USA > Pennsylvania > History of the First regiment infantry, National guard of Pennsylvania (Grey Reserves) 1861-1911, pt 1 > Part 12
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1 " History of Pennsylvania." William H. Egle, M.D., p. 623.
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racks, he still cherished a lingering recollection of the many pleas- ant days he had passed with the good people of the neighborhood. Lee, when he left Carlisle in the very early morning of July 2. had hastened on ahead of his column, and with his staff had halted at the hotel in Mount Holly. Each had stowed himself away so that it was difficult to tell the one from the other, and all were enjoying on the porch a much-needed sleep. The mill proprietor had heard that Lee was there; he had been his close friend in the ante-bellum days. The situation had become acute, he must have relief or his mill would go. After several failures in his indiscriminate search, unmindful of how he disturbed these sleeping soldiers, regardless of the opprobrions speech that followed when he happened to wake the wrong fellow, he finally struck Lee. Lee rubbed his eyes, waked more cheerfully than was to be ex- pected, recognized his old friend with a " Hello, Charley! How's Em!" and proceeded when the situation had been hurriedly explained, to interpose with his anthority to save the mill and make " Charley " happy.
It had been often asserted, not only on the Union side but by many of Lee's own people, that Lee's move in the vicinity was more to get among those whom he had once known than for any real purpose of war. Even as late as Gen. Joseph Wheeler's visit to Philadelphia to participate in the Peace Jubilee of 1898, he said to Colonel Wiedersheim when the conversation turned upon a point that led up to the suggestion : " Oh, Lee had no business . there [Carlisle] anyhow; he only went there to see some of his old girls." This view must altogether disappear with the facts supplied by the official report of Maj .- Gen. J. E. B. Stuart of his Gettysburg operations. It there appears that Carlisle, directly on his ronte to join his chief. had necessarily to be included in his line of march ; with him was but the one brigade, General Fitz- hugh Lee's, the others were " following at considerable intervals."
The most I could learn was that Genl. Early had marched his division in the direction of Shippensburg, which the best information I could get seemed to indicate as the point of concentration of our troops. . . . We pushed on for Carlisle where we hoped to find a portion of our Army. General Fitzhugh Lee's Brigade was charged with the duty of investing the the remaining Brigades following at considerable intervals from Dover. (War Records, Series I. vol. xxvi, part ii. p. 697.)
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And " Charley " about this same time ran into another of his old friends, a four years' student and recent graduate of Diekin- son, whom he had known well through all his college days. The last of Jenkin's cavalry, with a straggling wagon train, had dis- appeared just a day or two before Fitzhugh Lee had come. Like most of their neighbors the Mullin family-for " Charley," always so familiarly addressed by the acquaintances of his early manhood, then and always afterward the much respected and widely influential citizen of the Valley, himself the proprietor of the mill-had under the advice of the authorities sent the best of their stock to the other side of the river. Forage, provision, and all else that remained had already been freely drawn upon by the enemy. The quartermaster of one of these straggling trains was insistent to know from Mullin something that would disclose an opportunity for a more substantial seizure than appeared to be available. Mullin was equally insistent that already these en- forced contributions had taken about all they had, when the parley was interrupted by an ill-kempt, ragged-looking fellow, ad- dressing Mullin with, "Say, is your name Charley Mullin ?" Mullin acknowledged his identity, when the say was followed with : " Well, there is a fellow down there with the wagon train wants to see you." Obedient to the summons, Mullin repaired to the train and there, through the rags and tatters of a wornout Confederate uniform that covered his body and the dirt and dust and unshaven and uncut hair and beard that concealed his feat- ures, he recognized his old friend, the college student of recent years. " My heavens, Joe," was his first exclamation, " whatever got you into such a plight as this ?" Joe belonged in Maryland. " Well," said Joe, " when the war broke out, I didn't think it was going to last long, not more than sixty or ninety days at most. and I was out for adventure as much as anything else, except my folks were this way inelined. and so I enlisted as a private in a Maryland regiment. I soon began to discover that the way was neither soft nor easy, got tired of carrying a innsket, sought to throw up the job, finally secured a detail with the wagon train. and here I am-a teamster." "Come on up to the house," said Charley, " sce the girls and take a meal with us." "No! no!" was Joe's reply, " not sueli a dirty, ragged, vermin-beridden fel- low as I am ; the contrast is too great between what I was onee and
