union line. During the night before, rain fell almost constantly on the already sodden ground where the men lay without cover: and the like experience came the night after. Many of the soldiers, lying down in their blankets, awoke in little puddles of water. The whole field seemed a wilderness of mud. Camp and garrison equipage was all behind at Savannah, and did not come up until the fifth day after the battle. Meanwhile the regiment was sadly uncomfortable with the con- tinued exposure, and much sickness resulted. The battle field was strewn with unburied bodies of men and horses. Heavy details were sent to put these under ground; and in some instances the rair
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SHILOH.
of the following night undid the work of burial and laid bare the de- caying corpses. The burial details found dead men in strange atti- tudes. They came across a Confederate kneeling beside a big log, his head and shoulders bent forward over it, and his gun in his hands as he had held it in the position of aiming when he met instant death from a Union bullet. Some of the dead faces bore signs of agony, but not many; a very few were torn by shot or shell. The deadly work at Shiloh was done by musketry, not artillery. On some of the Confederate dead were found large knives, designed for fighting- evidences that crude notions of war found lodgement among the fiery Southerners. None of the butcher knives were stained with blood; but some of them showed painstaking finish and polish, only to be rusted in the rain.
The battle occurred on Monday, April 7th; the camp equipage arrived on Friday, the 11th; and on Sunday, the 13th-that is, after an interval of a week for burying the dead and cleaning up the sur- vivors-the Forty-first was astonished with an order to resume drills and study the following day. Officers and men thought themselves hardly yet recovered from the tremendous strain of the battle; the necessary period of rest after the exhaustion of march and fight seemed to have hardly begun. The difference between the theory and the practice of war had been made sharply prominent by the late experience in practice, while the connection and value of the theory had been rendered correspondingly dim and indefinite. The days of squad drill and the school of the soldier were far back in the past, with a whole campaign of actual war between them and the present. But there was the order, and the soldier's first duty is obedience. Obedience was rendered in this instance, but it was hardly of the cheerful kind-the men had been too roughly used, and too recently.
What, in other ways, of those days immediately following the first battle? Well, for one thing, the regiment slowly realized that it had received, between sunrise and sunset of one day, more and infinitely better teaching than all that could come from books-the invaluable lesson of experience. There was much of disenchant- ment in it-the most notable thing in this way, perhaps, being the
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THE FORTY-FIRST OHIO INFANTRY.
absence in practice of the element of show. No music, for the drum corps are stretcher-bearers for the wounded. No bright uniforms, even on the mounted officers. Save for a two-inch bit of gold embroidery on the shoulder, a major-general on the battlefield may be scarcely distinguishable from his orderly, if the latter has had a good pick of horses. There is not often the inspiration that comes of seeing great masses of troops in motion or in action. In a coun- try like the South at the time of the war, it is sometimes possible to see a brigade in line of battle; but many a considerable engage- ment has been fought through without either side catching full sight of so much as a regiment of the enemy. The battles about Chat- tanooga were, perhaps, the only ones in the central South where divisions entire could be seen in action. To sum up, then, the real business of war, the fighting, is relieved by none of the supposed embellishments; it is a business sombre and heavy, lightened only when the unspeakable exaltation of victory is vouchsafed to the soldier. Finally, the notion which possesses most new soldiers, and others, that the battle is the only test, and that armies go in to fight at their best of strength and heart, is an illusion. In nine cases out of ten, the marching to be done before the troops are set for the fight is enough to tire out bodies and break down hearts in sheer weariness of toil and deprivation of even the soldier's scanty fare. The labor of the campaign is not in the battle, but in the preparation for it.
It hardly needs to be said that the greatest of all depressions in the soldier's life is felt after the battle, when he has leisure to think of the comrades lost or gone to the hospital for weary weeks or months, if not forever. He counts them over, one by one, with the grief of comradeship, and feels almost as sore for the badly wounded as for the dead, knowing the lack of opportunity for good treatment which the best of surgeons cannot make good. After its share in the action at Shiloh was done, the Forty-first passed near a field hospital where the wounded were being brought in and laid on the ground to await the care of the overworked surgeons. In a corner of a rail fence near by was a pile of severed arms and legs, the pile growing as the faithful doctors hastened their grim work. This is one of the spectacles which do not fade out of mind.
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EVENTS, BUT NO BATTLES.
CHAPTER IV.
EVENTS, BUT NO BATTLES.
May 2d, 1862, the advance of the Union armies on Corinth, Mississippi, was begun. Everybody knew that there had been a new army organization, or disposition, and that Halleck was chief in command, with Grant second; that the Army of the Mississippi, Gen. Pope, was to be the left; the Army of the Ohio, Gen. Buell, the center; and the Army of the Tennessee, Gen. Thomas, the right. The Forty-first was still in Hazen's brigade of Nelson's division, with its long-time companions, the Ninth Indiana and the Sixth Kentucky.
There was really no period of rest after the Shiloh fight and before the advance on Corinth. Fatigue duty was heavy, while drill and study seemed more than ever burdensome. The order to march was therefore not unwelcome; it would at least intermit drill and camp duty. The first march was ten miles, to the vicinity of Monterey and about ten miles from Corinth, where the Con- federates were posted. A great deal of road repairing had already been done, and more was done after the movement was begun. Ha- zen's brigade at one time advanced to within five miles of Corinth, acting as guard to the heavy details at work on the roads. Now and then, scouting Confederate cavalry was encountered, but in those days horsemen counted for little; they were very considerate of infantry, and did not bother. The country was wild and only thinly settled, seeming to produce not much besides thickly tim- bered land and mud. It was an excellent place for corduroy roads. A week or more was occupied with short marches of two to four miles, as the roads permitted, for sometimes the repairs of a day were washed out by the rain of the following night. On the 9th of May, heavy artillery firing was heard in the direction of Pope's army, and indicated that the Union forces were being closed in upon the enemy. But the next day a regular camp was established on fairly comfortable ground, and the day was spent in cleaning up.
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