USA > Pennsylvania > History of the First regiment infantry, National guard of Pennsylvania (Grey Reserves) 1861-1911, pt 1 > Part 10
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Second Lieut. Thomas H. Mudge, Jr.
Company H. Captain George W. Kern
First Lieut. Mortimer L. Johnson
Second Lieut. David Jones
Company I. Captain G. West Blake
First Lieut. William Maris. . Jr.
Second Lieut. John C. Sullivan
Company K. Captain Wm. W. Keys
First Lieut. David A. Woelpper
Second Lient. Silas H. Safford
Company L or Battery Captain Benoni Frishmuth
First Lieut. Jolin S. Jenks
Junior First Lient. Samuel T. Irwin
Second Lieut. B. M. Matlack
Color Sergeant of Regiment. Alfred Ogden 1
To this call of June 26 twenty-eight regiments of infantry, from the Thirty-seeond to the Sixtieth inclusive, responded, to-
1 See Appendix for muster-roll.
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HISTORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT, N. G. P.
gether with several battalions and independent companies. They were received under it as the terms of the proclamation provided, and were designated as "Pennsylvania Ninety Days' Militia." To the previous call of the President of June 15, eight regiments of infantry, the Twentieth, the Twenty-sixth to Thirty-first, inclu- sive, and the Thirty-third, together with a number of independent companies, responded. These organizations mustered into the service of the United States were known as " Emergency " infan- try, Pennsylvania volunteers. The infantry regiments in the campaign of September, 1862, were numbered from the First to the Twenty-fifth, and in the campaign of June to August, 1863, from the Twenty-sixth to the Sixtieth, inclusive. The Twentieth retained its number in both campaigns.
The officers' commissions, however, were issued under the President's proclamation of June 15, and bore no distinction be- tween the ninety days' militia and the " emergency " infantry volunteers. As there is no record of the commission anywhere it is fortunate that the evidence of this material fact is supplied by that of Colonel Smith's, carefully preserved with other valuable papers by his grandson, Maj. Charles S. Turnbull, now the surgeon. First Regiment Infantry, National Guard of Pennsylvania. The commission is dated Harrisburg, June 26, 1563, and after the usual formalities reads as follows: " Know ye that Charles S. Smith of the County of Philadelphia having been duly elected and re- turned colonel of the Thirty-second Regiment Infantry Pennsyl- vania Militia, mustered into the service of the United States, for the defence of the State of Pennsylvania under the Proclamation of the President of date June 15, 1863, and General Orders No. 43, I, Andrew G. Curtin, Governor of the said Commonwealth. do Commission him to rank as COLONEL, from the day of the date hereof. . . THIS COMMISSION to continue in force until the same shall be lawfully determined or annulled."
The letters a. w. m .- " appointed and waiting muster "-after the name of an officer of volunteers indicate that he holds a com- mission from the Governor of his State, but has not yet been mustered into the service of the United States, and that pending that interval between the date of his commission and the. date of his muster he has been acting without muster. Although not clothed with full authority, he was yet permitted to discharge
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" CRACKERS "
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the duties incident to his office: his subsequent muster to be a ratification and confirmation, should his authority at any time be questioned. So these seven days between the arrival of the regiment at Harrisburg and its actual muster into service, this a. w. m .- acting without muster-interval was not permitted to pa == in idleness. It was well utilized to practical purposes. The new recruits were made to understand something of discipline, and by competent non-commissioned officers were instructed in such rudimentary preliminaries as the opportunity afforded. There was the usual and regular routine of roll-calls, guard mounts, dress parades, inspection, squad, company, and regimental drills, with better results than in this period of hesitancy could fairly be expected.
Not much could be expected from a commissariat with the troops in the army and yet not of the army. Some companies fared better than others. With an alert quartermaster and lib- eral contribution, there came the more satisfactory supply. Grum- bling there will be, whether the soldier be overfed or underfed. For the Government ration, not always at hand, never in quantity, sometimes in quality, red herring, crackers, cheese, was the non- nutritious substitute. It was needful to be frugal too; crackers and cheese, inseparable elsewhere, were parted here. "Those who have crackers can't have cheese," was the ever-repeated in- junction with every issue.