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what I look like now, to permit the obtrusion, for such it certainly would be if I forced my presence on them now. No; just get a little bread and meat, or anything else that will satisfy hunger, wrap it up, leave it in the wood-shed, and I'll come and get it and be as well satisfied as if I had enjoyed your hospitality at one of those real good meals which I know I always used to get when it was my good fortune to be your guest." Joe would not be persuaded, so Charley got the provisions together as Joe had sug- gested, put them in the wood-shed, and Joe passed on with his train and out of Charley's memory for many, many years. One day some fifteen years later Mullin was in attendance at Herkness's bazaar in Philadelphia on a regular sales day with a view to purchase a horse. He sat upon the platform when the auctioneer was erying the sale, and beside him sat a well-groomed, well- appointed double-breasted coat, silk-hat fellow, who after a while addressed him with: "Charley, you don't know me. do you ?" Charley conceded that his friend had the better of him. And well he might, for the differences between the then and the now were too great to leave even a shadow for identification. " Well." said he, " I'm Joe, your old friend of college days, your later friend the mule-driver of the Confederacy." \ few exclamations of astonishment followed, with a cordial, generous greeting, when Joe, in response to Charley's search for information as to how it had all come about, said: " Well, I passed safely through my enlist- ment, saw the end of the war, returned to my home, completed" my study of the law. practised successfully for a while, and am now upon the bench, where I hope to remain and I hope, too, that you and I may often meet again."
The quartermasters of Lee's forces, in their search for sup- plies, eame more frequently in touch with the people of the valley than others of the officers of his army. The nature of their queries, their guarded expressions, indicated a disposition to con- ceal rather than be free; to be slow of speech, rather than demon- strative over their impressions of the country. This movement into the North had not been a stimulant; it did not invigorate the observing man. There were too many evidences of thrift and prosperity, too much activity in the field of labor, too many men fully employed, too many men available for the field, too much wealth, too many resources, all awaiting the requisition and de- mand of the Government, if needed for war.
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The chief quartermaster was not disposed to be so hesitant. He was at times quite inclined to give liberal expression of his views to some of the leading men of the valley. He conceded that there were more men still available, greater resources still obtain- able, better evidences of thrift and prosperity, wider opportuni- ties for trade and commerce than he had expected to find. The South was facing a more serious problem and had undertaken a more formidable work than she had at first conjectured. Such were the deductions that it was deemed at the time might have been fairly drawn from the general trend of his speech.
A whole day at Gettysburg had gone-Lee's only day of triumph-and Fitzhugh Lee's brigade was not there, and still another day must follow before he could make the march to get there. Unwittingly the Pennsylvania and New York militia had held him in dalliance, where he had accomplished nothing, and prevented him, in the gravest battle crisis that ever confronted his army, from hastening to where he might have accomplished much.
On the morning of Thursday, July 2, the detached companies rejoined their regiments, the regiments their brigades, and the division moved out to the grounds about the burned barracks, where it eneamped awaiting an issue of rations and its impedi- menta. General Knipe had not hurried his march when his presence was no longer urgent, and his brigade did not arrive until Friday morning. The grounds occupied were in part those held by the enemy the night before. The entire regiment was with the brigade except Companies D and F, Captains Clark and Kennedy, detached for duty in Carlisle with the provost guard. They were not relieved until two o'clock on Saturday afternoon, when they started to hurry along to overtake the main column, which had moved in the early morning. These few days, devoid of incident, were devoted to preparation. Many weary marches were vet to follow and there were some dangers still to face. The diaries and journals make no mention of the noise of distant strife. Indeed, despite the fierce rattle of small arms and the thunderous roar of the eannon, but twenty-five miles away, no sounds of confliet reached Carlisle through all those three decisive days of battle. Its every echo of portentous significance was lost as the sound- waves vanished amid intervening hill and dale.
