USA > Pennsylvania > History of the First regiment infantry, National guard of Pennsylvania (Grey Reserves) 1861-1911, pt 1 > Part 11
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Gen. Fitzhugh Lee with his brigade of Confederate cavalry, his corps commander, Maj .- Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, with him, was moving from a southeasterly direction on the roads leading from York and Dillsburg. Stuart in his search for the Army of North- ern Virginia had before day on the first of July reached Dover in York County, abont sixteen miles from Carlisle. Having marched all night. he had then halted for a brief rest for
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HISTORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT. N. G. P.
horses and men, and then, pursuing his quest still further, started on for Carlisle shortly after the break of day. General Lee, so it is stated in Egle's " History of Pennsylvania," first made his appearance about seven o'clock where the Trindle Spring Road, with its more directly eastwardly trend, makes a junction with the Dillsburg Road. These roads lay to the south- - ward of the Cumberland Valley Railroad. The road, its course westerly, by which Brisbane's column moved, was to the north- ward of that railway. As the two columns approached the town, they were consequently, though coming in at different angles, but little over a mile apart.
As the regiment was about to pull out from its noon-day halt, Colonel Wiedersheim, then a corporal in Company F, remembers to have overheard a staff officer give directions to Colonel Smith to hasten his march, that the purpose was to reach Carlisle before the enemy, who apparently was moving in the same direction. Captain Kennedy, his captain, caught these instructions too, and impetuous and zealons as he was, earnestly urged that he be per- mitted to detach himself and push into Carlisle in advance of the regiment. Others, too, recall the fact that at this point orders came from above to hurry the column along. An order given to load, awkwardly executed in some instances, was followed by a growl here and a complaint there, according to temperament, that the awkward fellow in the front rank was placing in jeopardy his better skilled companion in the rear. Sometimes it was reversed, and the awkward fellow was in the rear and the skilled men in the front rank .. The instructions to increase the pace were so faith- fully carried out, that a line officer records " the last hour on the double quick."
General Ewen with his command, his distance shortened by a start from the scene of his skirmish of the day before, reached Carlisle at three o'clock in the afternoon, and occupied a position on the main road on the brow of a hill overlooking a valley about a mile south of the town. General Ewen moved by the turnpike. He states in his report: " The troops were refreshed at the small villages along the march by the inhabitants, who were kindly at their doors with offerings of their food."
The regiment, with better-closed ranks, completed the march, entered the town over the Letort. a branch of and that flows north
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into the Conagadwinet, moved out the main street, halted at Market Square in front of the court-house, formed line on the north side facing south, and stacked arms. A section of Landis's Battery, afterward unlimbered and in action, front to the east- ward, was planted in the street opposite the left of the regiment. C. Stuart Patterson, eminent lawyer and financier, now quarter- master of the Veteran Corps, was the sergeant in command of the right gun. The main street is some eighty feet in width ; through it, with its double track, runs the Cumberland Valley Railroad. Market Square is a wide open space with the Presbyterian church on the northwest, the Episcopalian church on the northeast, the court-house on the southwest, and the market-house on the south- east corner. The railway passenger station. is about a square to the westward, the Wellington Hotel a square to the eastward, and the county jail still a square further to the east, all on the north side of the street.
The command reached this destination between six and seven o'clock. On a bright July afternoon, the skies had eleared, the showers had ceased, there was still quite a little daylight left. A few of the men, prone to inquiry, were disposed to stroll. A buneh from Company D-Randall, Sam Wanamaker, and Goodwin -went off, they said, to get their bearings and gather some knowl- edge of the roads besides the one on which they had entered. While they were thus engaged, they were passed on the edge of the town by a small body of mounted mien, so dusty and begrimed as to makes their equipment searee discernible. Randall, who had been in service and had seen two battles, conjectured, from the way they rode and carried their arms, that they were rebels. His companions, however, gave no eredenee to his suggestion, and received it with rather a boisterous guffaw. Randall was right. There were about twenty-five of them, apparently browsing round for whatever might seem to come, legitimately or otherwise, within the scope of the game of war. It was well they had not so in- eluded the three strolling militiamen, who were baek to their ranks again in time not only for the better things that first awaited them, but for the worse that were to follow. They lost neither the feast nor the fight : got but little of the one, but a good deal of the other.