The old-fashioned hardtack was the stay and prop of the army. When all else was scant. there was generally hardtack in plenty. "Crackers," its familiar designation, was a generic term for all sorts of food-supply. As the mule's weird bray told of his hunger. in the soldier's "crackers" in chorus told of his. In the course of this campaign this militia contingent came in touch with the brigade of Gen. Thomas H. Neill, of the second division of the Sixth Army Corps, seasoned soldiers. There were in this brigade two Philadelphia regiments, the Twenty-third and Sixty- first Pennsylvania Volunteers. General Neill, himself a Phila- delphian, had been the colonel of one of them, the Twenty-third. He was a West Point graduate, of exceptional excellence as a sollier, superior as a tactician, courteous, courageous, always at vase, though excessively formal, and withal about the best-dressed officer of the army. It so happened that about this time, too, a
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HISTORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT, N. G. P.
shortage fell as well upon these bronzed and hardened veterans, and Neill's brigade felt the pinch. A toilsome march, a hot day. travel-stained and weary, his troops, driven along famished and thirsty, had suddenly come to a halt and fallen off to each side of the road for the brief rest the opportunity afforded, when Neill, with his rather showy staff, dashed up through the column. His magnetie presence soon aroused his soldiers, and, as if there was but one thought in every mind, there burst in unison from every throat a spontaneous chorus of "Crackers! Crackers! Crack- ers!" Neill, proudly ereet, reined himself in, whirled suddenly to the right, rode well in toward the resting column, and as if de- termined, if not to let his soldiers know what he was, certainly to let them know what he was not, vehemently shouted, " I'm no damned commissary! I am no damned commissary!" and then contentedly rode away.
General Neill had a charming personality. His mannerisms, so exclusively his own, were rather attractive than peculiar. His military abilities, conceded during the war, were recognized after it by his selection as Commandant of Cadets of the West Point Military Academy. His brother, Dr. John Neill, was a Philadel- phia physician of high repute. He was a surgeon of United States volunteers during the Civil War and was brevetted lieuten- ant-colonel for faithful and meritorious services.
The construction of fortifications on the heights on the right bank of the Susquehanna to cover Harrisburg and its important bridges had already made some progress. "Some of the patriotic citizens of that city volunteered for the work; others were paid. The colored population were not behind their white brethren in giving assistance." Fort Washington, said to be the only fortifi- cation worthy of the name erected in a northern city during the Civil War, was nearing completion. Work on these entrench- ments, strengthened and enlarged to protect not only the bridge at Bridgeport opposite, but as well the other at Marysville above the city, was stimulated by the near approach of the enemy. His piekets were within a few miles of the city. Jenkins's cavalry brigade, in Chambersburg on the fifteenth, entered Carlisle, but eighteen miles away, from the west on Saturday morning the 27th of June at ten o'clock. Ewell's infantry corps followed at two. They came not as an " army with banners," but as an army with
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UNUSUAL AND NOVEL OCCUPATIONS
1863
wants. Jenkins wanted rations for fifteen hundred men to be deposited in the market-house within one hour, and he got them. Ewell wanted more; he wanted fifteen hundred barrels of flour, surgical instruments, medicines, quinine, chloroform. Carlisle was bankrupt in such supplies, and he did not get them.
The old muskets exchanged for others of a more modern pat- tern, the regiment was hastened from its quarters at Camp Russell at five o'clock on the morning of Sunday the 28th over the old covered foot-bridge across the river for work on the fortifications; and after night a detail was sent out to level a forest that inter- fered with the range of the artillery in the Fort. Neither accus- tomed to the spade nor familiar with the axe, they made a sorry job of it. The way the timber was slashed was a menace to human life. Trees fell indiscriminately in the darkness, the axeman and the bystander alike in jeopardy. A letter of the time thus portrays the situation :
"On the evening of the 28th we were formed and marched off in light marching order without muskets or blankets, and to our disgust the whole regiment was started to digging in the entrenchments, our company (D) excepted. Company D was marched about two miles further to the front and acted as axemen, or, in other words, we were ordered to chop down a forest which in some way interfered with the range of the artillery. It was rough duty for the boys of Company D, but they worked splendidly, each man helping to the imminent peril of his life. You can imagine what about one hundred green hands were worth in a dense forest and in the dark. Trees were falling around. and it made our position by no means pleasant. It was a very cold night too, for June: no overcoats, but a quick step back to camp made us all right, where we arrived at four A. M. The joke here is that we had only been mustered in twenty minutes when orders were given that made us the wood-choppers."