The author of " In Old Bellaire " writes as follows (p. 322) :
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In Bellaire. twenty miles away, there was no sound of rattling mu -. ketry; nor even when, a little later, the great dogs of war began to belch forth smoke and shell and solid shot, did any echo of it reich Bellaire. South Mountain lay between, and the thunder of cannon and all the awful roar of a mighty battle rolled back and forth among its spurs and ridges until they lost themselves and died away in its wooded glens.
The troops were still waiting for a full ration on Friday morn- ing. The supply trains had been delayed from the occupation of the road by the enemy through the night of the first and early morning of the second. Our own troops, too, had contributed something to the detention; farther to the eastward stragglers. and now and then a belated moving column, blocked the way. The citizens meanwhile had manifested every disposition to aid, but their contributions were necessarily limited and meagre compared with what was required. By night, however, the railroad was opened to Harrisburg and provisions came along freely.
Independence Day of 1863 was everywhere eventful. Vieks- burg had fallen, Gettysburg was won. Even when the day had gone, no news had come of the one event and but meagre details of the other. Rumor, so often rife with ominous tale or awake to undue elation, had not yet brought the story of the stupendous import of the combat of the three previous days when at six o'clock on the morning of Saturday, July 4, the entire division of General Smith, Generals Knipe's, Ewen's, and Brisbane's brigades left Car- lisle and moved by what seemed to be better known then to thosewho kept the official itineraries as the Papertown Road to Mount Holly.
It was a good turnpike, a straight road, and casy marching for the six miles to Mount Holly. There the column was over- hauled by a flag of truce, with its escort and about two thousand prisoners, a few of them stragglers who had been picked up on the roads leading into Carlisle, and the rest, and by far the greater num- ber, those who had been captured in the first day's fight at Gettys- burg and paroled on the battle-field. 1 detention of some hours followed, that the question of just what to do with them might lw intelligently disposed of. The enemy claimed credit for the cap- ture, and to the four thousand prisoners he took with him across the Potomac he added, in his estimate of his gains by the fight, the " nearly two thousand that had been previously paroled." 1 This
1 War Record-, Series i. vol. xxvii. part ii, p. 309.
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anticipated but not known claim added materially to the delicacy of the situation. Had it not been for this claim of credit, antici- pated as well as real, these prisoners might have been fairly treated by the authorities. as they had been thought by the men as escaped and not paroled. Neither is it altogether clear why the enemy should send his prisoners around our right through his adversary's country, upon which he had but a precarious hold, a distance of twenty-five miles, instead of passing then directly through his own line to the commanding officer in his immediate front, unless it was his conception that it might permit him to avail himself of opportunity to secure information not otherwise obtainable.
Just how delicate the question was and how necessary it was that the independent commander in the field should act with caution will be better comprehended when the situation is re- called. Exchange of prisoners had been suspended in December, 1862, when the cartel of the previous July had been interrupted through the Jefferson Davis proclamation declaring Benjamin F. Butler "a felon deserving of capital punishment " for having executed Mumford, who hauled down the American flag from over the United States Mint in New Orleans, dragged it through the streets, and tore it into shreds, and ordering that no commissioned officer be released on parole until Butler had been punished for " his crimes." 1 The enlistment of colored troops had become a specifie irritant, and that question too had been interjected. " All negro slaves," so declared the Confederate authorities, "cap- tured in arms and their white officers were to be delivered over to the respective States of the Confederacy to be dealt with accord- ing to their laws." It was unjust discrimination-the laws of war for the white soldier, the civic laws of States for the colored. The rigorous statutes of the States relating to negro insurrections clearly indicated the manner of procedure and its results.
General Smith was prompt with his demonstration and ready with his solution. If it was the purpose of the enemy to spy upon his adversary, to look to his communications, to calculate his force, to measure his ordnance, and estimate his supplies, then it was his business to stop him. He was moving " towards Carlisle," so he
'Rhodes. " United States," vol. v. p. 483.