The citizens glad to welcome their friends, the coming, as they had been to speed the enemy, their parting and self-invited guest,
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had provided for them liberally and were prepared to quench thirst with coffee and appease appetite with nourishing food, served from well-appointed tables bountifully spread in the market-house. The meal had scarce begun, or, in fact, as one account gives it: " Just as we were about to take the first mouthful there arose a cry --- which I shall never forget-' the rebels are coming !' Cap- tain Clark and I stayed back for a few moments presuming it was a scare on the part of the townspeople; but seeing our artillery being hurried up, we took our station in line, and had hardly given the order to take arms when the first shell burst over our heads." Another reads: " We were eating this [' the bountiful meal provided for us'] when we heard the noise and commotion that followed the discovery of the rebel cavalrymen by some of the town people or some of our men. They put spurs to their mounts and quickly got away; we heard a shot fired and were told to fall in. The line was hurriedly formed by our stacks and we took arms." And still another is as follows: " What a relief when we reached the market place and found coffee in waiting, and what a disappointment before we could drink it to hear the cry, 'The rebels are coming! Fall in! fall in!' How startled we were, and how quickly we formed line, as the whiz of the first shell sung in the air! "
It was still daylight when the firing began. The test was severe, the ordeal trying. The regiment stood it manfully. A captain in later years recalled an incident, illustrative of the cali- bre of its personnel, of a young fellow of the name of Robinson, who, incensed at the weakening of other troops in the vicinity, burst forth in his youthful ardor with: " What the hell did you come for, if it wasn't for this ? "
The enemy had seven guns. His battery was planted near the residence of Carey All, on a rising knoll, the only ground with an appreciable elevation in that vicinity. This residence and grounds are on the south side of and to the eastward of a slight curve, in the railway, near where the Cumberland Valley enters the town, and the battery was therefore about half a mile from the left of the regiment. It enfiladed the line that had been formed when the regiment halted on the main or railroad street, and where it still was when the shelling began. The battery had the range of the street if it chose to rake it, or it could sweep the town with its guns at a proper elevation.
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CARLISLE, JULY 1, 1863
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THE THIRTY-SECOND UNDER FIRE
1803
The first shell passed high overhead. Randall, the soldier who had felt of war before, stood next in the ranks to Colladay. It was something new for Colladay, and he turned to his comrade with the better knowledge, and inquired, " What is that?" Poor fellow! Ile soon knew what it was in a way that Randall never did. First Lieutenant Edmund Randall, a prominent lawyer, a member of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, had won distinction in Mulholland's famous fighting regiment, the 116th Pennsylvania, at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. He had resigned, and was in the ranks of the Thirty-second Regi- ment for the emergency. The second shell struck a lamp-post just opposite Company D. Its screech before and its resonant roar afterwards, deep and sullen within the confined space of the street, recall Kipling's lines :
When shaking your bustles like ladies so fine. The guns of the enemy wheel into line; Aim low at the limbers, and don't mind the shine; For noise never startles a soldier.
It did, however, weaken the lines of some of the troops nearby, but rather strengthened those of the Thirty-second. This is what an eye-witness says: " The Thirty-second still and silent: stolid. indifferent, apparently a bit dumbfounded, the third shell burst just overhead, and a piece of it struck Colladay in front of the thigh near the groin. Earle was next to him. Captain Clark. who was in front of him with Stotesbury, carried him to the pave- ment in the rear. Two other men had their clothing torn by pieces of shell. Colonel Smith then moved the regiment back from the railroad tracks to the house line."
" I never," so reads a correspondence of the time, "heard shell burst or cannonading before, and I must confess it was fully up to my expectations if not more so. Although we had no opportunity to return the fire, the regiment never flinched, the battery doing all the work." Colladay was of most respected parentage, with a promising future. He was elected to member- -hip in Company D on September 8, 1862, was present through the Antietam campaign of 1862, faithful to his obligations, attentive to his duties, prompt to respond to the Gettysburg call, he had won the esteem of his comrades and the confidence of his officers. He lied of his wounds, as Fletcher of his company recalls it, on the day the regiment passed through Carlisle on its return from the
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HISTORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT, N. G. P.
campaign, Sunday, July 26, at the private residence of Mr. Jacob Rheims. which had been generously tendered for his care and treat- ment. Ile was the only Union soldier killed in battle on northern soil so far north a- is Carlisle, as no battle was ever fought during the Civil War east of the Mississippi, any farther north. It is said that a Confederate soldier mortally wounded at Oyster's Point, shortly afterward died of his wounds at the hotel at Womels- dorf.
Appropriate resolutions in acknowledgment and commemora- ยท tion of the virtues, worth, manhood, and patriotism of Charles W. Colladay were passed at a special meeting of the company immedi- ately upon its return from the campaign. A concluding clause in these resolutions is well worth historic preservation, confirming, as it does, the deductions so effectively drawn by the Hon. John Hay in his memorial address before the two Houses of Congress on the " Life and Character of William McKinley," where, in re- ferring to the patriotic awakening of 1861, he said that " patriot- ism, which had been a mere rhetorical expression, became a pas- sionate emotion in which instinct, logic, and feeling were fused." " Finally," so the concluding clause reads, " in our brother's death at such a time of our country's trouble, we have given to us new cause of devotion to its interests, in the memory of such a life so freely given, and which goes into the great sum of all that is noble and true which has been sacrificed in order that our nationality and the earthly interests of man might be maintained; and in the cutting off of our comrade at so early a period of his life and early season of his usefulness we are impressed by the uncertainty that attends all earthly things, and are warned to be also ready."
Another disaster quickly followed in the immediate vicinity. The enemy seemed to know where his shells would work most effec- tively. Sergeant C. Stuart Patterson, of Landis's Battery, his see- tion engaged just opposite Company D. was so seriously wounded in the right hand that amputation of the fingers followed. Patterson was a friend of Dr. Darrach. assistant surgeon of the Thirty-second, and sought to secure his services, but found him so closely in attendance on Colladay that he was compelled to look elsewhere. He fell upon a surgeon whose purpose to amputate the entire hand was only frustrated by the interference of Dr. John Neill, the surgeon of the division, who, insisting that he could save it. ulti-
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WORDS OF COMMENDATION
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mately did so by the amputation of the fingers only. The Episco- pal church at the northeast corner of Market Square had been improvised as a hospital. It was so constantly under fire that the surgeons insisted upon the removal of the patients. Patterson, under this insistance, had just been taken from the chancel to the front of the church when a shell entered the roof and landed on the spot where he had been lying.
Years afterward, in a little badinage on the occasion of a casual meeting between Patterson and Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, Lee told him how a shell from his battery that struck close to the bottom of a panel of fence had nearly disposed of both " Jeb " Stuart and himself, who occupied the top rail of the adjoining panel.
Gen. William F. Smith, after the enemy opened at Carlisle, and before any reply had been made, had personally given Patter- son some instruction as to direction and distance, when his No. 1 gun should fire. Meeting General Smith some years afterward and referring to the incident, the general said he had been in many trying positions on the battle-field, but this was one of un- usual tension. He spoke of the heroism of the Thirty-second Regiment, and referred with enthusiasm to the handsome behavior of officers and men through all of its trying ordeal. Patterson follows the general with the like impression that the conduct of the regiment made upon him, and adds that the stolidity and coolness of Captain Clark and the usefulness to which he put him- self wherever his presence was required, left a recollection that has never been effaced.
The rumors prevailing through the afternoon of a large cavalry force in the vicinity were not fully confirmed until the seonts sent out on the cross-roads by General Smith had ascertained their truthfulness and so reported to him at General Ewen's headquar- ters, a mile and a half to the south of the town, where he had gone " about sunset " upon his arrival at Carlisle " soon after," so reads General Ewen's official report, "reports of artillery were heard in our rear and the flash and smoke of the guns were visible along the hills to the north."
The troops were then distributed with a view of "simply holding the town." General Ewen's return was immediately ordered. His regiments were subdivided into detachments. The Thirty-seventh New York, with one field-piece, guarded the een-
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HISTORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT, N. G. P.
tral portion, and the Twenty-second New York, with another, the southerly portion, " skirmishers being also thrown out. Some of the citizens too did good service on the skirmish line as volun- teers."
General Brisbane's brigade was assigned to the northerly por- tion with the Thirty-second on the right. Company D was deployed across the railroad street at the eastern edge of the town " where the minie balls whistled up the street until dawn," and " some of the men were stationed in the windows of the houses on the two corners of the street with the road in front." As the town was simply to be held, and a collision with the enemy if possible avoided, the troops were pushed out to the eastward as far as the contingency would permit. Company C moved to the north and east of its position on the railroad street to a house and barn on the west bank of the Letort. The family who occupied the premises offered such attentions as the exigency permitted until the order to remove the women and children, when they sought a refuge in the eellar. The outlook to the eastward was toward the barracks, and included quite a bit of open country. To the left of Com- pany C and across a road that passed between them another com- pany of the regiment was also posted. These subdivisions were in detachments of two companies each, and in the close vicinity were Companies A and F. These dispositions at the double quick were made under fire, and throughout their execution there was, when- ever it was needed. the conspicuous presence of General Brisbane and Colonel Smith. Private James Hogan, of Company C, after- ward a lieutenant. and now paymaster of the Veteran Corps, clearly recalls the rather showy mount on a white horse of General Brisbane, who happened opposite his company, giving some super- vision to the movement as it left the railroad street for its newly assigned position. They were not commenerd until after the enemy had opened and not perfeeted until after dark. Just when the firing began does not seem to be definitely fixed. Sun- set, seven o'clock, before dark, is the time stated from various sources. That it was considerably before night set in, in that long July twilight. is quite apparent.
The shelling continued until one hundred and thirty-four shots had been fired by the enemy. It eeased about one o'clock in the morning. " with the exception of three guns about three." parting
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shots. It was interrupted by three distinct summons through flags of truce-the first about nine o'clock-" to surrender the town and send out the women and children "; to which answer was returned that the " women and children would be notified to leave." Half an hour later another message followed to the same purpose, with the addition that " if not surrendered the town would be burned." Reply was made that one answer had already been given. And again, about twelve o'clock, came the third summons, to which reply was given that the message had been twice answered before. The character of the enemy's fire seemed to be measured by .the forcefulness he intended to give to his several demands for surrender : vigorous and continuous before the first message came ; pernicious and defiant, but not so incessant, after the reply ; quick, sharp, and decisive, but of shorter duration, after the sec- ond; and slowly subsiding to occasional discharges after the third.
In pursuance of his purpose to " simply hold the town," and because he deemed the enemy's fire to be inaccurate and he wished to save his ammunition, General Smith ordered our artillery firing to cease, after the early shots from Landis's battery. To this conclusion in his official report, General Ewen adds his coneur- rence : " Orders had been given," he there says, " by General Smith not to fire a gun unless it came to close quarters, which in my judgment was eminently judicious under the circumstances."
General Knipe's brigade did not leave the Susquehanna fortiti- cations until half-past one in the afternoon, and it not appearing that his movement need be over-hastened, had halted for the night on his road to Carlisle, at a place known as Silver Spring. . Gen- eral Knipe, home from the field wounded, a citizen of Harris- burg, who knew the country well, had been temporarily assigned for duty with the militia during this campaign. He had a famous reputation as a courageons, successful, and insistent figliter, and would have courted just such an opportunity as here presented itself for a touch with the enemy's rear or a junction with the main force, as the situation might develop. Captain Dougherty, an aide on General Smith's staff, was despatched to communicate with him. The enemy got Dougherty, and, disposed to use him rather than keep him, returned him to his chief as their second truce-bearer, " principally," as the headquarter itinerary reads. " to give the impression that Lee's force was very large and could
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easily destroy the town." That it did not do so is quite clear. " Dougherty's orderly was shot." Mr. Ward, another aide, suc- ceeded in getting through to General Knipe, too late, however, to be of immediate service, as meanwhile the enemy had withdrawn. His orderly was captured.
The enemy commeneed to move his heavy wagon train on _a country road that came into the turnpike to Mount Holly and Gettysburg about two and a half miles beyond Carlisle, about one o'clock, and his troops followed toward three. Before his depart- ure he had fired a board yard near the gas-works, the gas-works, several private dwellings, and the United States cavalry barracks, all of which were consumed. General Stuart denies responsibility for firing any other structure than the barracks; although he claims that as sharpshooters fired on his men from private houses, their destruction would have been altogether proper.
Napoleon Bonaparte on one occasion, his guns planted about the city of Rheims, preparatory to its bombardment without oppor- tunity for the removal of non-combatants, sought no justification for his aetion, but rather delighted in the fact that, as he said, " the ladies of Rheims were about to enjoy a very unpleasant quarter of an hour." Gen. J. E. B. Stuart finds his justification at Carlisle from its refusal of his demand for an unconditional sur- render ; its resistance against him instead of the peaceful surrender it had accorded Ewell, and offers this, as explanatory of his failure to fully consummate his purpose to bombard and burn-that " the only obstacle to the enforcement of my threat was the scarcity of artillery ammunition."
Six or eight hours of a bombardment, one hundred and thirty- four shots, twelve soldiers wounded, no citizen injured, no building fired, save by the torch, would clearly induce the casual observer, at least, to ineline to the conviction that the threat was ineffective, because its enforcement was ineffectual.
The twelve wounded soldiers were Sergeant C. Stuart Patterson, Philadelphia Artillery, Landis's Battery; Walter Scott, Philadelphia Artillery, Landis's Battery : Duffield Ashmead, Phila- delphia Artillery. Landis's Battery; Charles W. Colladay ( mor- tally ). Company D. Thirty-second Regiment. Pennsylvania Militia : W. B. Walter. Company -. Thirty-second Regiment. Pennsyl- vania Militia : Penrose Garratt, Company G, Twenty-eighth Regi-
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CUMBERLAND VALLEY
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ment, Pennsylvania Emergeney Volunteer Militia; Robert Welds, Second Blue Reserves; George MeNutt, Blue Reserves; William Prevost, Lieutenant, Thirty-seventh New York National Guard; John Coday, Thirty-seventh New York National Guard; H. C. MeCleo, corporal. Thirty-seventh New York National Guard; A. T. Dorsets, Thirty-seventh New York National Guard.1
The Cumberland Valley, so frequently in the occupancy, first of one army, then of the other, and sometimes of both, was the seene of many incidents attendant upon the war drum, interesting, entertaining, instructive, historic, well worth a place in story. A number centred about Mount Holly Springs. Mount Holly is six miles south of Carlisle, on the road to Gettysburg. At the foot of a gap over the South Mountain range that bears its name, favored with a water-supply of especial value in the manufacture of paper, with Mountain Run, Hunter's Run, the Yellow Breeches, all neighborly acquaintances, it maintains as its sole industry the production of a paper widely known for its peculiar excellence. It was sometimes known as Papertown. The South was in sore straits for good writing-paper. It was said at the time the enemy passed through that there was nowhere in the South an establish- ment for its manufacture. Business had been brisk at the Mount Holly mill, and it so happened when General Ewell's column passed it on its march that there was on hand an accumulated prod- uct of an estimated value of some eight thousand dollars. Ewell's quartermaster took it all. General Ewell, from his barraek days, had some recollections of its worth, and, his war conscience satis- fied that his government voucher was all-sufficient, insisted upon what he deemed a proper settlement for the seizure. The worth- less pledges his quartermaster left are still produced by the present proprietors whenever the story is told.
More destruction follows the withdrawal of an enemy from, than damage aecompanies his advance through, the country of his adversary. So it happened here. The paper mill was seriously threatened. Stragglers, irresponsible parties with the trains, were giving the proprietors serious concern. Gen. Fitz- hugh Lee's advent was most opportune. Well known in the vicinity. a constant visitor thereabouts when an officer at the bar-
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