A detail under command of Major Nicholson was detached for what was supposed to be a reconnaissance. The incident was un- eventful. A " noiseless march on a beautiful moonlight night" and a return to camp is all the recognition the records give it. On this same night. Sunday, June 28. after the Army of the Potomac had made its bivouac in the vicinity of IIvattstown. Maryland, the order was published that relieved Hooker and assigned Meade to its command.
Carlisle remained in the hands of the enemy until the " dawn of Wednesday morning " (July 1). Carlisle is a county seat, a college town, and was a military post. The county town of Cum-
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HISTORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT, N. G. P.
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berland County, it is the home of Dickinson College, an institution of learning of high repute, founded in 1783 and named in honor of John Dickinson, a famous patriot, scholar, soldier, and states- man of the Revolution, by whom it had been partially endowed. The United States military barracks, within the borough limits, half a mile northeast of the court-house, were built by the Hes- - sian prisoners of war captured at Trenton. For many years a garrisoned post, a school for cavalry, it was abandoned at the close of the war and is now the famous Carlisle Indian School. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee was there on duty as a first lieutenant, Second United States Cavalry, when he resigned to enter the Confederate service ; subsequently to appear to break the rest, disturb the peace, and rack the nerves of the very good people who had once regarded him as quite a social gem. General Ewell, too, at one time in command of the post, was no stranger in the valley. He made his headquarters at the cavalry barracks while his corps held the town ; Rhodes's division encamped around and about him, and Dole's brigade occupied the college campus.
An amusing incident is related, which, though directly appli- eable to Gettysburg, may not inappropriately be repeated here. A prominent newspaper editor of that borough, observing the in- creasing anxieties of his neighbors as the near approach of the two great armies indicated the likelihood of a coming battle, songht to allay their fears as best he could. He gathered a few of his friends about him and offered this comforting suggestion : "You know," said he, " that we have a borough ordinance that forbids the discharge of firearms in the public streets, and I am confident that General Meade and General Lee, both law-abiding men, will never, never violate that ordinance."
Despite the close proximity of this heavy force, apparently hesitating as to what should be its further direction, the presence of the militia had restored confidence to Harrisburg and its viein- ity. Its highly nervous state had been quieted and the general exodus for a better safety had been checked. What knowledge the militia had that there was this heavy column of seasoned soldiers at Carlisle, but eighteen miles away, does not clearly appear. As soon, however, as it had disappeared or was thoughit to have disappeared, they began to occupy the town.
What the talk or gossip of the eamp was we are not permitted
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BRUSH AT OYSTER'S POINT
to know. Even the " cook house," from which always emanated the earliest intelligence of every manœuvre, however secretly it was intended to be conducted, was painfully silent. No note or memo- randum appears to indicate other than the ordinary routine of camp life for those two days of Monday and Tuesday, June 29 and 30, so eventful elsewhere. Neither was there rumor afloat or facts asserted of the manœuvres, marehing, concentration, neces- sarily incident to the close approach of the nation's greatest conflict. It is intimated, however, in a letter of the time, that the regiment held a "most important position on the right of the river road," covering the flank, where officers and men were kept constantly on the alert.
The affair on Tuesday the 30th, in the vicinity of Sporting Hill, beyond Oyster's Point, indicates that there was need to be watchful. Oyster's Point, really within the borough limits of Camp Hill, is located about three miles west of the old site of Fort Washington, at the intersection of what was known as the Mud Road to Carlisle with the Carlisle turnpike, and Sporting Hill on the turnpike is still a short distance beyond the inter- seetion.
Gen. John Ewen, of the Fourth Brigade of the New York National Guard, with two of his regiments, the Twenty-second and Thirty-seventh New York, finding no trace of the enemy, whom he had been instructed to develop; on his return march was overtaken by a company of cavalry that had been driven in from its picket outpost by a force of some considerable strength. He promptly put his regiments about, and when nearing Sporting Hill, with his movement accelerated by a volley of small arms from a copse of timber, deployed his Thirty-seventh in an adjoining wheat field and returned the fire. Advancing under the fire of a battery which had been planted in his front, and from a single gun on his flank, materially aided by a section of Landis's Philadelphia bat- tery, which had joined him on the march, he effected the enemy's dislodgement. The enemy's force was cavalry, and no pursuit was attempted. General Ewen on his march to Carlisle the fol- lowing day learned from the farmers that the enemy's cavalry had passed over the same route the afternoon before, with a force that they had estimated at about 3500, with a number of their killed and wounded in ambulances. General Ewen reported his own loss
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90 · HISTORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT, N. G. P.
as "a few officers and men of the Thirty-seventh slightly wounded." 1 Other reports gave his casualties as four wounded.
Neither had the two previous days been altogether free from touch with the enemy. On Sunday the 28th a cavalry force with a section of artillery had driven in our cavalry piekets near Oyster's Point, but did not succeed in moving the infantry pickets, while on Monday the 20th Lieutenant Stanwood, who with his detachment of regular cavalry had driven in the enemy's piekets on the Carlisle Road, was obliged to return under a fire of artillery which was opened on him.
This affair is given its significance in Bates's "History of Pennsylvania Volunteers," vol. v. p. 1227: .. Knipe, who had now been superseded in the chief command by General 'Baldy ' Smith, but who was still intrusted with active operations, continued to fall back until he reached Oyster's Point. where he again made a stand, and on the night of the 28th the enemy's ad- vance having approached within range of his artillery, he opened a rapid fire from the guns of Miller's Battery which inflicted some loss and caused a precipitate retreat. This was the farthest advance which was made in any considerable force towards the State Capital."
The brigade to which the regiment was assigned was com- manded by Gen. William Brisbane, of Wilkesbarre. It consisted of the Twenty-eighth, Col. James Chamberlain, the Thirtieth, Col. Wm. M. Monies, and the Thirty-third Blue Reserves, Col. William W. Saylor, Emergency Infantry, Pennsylvania Volun- teers, and the Thirty-second Gray Reserves, Col. Charles S. Smith, Pennsylvania Ninety Days' Militia. The division com- manded by Brig .- Gen. William Farrar Smith, United States Vol- unteers, consisted of two other brigades, one commanded by Brig .- Gen. John Ewen, of the Fourth Brigade New York National Guard, composed of the Thirty-seventh and Twenty-second and Eleventh, New York National Guard, and the other composed of the Eighth, Seventy-first, Fifty-sixth, and Twenty-third New York National Guard, commanded by Brig .- Gen. Joseph F. Knipe, United States Volunteers, Landis's Philadelphia Battery, 6 pieces, Captain Henry D. Landis ; Miller's Philadelphia howitzer battery, 4 pieces, Captain E. Spencer Miller; and the Independent Howit- zer Battery, + pieces, Captain Benoni Frishinnth, of the Thirty- second, were all attached to the division.
1 War Records (General Ewen's official report), vol. xxvii. part ii, p. 235.
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AFFAIR AT SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT-HOUSE
1863
General Brisbane had been the lieutenant-colonel of the Forty-ninth Pennsylvania Volunteers, a regiment with which our own 119th Pennsylvania Volunteers (Gray Reserves) had been brigaded throughout its entire career in the field. Though apparently without significant cotemporaneous coinci- dence, it yet bestirs recollections closely akin to the regi -- ment's early history well worthy of preservation. The intimacies between the officers and men of these two organizations were sineere and lasting. They were ever as of one military family. In battle their confidence was mutual, " neither had any fear of its flank as long as the other was there "; and when the great struggle was over, the confidence still remained, the friendships never were forgotten. Originally it was the old brigade made famous by Hancock at Williamsburg; the Forty-ninth had been with it from the beginning; the 119th joined it after Antietam, It was after- ward better known as Russell's Brigade, the Third Brigade, First Division, Sixth Army Corps. Composed of the Sixth Maine, Forty- ninth Pennsylvania, 119th Pennsylvania, and Fifth Wisconsin, the brigade won special distinction at Rappahannock station, No- vember 7, 1863, capturing the enemy's works by a bayonet charge, with a large number of prisoners, flags, and cannon. Fox, in his " Book of Regimental Losses," an accepted authority, says of this charge: " There was no more brilliant action in the war." Colonel Ellmaker commanded the brigade, Lieut .- Col. Gideon Clark the 119th, General Russell being in command of the division. It was in this engagement that Second Lieutenant Edward E. Coxe, of Company D, 119th Pennsylvania, formerly a private in Company D, First Regiment Infantry Gray Reserves, was mortally wounded, and Captain C. M. Hodgson, of Company B, and Second Lientenant Robert Reaney, of Company E, were killed.