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would halt him where he was and turn him back to where he belonged. As to the parole, was it to be measured to its full value, the prisoner to be held exempt from duty and service until regularly exchanged, or was he to be considered as a discharged prisoner of war and returned to immediate duty with his com- mand ? These alternatives were for his government to dispose of, not for him, and he would submit them for determination to the proper authorities. He put the proposition concisely and clearly in his report of his Gettysburg operations, " where " [Mount Holly], he said " we were detained for two hours by the arrival of two thousand prisoners paroled on the battle-field and sent under flag of truce towards Carlisle. Wishing to prevent the enemy from getting information of our strength, I was forced to accept the prisoners subject to the decision of the Government and turn the rebel escort back." 1
Coincident almost with this very action the Confederate Com- missioners declared that the prisoners captured and paroled by Grant at Vicksburg were to be regarded as discharged, and at the same time the Confederate Government refused to recognize the paroles given by the garrison at Port Hudson after it had sur- rendered to Banks and been paroled.
At Mount Holly the turnpike still bears south to Gettysburg and Baltimore, and there the road from Pine Grove and beyond from the south bearing west makes its junction. There, too, both roads start to climb the mountain. The Thirty-seventh New York was left here to look after that junction and to watch the approach from the southward. The remainder of the division moved six and a half miles on the Pine Grove road to Laurel Forge, where the other two regiments of General Ewen's brigade, the Twenty- second and Eleventh New York, were left to protect the junction of a road from Bendersville, connecting there, as it does, with the main route to Gettysburg. The other brigades, Brisbane's and Knipe's, were moved on to Pine Grove, two and a quarter miles farther in advance, reaching that point about six o'clock in the afternoon.
The journal of Company C, First Sergeant Ogden, and the correspondence of Second Lieutenant Harry F. West, of Company
1 War Records, Series i, vol. xxvii, part ii, p. 221.
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EXCESSIVE RAIN-STORMS
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D, both so frequently helpful to supply material, which but for them would have been wholly unattainable, graphically kept up the touch of the regiment with the moving column of the division through the route, and, indeed, throughout the entire compaign. The good soldier usually pays but little attention to aught else but his company and regiment, but when the story comes to be written, it is made the more readable and instructive when inter- woven at the proper junetures with that of the brigade and division.
From the " Journal " of July 4:
Remained in camp on the barracks grounds until Saturday morning, July 4th. Marched over South Mountain to Pine Grove, about sixteen miles through a delnging rain. never less than ankle deep in mnd and water and frequently up to our middles wading through the Mountain streams. Camp on the mountain side at Pine Grove Furnace for the night, wet, hungry, and miserable. A sorry-looking party. Our quartermaster not being able to fol- low with the teams, the men suffered severely from hunger. A wretched night passed.
And from the West correspondence :
Company F and D did Provost duty for two or three days and then started very hurriedly on Saturday at two o'clock P. M. to join the regiment. The rain on that day and night was such that the oldest inhabitant was rele- gated to a back seat. The rain in this part of the country has been fall- ing in a way never heard of before. Instead of marching, we waded in mud and water frequently up to our knees. At nine P.M. we had to bivouac; it was too dark to see our position. Happy were those who had gum blankets, and even with blankets there was not a man who was not soaked throngh and through. Off again next morning through mud and slush and by ten o'clock we joined the regiment. They had just received orders to march. By right we should have gone with them. but Capt. Clark begged for two hours to give us a rest. which was granted.
This duty of provost guard was continued throughout the route, and the two companies were not relieved until they reached their Pine Grove destination. The duty involved the bringing up of stragglers, and hence as the march progressed became more onerous and fatiguing.
It is interesting to note how this rain was viewed from differ- ent standpoints.
General Smith reports it officially as follows: "Saturday a furious rain-storm set in which raised the creeks, carried away bridges, and made the march toilsome in the extreme."
It covered considerable territory. A diary of an officer of the 119th from the battle-field refers briefly to its severity. Saturday,
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July 4, 1868, " changed position and formed line behind a stone wall on the top of a high mountain [Big Round Top] ; went out to the front occupied by Vermont troops; rained profusely during the entire afternoon and evening; picket firing going on all day."
It was indeed one ever-memorable rain; memorable whether because it was greater than other great rains, or whether because of its close association with a battle, greater than other great battles, is a proposition probably better left to conjecture than solution. If there be anything in the tradition that great rains usually follow great battles, Gettysburg may be said to have preserved it.
Pine Grove is well up the mountain. The residence of the proprietor was a mansion of fine proportions, and the Furnace had a reputation for the quality and quantity of its output. It is a settlement incident only to the industry that supports it. Some patronage fell to the store. Its stock in the line of what was most needed shoes, was exhausted, save one pair of long-legged brogans No. 10, and three of No. 8. They were all purchased by members of Company D. Built for men of broader girth and heavier frame. if the feet of the buyer, so said one of them, did not fill the boot, nevertheless the boot. " filled a long-felt want " for shoeless men, and hence the ready sale.
The regiment marched the next morning, Sunday, about two miles farther up the mountain, following a wood road through the mountain pass that led from Pine Grove to Cashtown, which Brisbane's brigade had been ordered to hold. Further necessity for its occupancy disappeared during the afternoon, and the troops at four o'clock returned and encamped for the night in an open field in the vicinity of the Furnace. The rest of the division at eight o'clock in the morning had moved from Pine Grove over the mountain.
The road from Chambersburg to Gettysburg, with Fayette- ville, Cashtown, Newman's Gap, intervening, a distance of some twenty-five miles, had served the enemy well while his concentration was in progress, and it was anticipated that should he be defeated he would again utilize it to withdraw. It lay about an average distance of from fifteen to twenty-five miles to the south and west of General Smith's line of march, and it was soon developed that, with his trains at least. he was following the
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route it was expected he would. Hence the necessity of following up all indications and keeping a watchful eye on all roads and eross-roads leading in that direction. So on this Sunday morning the remaining two brigades of the division, as had been the other with like intent. were disposed of as follows: Knipe with his command was ordered to hold the eross-roads from Mount Holly to Cashtown and Pine Grove to Bendersville, while Ewen crossed the mountain to the Mount Holly and Cashtown road, holding the pass in his rear and being within a mile of Knipe. A cavalry scout under Lieutenant Stanwood was sent up Mountain Creek Valley in the direction of the pass from Chambersburg to Gettys- burg. He uncovered the enemy's retreat, disclosed the movements of his trains, drove in his pickets for a couple of miles, as far as the force he had would justify. Captain Boyd, with his detachment. from the First New York Cavalry, joined General Smith at Pine Grove and reported having followed the rear guard of the enemy to Fayetteville, capturing prisoners. He was then directed to move this time more to the eastward, toward Cashtown. He again uncovered the enemy, still on his retreat on the Chambersburg road, and returned with eight of his wagons and a small batch of pris- oners. Meanwhile a scout from General Meade came through with information that the enemy had been defeated and was retiring. Later in the day Captain West, a volunteer aid and an assistant in the Coast Survey, returned. having successfully opened communi- cation with General Meade on Saturday from Mount Holly. And also during the day a small provision train came up, its arrival most opportune, as it was impossible to subsist the troops from the country.
On Monday. July 6, all the troops of the division were moved, each brigade by a different route, to Newman's Cut, four miles east of Cashtown, where they were concentrated during the evening, too late, however. for what was intended-to intercept the trains retiring by that route. The march of the regiment, led by one of the mountaineers of the vicinity as a guide, struck off through a bridle-path up the mountain, and after an extremely difficult, rough, and mountainous climb. the column reached the summit about noon, where the beauties of the valley that lay between these Appalachian ranges compensated in a measure for the toil and travail of the morning. This South Mountain range, long famed
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topographieally, has since the battles, marches, and bivouacs of the Civil War become equally famous historically. It was dusk when the command reached the Gettysburg turnpike and eneamped at Newman's Tavern for the night. " Tavern," as the " diarists " call it, " