USA > Ohio > The story of the Sherman brigade. The camp, the march, the bivouac, the battle; and how "the boys" lived and died during four years of active field service > Part 6
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"Days of danger, nights of waking."
They were the "Siamese Twins" of the Army of the Cumber- land.
By this time our baggage had arrived. We laid out the camp and pitched our tents after much labor, for as yet we were a great "'awkward squad" in all such matters. The fields were dotted with tents to the right and left. as far as the eye could reach. It was called "Camp Buell," in honor of the general commanding, who was rapidly organizing what was first known as the Army of the Ohio. We were located near the residence of the rebel General Buckner. At this time he was collecting a force at Bowling Green, with which he proclaimed his intention to cap- ture Louisville and eat his Christmas dinner at home. He missed connection, however, and two months later surrendered to Gen- eral Grant at Fort Donelson.
Our stay at Louisville was not a protracted one, but Camp Buell contained a great deal of misery to the square inch. The details, as far as they need to be told, will be found in the next chapter. It was very different from Camp Buckingham, and still more different from being at home. But at first we were all full of ginger, excited over our first experience of army life, and we gave little thought to the future. Indeed, we had our hands full taking care of the present.
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December,
CHAPTER IV. .
ROMANCE GIVES WAY TO REALITY.
CAMPING IN KENTUCKY MUD-FIGHTING AGAINST HOMESICKNESS - FIRST TASTE OF ARMY RATIONS-IMPRESSIONS AND OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING HARDTACK-TOM CLAGUE'S STORY AND THE IRISH- MAN'S GOOD ADVICE-OUR OLD FRIEND, THE ARMY MULE- BATTLES OF THE TEAMSTERS-JOHN BUMBAUGH AND HIS "MOOLS"- VISITED BY "FAKIRS"-A SOLEMN CHRISTMAS-ORDERS TO MARCH.
T HE weather, during our few days in camp at Louisville, was as disagreeable as the most ardent rebel could have wished for us. The mercury was most of the time un- comfortably near the freezing point, and hardly a day or night passed without rain. The soil was soft clay, the ground flat, and the camp became an ocean of mud. It was scarcely possible to step outside of a tent without sinking over shoe tops. The adhesive power of that mud was something wonderful. "Spalding's Prepared Glue" was nothing to it. One of the boys observed, after his comrades had pried him out of the mud, that he was satisfied that, at least as long as the rain lasted, Kentucky would "stick" to the Union.
A storm has ever been a favorite theme for writers of both prose and poetry. It may be full of grandeur, and beauty, and all that sort of thing, when one can sit in his comfortable chair, before a cheerful fire, listen to the roar of the tempest and watch the drops as they dash against the window panes; but there isn't half so much romance about it when he crouches shivering upon the
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[861.
GETTING DOWN TO HARD-PAN.
ground, in a frail canvas tenement, shaken by the wind. From his point of view the subject has a very different aspect.
We all tried to endure bravely our many discomforts, but few were able to avoid, now and then, a touch of "the blues." Thoughts of home would sometimes come to the stoutest heart. Indeed, it cannot be doubted that there were many clear cases of homesickness. There were times when in every mess the boys sat around in moody silence, or lay curled up in their blankets try- ing to keep warm. Nobody spoke except to growl because the government didn't furnish houses on wheels, with all modern im- provements, for the soldiers to live in. There were a few fortu- nate "Mark Tapleys" in every company, who took everything as it came in a philosophical way. They managed to keep up their own spirits and their cheery laugh and jest were all that saved the whole crowd from dying in the dumps.
The doctors in the army recognized homesickness as a distinct and well defined disease. In their learned way they called it "nostalgia." It was exactly what ailed many who went to the hospitals. Some died of this malady. It was often developed, among raw soldiers, under just such conditions as those which surrounded us at Camp Buell.
The matter of rations became an exceedingly practical ques- tion with us. Up to this time we had been plentifully supplied with "soft bread," as we afterward called it, to distinguish it from the stuff that was now played off upon us under the seductive name of "bread." We had never seen that article of alleged food which universally took the name "hardtack." When we reached Louisville we plunged down, at one fell swoop, alighting upon the hard-pan of army rations-and our fare at Camp Buell was a sumptuous banquet when compared with what we lived on, for weeks at a time, months and years later !
The first day they gave us a loaf apiece of good soft bread, but this was only a weak attempt to "let us down easy." The next day came the boxes of hardtack. This was officially called "hard bread," and we bear cheerful testimony to the fact that the adjective part of the name was not misapplied. Others spoke of them as "crackers" probably because if a man was not careful they would crack his teeth. Some of the commissary people, with
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OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING HARDTACK.
[December.
a bitter irony that was most exasperating, spoke of them tenderly as "biscuits."
But they were just as hard by whatever name they were called. When handled and tossed about they rattled like so many blocks of dry wood, or stones. We happened to get, in the first issue, an extra hard lot. The baker must have gone to sleep, or his watch must have stopped, and the stuff been left in the oven or dry-kiln too long. It is 110 exaggeration to say that some of them were so hard that the stoutest teeth in the brigade could make no impression on them. It was like trying to eat a stove-lid. There was an old army song, in which poor Schnapps was represented as telling his tale of woe after his "fraulein" jilted him and drove him off "mit der war." One quatrain ran like this :
"Dey gifs me hard pread tuffer as a rock, It almost preaks mine shaw ;
I somedimes shplits him mit an iron vedge, Und cuts him oop mit a saw !"
These lines put the case very fairly. It was a good while before we knew what to make of the hardtack. They were un- like anything "in the heavens above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth." Ingenuity was taxed to its ut- most, and every culinary scheme that could be devised was tried on those hardtack. They were fried, roasted, boiled and stewed, but most of the experiments resulted in failure. If we got a piece in suchi shape that it could be chewed it had no more taste than a chip. It was but natural and reasonable to suppose that soaking would soften them, but anybody who acted on this theory made a mistake. Our mess soaked some-soaked them all night, and found in the morning that they had been turned into leather. They would have made a prime article of half soles for army shoes.
Two or three years after that, when the boys of our company were telling yarns around the campfire, Sergeant Tom Clague said that he did half-sole his shoes with two of those soaked hard- tack at Louisville, "and," said he, "they hadn't worn out yet when we got to Shiloh! Fact, boys ! "
We tried the plan of breaking them up with a stone or a club, and stewing them in a pan, with salt, pepper, and other condiments, but it was like a stew made from the parings swept
1861.]
THE HARDTACK, CONTINUED.
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up around a shoemaker's bench. This manner of preparing the hardtack did, however, come into quite general use in the army. The stew was everywhere known by a familiar name. Although the fact seems somewhat anomalous, it is true that the only way to soften a hardtack was by toasting it before a hot fire. It might be supposed that this would only make it harder, but it went by contraries. The hardtack was a contrary thing, anyway.
In Company I, Sixty-fifth, there was an old Irishman-one of Captain Christofel's "jewels"-who had "sailed the seas over," and had eaten hard bread for years. He said to his com- rades one day, after they had tried all these processes :
"B'yes, jist let me tell ye. Ye want to quit monkeyin' wid that stuff and jist ate her as she comes out av the box! That's the bist way intirely, an' ye can well belave me, as ye'll foind out fer yerselfs atter a while ! "
The old weather-beaten Hibernian was right. The hard- tack was better "straight" than in any other way. All the de- vices for cooking it proved a delusion and a snare.
There were many suggestions of different practical uses for the hardtack. One thought that a shirt lined with them would be an excellent armor, as it would be impervious to bullets. An- other said that in close action they might be stuffed into cannon, half a bushel at a time, and fired at the enemy instead of grape. A third thought he now fully understood why the doctor exam- ined his teeth so carefully when he enlisted, under the pretense that if they were defective he would not be able to bite "cat- ridges."
But, despised and reviled as it was at first, the hardtack be- came the soldier's best friend. There were times when it tasted better than the daintiest morsel that ever passed our lips, before the war or since. One indispensable feature of the hardtack was that it would "keep" forever and a day. I have kept one, as a souvenir, more than thirty years. It looks now just as it did when I laid it away on that Texas prairie to "take home." I have no doubt it would taste just the same as then. The hard- tack was a most important factor in army life, and I have deemed it worthy of these random observations.
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THE ARMY MULE.
