USA > Ohio > The Twelfth Ohio cavalry; a record of its organization, and services in the war of the rebellion, together with a complete roster of the regiment > Part 5
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During the stay of the Regiment at Winchester, and part the month at Richmond, the command had devolved upon Major Herrick, Colonel Ratliff being still in command of the Post at Lexington, and Lieutenant Colonel Bentley being on leave of absence, and subsequently on some detached duty, procuring new horses and other supplies for the regiment. He rejoined it about the 10th of August, and sent Maj. Collier with a detachment including parts of squadrons "E" and "I" to Irvine, thirty miles farther south, where he served as outpost for the main command. At the end of a month the Rebel General Forrest crossed the Tennessee line and seemed inclined to menace Central Kentucky. The Twelfth Cavalry accordingly broke camp on the 26th of August, and marched a hundred miles further south, to Point Burnside, a military post estab- lished at the confluence of the South Fork with the Cumberland river. On the way the regiment overtook the Eleventh Michigan and other regiments, with trains and stores, all mov- ing toward the same point. Arriving on the third day after leaving Richmond, we found the post garrisoned by a single colored regiment, and the ordnance and commissary stores in preparation to be blown up and destroyed should the threat- ened attack of Forrest prove successful. Here ammunition was again distributed, all unserviceable horses replaced, and the brigade, now commanded by Col. Brown, of the Eleventh Michigan Cavalry, and including that regiment the Twelfth Ohio and the Fifth U. S. Colored Infantry, Col. J. F. Wade commanding, was put into condition for immediate service. The Twelfth encamped in a dismal ravine at the head of some salt meadows, two miles up the river, and watched for the enemy. The same afternoon Squadron " I," under Captain Degenfeld, was sent on a reconnoisance in the direction of Cumberland Gap. The Detachment travelled a long distance, but saw no other enemy than Champ Ferguson and a few of his marauders, who as ' usual saved themselves from capture by flight. After two or three days hard riding Capt. Degenfeld returned to Point Burn- side. Shortly after our arrival the commission promoting Adjt. Mason to Captain arrived, and that officer was at once placed
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in command of Squadron "L," and sent on an expedition with his company to Monticello, twenty miles further south, to watch the movements of Forrest. The detachment was ferried across the Cumberland at midnight, and by noon the next day reached its destination, being the first body of Federal troops ever seen in that region. The region was alive with guerillas, with whom Captain Mason's command had frequent encounters, but nothing was seen of any organized force of the enemy. It Forrest had ever intended to cross the Cumberland at this time, that plan was changed, for within the next fortnight he was heard of far down on the Nashville & Chattanooga Rail- road. The danger was past, the outpost at Monticello was recalled, and Brown's Cavalry Brigade, having eaten up the last of the forage and provisions at Burnside Point, destroyed that post, and set out to return via Richmond and Winchester to Mount Sterling. This on its face was no extraordinary move- ment, but with the instinct of soldiers the men and officers of the Twelfth foresaw in the concentration at Mount Sterling the beginning of a second expedition into Virginia. Our arrival there confirmed this theory. Half a dozen regiments had already assembled, and it was soon understood that Bur- dridge, foiled in his first essay, was about to make a second attempt to pierce the mountain district of south western Vir- ginia, grasp the railway from Lynchburgh to Knoxville and destroy the valuable salt factories at Saltville.
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CHAPTER VII.
THE SECOND SALTVILLE EXPEDITION.