As they had had before, and were often to have again, but this time suffering terrible loss, there came, at Spottsylvania Court House, the opportunity to probably put to its severest test their battle confidence. The Forty-ninth and 119th Pennsylvania were two of the twelve selected regiments which on the afternoon of May 10, 1864, formed the assaulting column under the gallant Upton. Both regiments were punished severely, the Forty-ninth the heavier, the colonel, Thos. M. Hulings, and the lieutenant-colonel, John B. Miles being killed, as was also Seeond Lieutenant Edward
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HISTORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT, N. G. P.
IS63
Ford, Jr., of Company I, and First Lieutenant J. R. Lawrens, of Company C, of the 119th; and two days afterward, on the twelfth in Hancock's charge at the " Bloody Angle," in which the entire Third Brigade was actively engaged, the 119th lost its major commanding, Major Henry P. Truefitt, and the command- ing officer who succeeded him. Captain Charles P. Warner, both killed. Early in this campaign of Grant's, "to be fought out on this line if it takes all summer," the losses of these two regiments about paralleled each other. From May 6 to May 13, 1864, in- elnding the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, the Forty-ninth lost 317 in killed and wounded out of the 530 who crossed the Rapidan. And for the same period, including the same battles, the loss of the 119th was 217 in killed and wounded out of about 400 effectives.
Of the other officers of the 119th Pennsylvania killed in action in this last campaign of Grant's, were Jolin D. Mercer, adjutant, killed at Petersburg, Virginia. April 2, 1865; First Lieutenant George G. Lovett, Company G, died May 10, 1864, of wounds received in the Wilderness May 5, 1864; Captain George C. Humes, of Company B, killed at Cold Harbor, Virginia, June 3, 1864. This Company B was significantly marked for fatalities among its officers : three of its captains were killed outright-Cap- tains Hodgson and Humes, already mentioned, and Captain Peter W. Rodgers, a most promising and thoroughly efficient officer, who fell, early in his career, at Salem Church, Virginia, May 3, 1863.
Though apparently digressing, it seems not inappropriate, where opportunity is afforded, to interweave facts and incidents in the story of the parent regiment forcefully suggested by others of absorbing interest in the military life of the regiment it had so successfully fathered.
There was one of the officers of the Forty-ninth, Sherwood by name, a captain, famous as an entertainer. Ile was disposed at times to be a bit facetious. On one occasion, in winter quarters, when there were few, if any, facilities for such an entertainment, he sent out quite a formal invitation for a " fish dinner," with covers for twelve. The table furniture was crude: plates tin : forks sterl. three prongs; wooden handles for both knives and forks; table deal boards, clothless. At each plate there was a bottle of " Commissary," the army's generic for whiskey of every
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HISTORIC DAY OF JULY 1
1863
brand, and in the centre a lonely mackerel with a single box of sardines. Sherwood stood at the head. his guests arranged six on each side opposite each other; but before he had opportunity to bid them be seated, there came, as if in chorus, the exclamation, " Sherwood, what in the name of thunder are you going to do with all those fish ?" That was where Sherwood was facetious.
General Brisbane had been directed to move his brigade by the Mud Road to Carlisle at daylight on July 1. July nights are short, and that the men might be properly fed before this their first well-defined march, and that the brigade might be assembled, as it was that morning for the first time, shortly after midnight the command " marched to the Blue Reserves' Camp, the Thirty-third Regiment's, and waited there a long time while the morning mess was cooked and eaten." Logistics had had but scant attention. Vexatious delays still followed from insufficient transportation facilities, and it was nine o'clock before the column was well in motion toward its destination. "The day was hot, very hot, even in the early morning." Then it rained at intervals. Two- thirds of the ten hours covered by the march were sunlight and during the other one-third there was either a hard rain or the air was sultry, steaming with the moisture, not unusual when sum- mer showers frequently repeat themselves. The temperature, the weather, the early morning frittered away in tedious delay, un- seasoned troops. many fell by the wayside. A halt at noon in a wood gathered the scattered column, fed and rested the men.
Wednesday, July 1. 1863. is a day historic in the battle annals of the country. renowned for fight, famous for the march. Two corps of the Army of the Potomac were in the death-grip at Gettys- burg: the others were hastening to their support. The Sixth, the farthest away-the 119th was with it-covered its thirty-seven miles in seventeen hours, without an organized halt-a march with scarce a modern parallel.
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