[December,
There is another old acquaintance that comes before us when we recall the camp at Louisville, and deserves recognition at our hands. It is the Army Mule. It may be considered a just trib- ute, and will hardly compromise the truth, to say that the mule put down the rebellion. At least, without the mule the war would have been a failure. Very soon after we reached Louis- ville, each regiment received thirteen six-mule teams and wagons -one for each company and three for headquarters and general purposes. For several days the teamsters were the busiest men in camp, "breaking in" their mules. In fact some of them had more than they could attend to. The mules were as raw as ourselves, and a good deal more intractable. Some of them were extremely wild and vicious. They were "business" at both ends, using teeth and heels, according to circumstances, in an equally effective manner. It required about as much courage for a man to go among those mules as for a lion-tamer to enter a cage of wild beasts.
Many of them had never been broken to har- ness; and while we were being instructed in the JOSEPH F. SONNANSTINE, MAJOR, SIXTY-FIFTH. "school of the soldier" the teamsters were putting their animals through the school of the mule. They were stubborn pupils. Long and persistent effort was necessary to render them even measurably docile and obedient. The stubbornness of the mule long since passed into a proverb. It has been un- kindly said of woman :
"When she will, she will, you may depend on't ;
And when she wont, she wont, and there's an end on't."
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A TYPICAL MULE DRIVER.
1861.]
This I believe to be a slander upon the sex, but it may, with all justice and truth, be transferred to the army mule. When he planted himself and made up his mind to stay there, nothing could move him. The lash had no more effect than if applied to a log. Even the most sulphurous profanity was powerless. The mule would just stand and kick, and lay back his long ears, and wink, and utter that heart-rending, ear-torturing, "yee-haw," while the teamster vainly used up his whip, his strength, and his temper. Sometimes he would get his mules all geared up and in their places, and begin to feel that at last he had conquered. Suddenly, as if moved by a common impulse, those six mules would begin to bray and kick and twist and turn themselves around,. until they would be all tied up in a knot, standing with their heads and paint-brush tails at all points of the compass, and the harness in a hopeless tangle. Then the man would just sit down and swear.
John Bumbaugh, the muleteer of Company E, Sixty-fifth was a fair sample of that useful but profane contingent of the army. In some respects his abilities were of a superior order. He was a burly German, six feet high and broad in proportion, with eyes that looked in opposite directions at the same time. He could swear with great fluency in Dutch and English, and gen- erally mixed the two in about equal parts, with paralyzing effect. He entered upon the campaign with his "mools" with an avowed determination to "break" them or kill them. He had a per- suader in the shape of a club four feet long and two inches thick. The blows he administered in his battles with the mules could be heard all over the camp. John had no faith in moral suasion. He went upon the theory that the animals were totally depraved and could only be regenerated through the agency of severe cor- poral punishment. It must be confessed that the weight of evi- dence was in favor of John's theory. The army mule was not in the slightest degree susceptible to kindness. He used his heels upon friend and foe, without any discrimination whatever.
It was no uncommon thing to see Bumbaugh smite a mule between the eyes with his cudgel, and the animal would fall like a bullock under the blow of the butcher. As he lay there, in a half stunned condition, John would read him a lecture in two
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BUMBAUGH A CONQUERER.
[December,
languages, warning him, with terrific imprecations, of the fate that would befall him if he did not mend his ways. I saw John one day, when his mules had turned themselves around and twisted up the harness, in the manner before mentioned. He was speechless with rage. Even his well-stored vocabulary failed him and he couldn't think of anything to say that would give relief to his feelings. While the mules stood there, kicking and braying, John got an armful of straw, lighted it, and threw it under them. As they felt the heat, and the hair began to singe, they made a wild rush, one being carried along sidewise and another backward, until they finally all went down in a kicking, struggling heap, breaking the pole of the wagon. John thought it was great fun and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. It took him an hour to get those mules untangled.
But John finally subdued his mules, the "wheelers," the "swings" and the "'leaders"-the three pairs constituting a "team" being so designated in the parlance of the drivers-and as he bestrode his saddle mule, and guided his menagerie with the long single line over their backs, cracking his whip and firing furious adjectives, interjections and pronouns in chaotic English, he was as proud as a brigadier-general. It was his boast that he had "six von de pest mools in dot whole prigade !"
I have briefly sketched some of the leading points in John's experience, as they illustrate what all the muleteers went through. John was a representative man of his class. The drivers were a happy-go-lucky set of men. They were better provided than the soldiers. They usually slept in their great can- vas covered wagons, and were thus assured of a, good shelter. They had abundant facilities for the transportation of blankets, foraged provisions, and cooking utensils, and many of them lived in sumptuous style. Their chief weakness was in "trading off" their crippled or unruly mules. If a teamster had one that was lame, spavined, glandered, balky, a chronic kicker, or in any way particularly undesirable, he would pick out some fine animal in another regiment or brigade. Then at night he would lead over his own miserable beast, untie the one he had selected and take it back, leaving the discarded one in its place. The driver who found next morning that he had been imposed upon would get
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OUR FIRST CHRISTMAS IN CAMP.
1861.]
even the next night by exchanging with some other fellow who was asleep. They said it wasn't stealing, because the brutes all belonged to Uncle Sam, anyway.
But the much abused mules, ridiculed and despised, cursed and "beaten with many stripes," how badly we would have fared without them! After they were brought into subjection, and fairly settled down to their work, they patiently toiled and plod- ded day by day, drawing enormous loads, in heat and in storm, through mire and over logs and stones and up steep hills, often starved until all their bones could be counted. By thousands their carcasses marked the track of our armies, and were left for the buzzards to devour. The army mule had his faults, like the rest of us, but the glorious fabric of our reunited nation is a mon- ument not less to his faithfulness and patient endurance, than to the valor and sacrifices of those who went upon two feet instead of four.
While we lay at Louisville we were daily visited by "fakirs" who were trying to sell all sorts of contrivances which they en- deavored to make us believe were indispensable to our safety, health and happiness. Many will particularly remember the steel "breastplates," intended to be worn under the clothing to protect the wearer, on the same principle as an armored gunboat. We were told that these things were impervious to bullets, and that thus shielded we could just wade through the rebel army and win imperishable renown. A very few of the boys were beguiled into buying breastplates, but their comrades continually rallied them on their deficiency of "sand" and made so much sport of them that the things were thrown away. Some soldiers did go into battle wearing them, for I remember to have seen two or three of then on the field of Shiloh. Through each of them was a bullet hole, which proved their utter worthlessness.
Christmas eve found us lying deep in the mud of Camp Buell, bringing thoughts of home and loved ones. We didn't hang up our stockings, as we had no faith in Santa Claus visiting such a wretched place; but they were full in the morning, because we slept with thein on. It was not a pleasant Christmas for Pri- vate Tuttle, of Company F, Sixty-fifth, who was the first man in the regiment to get hurt with a bullet. He lost the forefinger of
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ORDERS TO MARCH.
[December,
his right hand by the accidental discharge of his gun while on guard. We all thought it was a terrible casualty.
The day was dismal indeed. There was a general effort to get up the best dinner possible, but this was frugal enough, when our only resources were hardtack, bacon. coffee, and bean soup. Marching orders for the next day came as a Christmas present to the Sixty-fourth, and the Sixty-fifth was directed to be ready to move the following day. We felt that we had had as much as we wanted of Camp Buell, and the prospect of a change was hailed with delight. We thought it impossible to find a worse place, wherever we might go.
We did little drilling at Louisville. A few times we were ordered out, just for exercise, and went "sloshing around" through the mud, but the conditions were not favorable, and the military instruction we received there did not benefit us to any extent worth mentioning. There was great activity in the work of organizing and supplying the army, and putting it in effective condition for a forward movement. Regiments from Ohio, Indiana and Illinois arrived almost daily, and sat down in the mud-just as we did.
We had entered upon the long and painful process of season- ing by which we were to be made soldiers, capable of enduring the utmost exposure and fatigue. We thought it pretty hard, but we had as yet no conception of what was in store for us during the coming months and years. The altogether wretched December weather at Louisville had its effect upon the health of the novices in soldiering. The daily sick-call was largely attended, and fully a hundred men of the brigade were so prostrated that they had to be sent to hospitals.
1861.]
CHAPTER V.
OUR FIRST EXPERIENCE AS ROADSTERS.
ON THE WAY TO BARDSTOWN-WE START OFF BEAUTIFULLY, BUT -- THOSE MOUNTAINOUS KNAPSACKS AND HOW THEY WERE LIGHT- ENED-THE ACHES, THE PAINS, THE LIMPS, THE BLISTERS !- BADLY USED-UP PILGRIMS-A BONANZA FOR THE NATIVES-CAMPING IN THE SNOW-NO CONFISCATION, BUT THE QUARTERMASTER FURN- ISHES STRAW-TWO WEEKS AT CAMP MORTON-A WRETCHED TRAMP TO LEBANON.
0 UR FIRST day's march! It was only ten miles, but will any ever forget the aches and pains, the blistered feet and the limbs that tottered from weariness? Out in the min- ing camps and towns of the far west, when a fresh young man from "the states" makes his appearance, they call him a "tenderfoot." Tliat is just what we were at this time. Perhaps we didn't know it before we started-we thought we could march just like old campaigners-but we found it out pretty thoroughly during those three days of tramping from Louisville to Bards- town !
The Sixty-fourth marched the day after Christmas. It started in fine style, with band playing and colors flying, just as our regiment did the next day. The boys loaded themselves down like pack mules, as we did, and to write of our own exper- ience will describe theirs equally well.
The reveille sounded through the camp of the Sixty-fifth early in the morning of December 27th. Everybody turned out
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OUR FIRST TRAMP.
[December,
promptly. That day a new leaf in our army life was to be turned. Thus far it had only been lying in camp and drilling; now we were to take the road. Breakfast over, and a few sick sent to the hospital, we broke camp at eight o'clock. The sun came out and smiled, as if to give us a good send-off. We would have thought better of him if he had shown his face a little more during the week previous. It took us two hours to get the wagons loaded and ourselves in order for marching. At ten o'clock we shouldered knapsacks-and such knapsacks! They were crammed to their utmost capacity with extra articles of clothing, books, and notions of every conceivable sort that we had brought from home. We didn't know how heavy they would get-that before night every pound would seem to weigh a ton. There were few who did not have extra quilts rolled up with their blankets and strapped to their knapsacks. As one of the boys expressed it that night as he sat by the fire looking ruefully at the great blisters on his feet, we "bit off more than we could chew." But we cheerily buckled on our cartridge boxes, strapped our loads upon our shoulders, hung on the canteens and haver- sacks, seized our muskets and stepped briskly into line. While the regiment was forming Colonel Harker laughed as he said:
"Those knapsacks will not be so large tomorrow, and the next day they will be still smaller."
Even during the few minutes we stood in line awaiting the "Attention-Battalion !" the knapsacks began to feel a good deal heavier than we supposed they were. Shoulders ached, and the boys would furtively slide their muskets around and brace them under their packs to ease the strain. But nobody said anything, and directly we were off, to the stately tune of "Hail Columbia," followed by that quick stepper, "Yankee Doodle." The knap- sack was by no means all of the soldier's burden. There were the haversack with three days' rations, the canteen full of water, the cartridge box with forty rounds of ammunition, and the mus- ket, which before night seemed as heavy as a bar of railroad iron.
Before we had gone a mile we began to hitch up our knap- sacks and hump our backs, leaning forward to relieve the shoul- ders, until we looked like a procession of camels. It was not long till many began to "weaken." The jokes that had been so
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1861.]
GETTING RID OF THE SURPLUSAGE.
freely bandied when we started, gradually ceased, and conversa- tion flagged. If anything was said, at all, it was usually some- thing that sounded like "Amsterdam," but they all forgot to put on the "Amster." The boys were loth to yield, but pluck fi- nally gave way to discretion.
At the first halt, two or three miles out, a few unstrapped the rolls on their knapsacks, took out the quilts that were made by loving ones at home, and tossed them into the fence corners. The quilt is a good thing in its proper spliere of usefulness, but when a soldier is forced to make choice between it and an army blanket, there can be no question as to the result. Nobody else wanted those castaway quilts, for every man had as much as he could stagger under-and more. They were left to be picked up by people who followed the regiment for miles for that very pur- pose. I remember seeing one perspiring man take out his long bowie knife, cut his quilt into strips, and stamp them into the mud.
"My mother made that," said he, bitterly, "and if I can't have it myself no blasted Kentuckian is going to sleep under it."
But the rattle of the drum tells that the "rest" is at an end. With sighs and groans we again sling our knapsacks, not without many misgivings as to our ability to lug them all day. "For- ward!" says the colonel, and we plod along the flinty pike. But few milestones, that mark our progress on the road to military glory, are passed before many begin to walk with a limping gait. One says he cannot march further, and the surgeon gives him a pass to ride in an ambulance. Others are permitted to put their knapsacks on their company wagons. An hour later and the am- bulances are full of men who find marching so much harder than they expected, and the wagons are covered with knapsacks, hang- ing from every available point. Some of the boys tramp along bravely, determined not to give in, and a very few are able to hold out to the end.
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