UPON arriving at Mount Sterling, the Twelfth Ohio and Eleventh Michigan Cavalry regiments were joined with the Sixth Regiment of United States Colored Cavalry, and became the Fourth Brigade of the Fifth Division, Twenty-third Army Corps, General Cox commanding, to which corps all the troops in the department of Kentucky officially belonged. It was at once apparent that the second expedition against Saltville was to be undertaken with the same purpose as the first, but would embody more strength and proceed more systematically. The force assembled at Mount Sterling included ten or twelve regiments-the three already mentioned mustering an aggre- gate of about two thousand men, the others being mostly Kentucky infantry regiments, reduced by long service and loose discipline, to mere battalions, and armed only with the long rifled musket and cumbrous cartridge-box .of the foot service. All were mounted, for a Saltville expedition was one which could not be undertaken on foot. Three or four days were spent in organization at Mount Sterling, during which time Colonel Ratliff, of the Twelfth Ohio, arrived and took command of the Fourth Brigade, made up, as already stated, of the Twelfth Ohio, the Eleventh Michigan, and the Sixth United States Colored Cavalry, of Colonel Wade. Colonel Ratliff had been in command of the post at Lexington since his injury in the first collision with Morgan at Mount Sterling, during the June previous, and now was released, at his own urgent re- quest, and permitted to join the expedition. The remaining
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brigades were commanded by General E. H. Hobson and Colonel Hanson, of the Thirty-seventh Kentucky, the whole forming a division under the immediate command of General Nathaniel McLean, of Cincinnati, who was himself directed by General Burbridge, commanding officer of that department, who aspired to make the destruction of Saltville and the Ten- nessee railroad, the crowning event of his administration.
Everything being in readiness, the division left Mount Sterling, on the 20th of September for Prestonburg, taking the southern route-one nearly parallel, and for some distance identical with, the trail by which the division of Burbridge had returned in pursuit of Morgan, three months before. Three days of brisk marching brought the command to Prestonburg, whence, after a day's halt and rest, it again proceeded up the river, forty-five miles, to Piketon-the last trace of civilization before entering the wilderness which forms the south-western part of Virginia. The road along the river had been neglected for years, and, exposed as it was to constant freshets, was then in an almost impassible condition, the best efforts of the sappers and miners being constantly required to enable the division to work its way along.
A few miles above Piketon, the Big Sandy River, which, as far as Louisa, forms the boundary line between Kentucky and Virginia, makes a sharp curve to the eastward, and is soon after split in twain, or divided into two main forks, whose junc- tion forms the Big Sandy proper. Of these two tributaries, one-Elkhorn Fork-reaches along the western. base of the Cumberland Mountains, flowing in a north-eastwardly direc- tion, while the other-Louisa Fork-breaks through the range and stretches far away, eastwardly, into Virginia. The road, which follows the margin of the Big Sandy as far up as Piketon, there crosses the stream by a deep ford, leads up a creek, over a ridge, and down the valley of another small stream, and having thus cut across the long detour of the Big Sandy, debouches again into the valley of that stream at the junction of the two great branches, or "forks," already de-
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scribed. Thence the road follows the Louisa Fork throughout its entire course, nearly a hundred miles eastward, through an. almost entirely unsettled country, and at last descends into the rich valleys of south-western Virginia. The division left Pres- tonburg on the morning of September 27th, forded the river several times during the day, passed through Piketon on the morning of the day following, again crossed the stream, and followed the creek road back into the hills, driving before it a party of rebel scouts which had been sent to watch our opera- tions, and, coming suddenly in contact with our advance, gave our leading battalion a pleasant little skirmish which was maintained mainly by Squadron "E," of the Twelfth, which dismounted and deployed over the hills, while the remainder of the column pushed on to reach the river valley before night- fall. The encampment this night was the last enjoyable episode of that ill-starred expedition. The weather was the early autumn of the South, fuel, water and food were plenty, and the bivouac fires were bright and cheery as a memory of home. Here the long pack train, sent forward from Prestonburg in advance of us with a large store of corn, was unloaded and sent back, the corn being transferred to smaller sacks and mounted behind the troopers; each cavalry horse carrying from one to two bushels of grain-its only sustenance for a march of a hundred miles.
In former times the road we were following had been constantly traveled by salt trains, and being under the patronage of the Commonwealth of Virginia, had been really a remarkably fine highway for that region. The steeper grades had all been reduced to a uniform slope, sluices and bridges had been built at various places, and dykes of stone laid at exposed points to protect the road from sudden rises of the river.
Along this road the division marched rapidly, encountering no opposition save the scattered fire of a few guerillas, who 'were content to skulk among tl.e cliffs that overhung the path, and to fire a few harmless shots at the passing column. At one point a bushwhacker vetured too near, and a carbine shot from a soldier of the Eleventh Michigan sent him to his account
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The early fall. rains had already set in, and the streams began to grow ominous. The farther we went, however, the nearer we came to the sources of the rivers, and the less the danger of being stopped by a flood. This was fortunate, for the life of every man and horse in the column was limited by the amount of food in his haversack and the corn in his pack. A delay of three days in the mountains would have brought on famine and turned back the column in dispair. No such misfortune came how- ever, and at sunset of the third day after leaving Kentucky, the division had climbed from the valley of Louisa Fork to the crest of Laurel Mountain, the long frowning ridge which forms the eastern boundary of the western hill region of Virginia. Along the crest of this mountain the road wound for nearly ten miles, and before half this distance had been accomplished twilight had deepened into a night of that inky, impenetrable darkness which makes travel even over a well known path a matter of extremest care and difficulty. With the darkness came on a blinding, drenching storm. The flashes of lightning, even at that late season, were vivid enough to show the frightful chasms beneath our path, and the thunder bellowed along the black mountain slopes with a prolonged, intermittent roar that was strikingly grand and impressive. The horrors of that night march eclipsed all previous experiences of the Regiment. The road, which by day would have been a dangerous one. became, on such a night as that, the very brink of eternity. On one side rose a solid, rugged wall of rock, on the other the precipice, sheer and perpendicular, hung hundreds of feet above the abyss below. Sometimes the chasm was on our right, some- times on our left. The darkness was so thick and impenetrable that even a white horse could not be seen by the horse or rider following close behind. The roar of the rain drowned the clink of hoof and sabre, and made each man and horse alone in the night, without a guide. From time to time a hapless horse would step beyond the narrow brink, and a cry of despair, fol- lowed by a dull crash many feet below would be the only requiem of beast and rider. In this way eight men were lost
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A number of others went over the edge where the fall was less precipitous, and were drawn up with lariats, wet, frightened and more or less seriously hurt. Progress forward was terribly slow; for hours it seemed that the column scarcely moved .. Finally the end of the ridge road was reached, and the advance began to wind down the dark and slippery road which led to the foot of the mountain. Soon there was a halt in front, and each horse in the long procession jammed up against the one preceding. Something was wrong in front, but no one could get forward to ascertain the cause of the delay. For half an hour the column sat in the rain and waited, many dismounting and holding their horses by the bits to prevent the nervous animals from going over the precipice. Finally an aide of Gen- eral McLean volunteered to make his way on foot to the front and ascertain the nature of the difficulty. Picking his way over and under the horses and mules that blocked the narrow way, the captain finally reached the advance, to find the sap- pers, who led the column, fast asleep. They had stopped to cut away a tree that had fallen across the road, and this being finished, had awaited the order to march. Their captain, over- come with fatigue, had fallen asleep, and his men, not being able to find him in the darkness, had followed the example. To stir up the slumbering sappers was but the work of a moment, and the drenched column, led by the aide, on foot, moved briskly down the mountain side into the rich valley of the Clinch River. A large farm house, flanked by wide-spreading barns and corn- cribs, welcomed us back to civilization. The rain had now ceased, the wind changed to a keen breeze from the north, and the wet, weary regiments soon had the fences of that Virginia farm blazing in bivouac fires, and their horses up to their ears in the welcome corn. The cider, the apple-jack, the geese, the pigs and the chickens of the homestead all shared a common fate, and when the division moved forward at noon the next
' day, it was as though the valley had been swept by the locusts of Egypt. From the fact of our having met no opposition, nor even encountered a picket at this point, it was rightly believed - that in coming by the Louisa Fork route we had eluded the
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watchful eye of Breckinridge, who, believing this route impracti- cable, had sent a brigade of cavalry to watch for us on the Pound Gap road, the one by which the advance had been undertaken the June previous. We were still some thirty miles from Salt- ville, our way thither lying through a series of parallel valleys and across a number of dividing ridges more or less formidable. If we could reach Saltville before the return of the cavalry sent out to meet us, our conquest would be easy. Pushing forward rapidly, the second night's halt was made at the farm of Gen. Bowen, a Confederate brigadier having a command in that de- partment. This point was reached at midnight, and our halt was made necessary by a sharp skirmish in which we encount- ered a heavy cavalry picket of the enemy already in possession of the place. Again advancing in the morning, we encount- ered a considerable force on the slope of a high ridge, and after a fight of some minutes at long range succeeded in clearing the road, at a cost of two men wounded and one killed. Six miles further brought us to a point within five miles of Saltville, where the Holston river forces its way by a narrow defile, through a deep rocky chasm between two hills. Huge cliffs overhung the way to an immense height, and among these rocks a strong force of rebels was stationed, and disputed the passage by a sharp though rather ineffectual fire. To dismount a brigade, scale the cliffs and dislodge this force was a work of so much time and difficulty that night came on just as we had forced the defile, and the opportunity of attacking Saltville that day was hopelessly lost. In losing that, as will be hereafter seen, Burbridge forfeited his last possible hope of making his expe- dition a success. Encamping at night in the little village which lay beyond the gap, the division prepared for the work of the morrow.
The dawn brought Sunday the 2d of October-cloudy and cold in the morning, bright and cold in the afternoon-a day of victory for our foes, of defeat for us. Skirmishing along down the valley, with a cavalry force whose only object seemed to be that of delaying our march as much as possible, we,
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finally, about ten o'clock in the morning, came in contact with the main force of General Breckenridge, deployed upon the hills, on both sides of the valley,'to resist our approach. The Fourth Brigade, under Colonel Ratliff, was dismounted and sent across the creek to attack the forces on the left, Hanson's brigade held the right, and moved off through a close thicket to force its way, if possible, round to the rear of the town, and Hobson's brigade held the centre and formed a reserve to guard and hold the army of led horses whose riders had been sent forward to fight on foot. On our right ran a high ridge along which the force which we had driven out of the gap the evening before had retreated toward Saltville, and on our left a similar ridge less high and steep, and ending about a mile from the salt works, where its summit was crowned with a field battery. From this battery a long slope, thickly overgrown with brush and briars, led down to a little brook flowing through an almost impenetrable jungle, in which a heavy force of rebel infantry had been established to guard the approach to the hill, the loss of which would give the assailants command of the town. Against this body, and with a view of forcing the possession of the ridge, the Fourth Brigade was sent-the Twelfth Ohio taking its usual place in the advance. A rapidly increasing fire from the jungle at the foot of the mountain, showed the enemy to be there in considerable strength, so, having advanced some sixty rods behind its skirmishers, steadily driving back the rebel skirmish line, the brigade gave the bushes a volley, rushed down the hill under a galling fire, ,leaped over the stream and, after two minutes of fighting at arms length, secured a position which gave both sides an equal advantage. The rebels retired slowly and stubbornly through the thicket up the hill, the Federals pressing them forward, step by step-each soldier fighting according to his own ideas, and often unable to see either a comrade or an enemy. More than once duels took place between individuals at a distance of not more than half-a-dozen paces-each firing through the dense undergrowth at a noise heard beyond until a groan or a cessation of the firing announced that the heard but unseen
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enemy was dead. At other times a rebel would pop out from behind a tree or rock only a few feet from an advancing Yankee, and then it was the quickest and surest shot of the two who lived to tell the story. During the fight up the hill Sergeant Davis, guidon bearer of Company "H," of the Twelfth, became engaged in a hand to hand struggle with a stalwart rebel for the possession of the colors. Both were for the moment dis- armed, and each equally determined to carry off the flag. The sergeant was most fortunate and, in a moment of advantage, harpooned his enemy with the sharp spear head of the flag staff-the brazen point passing through the rebel and appearing between his lower ribs on the opposite side.
Slowly and laboriously Colonel Ratliff's brigade pushed the rebel line through the thicket to the crest of the ridge; the Elev- enth Michigan and the negro regiment both behaving superbly and losing heavily. The enemy retired to a line of entrenchment that guarded the battery at the top of the slope, and from there was driven by a brilliant charge in which the Twelfth Ohio took the lead. Just as the line emerged from the under- growth into the open space that surrounded the entrenchments, a few men of the Twelfth Ohio, on the right of the line, seeing a squad of the enemy attempting to drag off a twelve pounder from the entrenchments, made a rush to capture it. They succeeded in this, but were soon after forced to abandon their prize. It was here that Sergeant Robert D. Murray, of Squadron "G," fell, shot through the face by a soldier so near him that the flash of the musket blackened the face of the wounded man. He became a prisoner, and after a remarkable experience returned home disfigured for life.
The Fourth Brigade had now achieved its work, at a ter- rible cost, and found itself within an hour of sunset in posses- sion of the high ridge commanding the town, but with hardly a cartridge left, and the supply mules more than two miles in the rear. Had the right and centre of Burbridge's line been . equally successful, the salt works might yet have been ours before dark. But Hobson in the centre and Hanson on the right had achieved little or nothing. The former had by a gal-
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lant charge driven the enemy from a small wooded hill in the centre of the valley, into the permanent fortifications that en- closed the town, but the canister and musketry of the forts had checked his advance and nothing valuable was gained in that quarter. On the right, Hanson had pushed forward through a dense, tangled thicket, and come boldly out upon the cliffs and bottom land which lay along the river on the side opposite from the town. Finding the river impassable at all points ex- cept one, and that one heavily guarded, he made a gallant but vain attempt to take the passage by force, and in the effort fell shot through the abdomen, and as all supposed, mortally hurt. The command of his brigade devolved upon Colonel True, of the Fortieth Kentucky, then in reserve half a mile to the rear. As this officer came to the front to again essay the crossing of the river, the cheers of coming reenforcements were heard be- yond the village, and in a few moments a full brigade of veteran infantry, five thousand strong, from the army of General Early, . came pouring up over the hills, and, advancing in line as though - on parade, poured a terrific volley into the brigade of Colonel True, obliging it to fall back under cover of a ridge where a hot musketry fire was kept up across the river until nightfall. " From the arrival of the reenforcements the last chance of our success was gone, and every man in Burbridge's division knew it. Our delay at the Gap the day before had been fatal; Vaughan's cavalry brigade had returned to strengthen the gar- rison at the salt works; to these Early had added his five thou- sand veterans in the afternoon, and the force of Breckenridge was already more than double our own. His men were amply supplied with food and ammunition, while Burbridge had neither; they lay within permanent entrenchments bristling with cannon, while our men were totally exposed; the enemy had bayonets to repel an assault, while we had none with which to make one. The rugged nature of the country made ' cavalry movements impossible; we could only attack in front. and our only hope of victory lay in the theory that five thous- and carbines could dislodge ten thousand infantry from behind strong field works by the sheer force of persistence and cour-
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age. To make the situation still more threatening, the force of rebels, driven from the gap the day before along the high ridge on the right, came pouring down the hill about four o'clock in the afternoon and made a furious assault upon the led horses and pack train in our rear. A line of volunteers was rallied by a captain of the rear guard, and this new attack was driven off; but it gave the enemy in our front great comfort and new cour- age to see that we were wholly surrounded. All day long the enemy had enjoyed an immense advantage by reason of his ar- tillery. From the opening of the fight just before noon, not less than eight twelve pounders, admirably served, had played upon every exposed part of our line. The brigades of Hobson and Hanson had suffered terribly from the accurate fire of shells which these guns were able to deliver. Finding that we had no artillery with which to reply, the rebel gunners boldly wheeled their pieces out into more favorable positions, and . practiced upon the Federal line as though enjoying a day's tar- get drill. They were beyond the reach of our carbines, and the two little mountain howitzers which constituted our only artillery were equally harmless. Toward night the rebels got some heavier guns into position on one of the redoubts and sent ust wo or three shells as an inkling of what might be expected to- morrow. Under all these circumstances there was not even a muleteer in Burbridge's division who did not know as early as four o'clock on that October afternoon, that the best result we could possibly hope for was to escape without capture. This was equally apparent to the commanding officers, and at a hasty council held near the center of the line about five o'clock, it was determined to retreat that night.
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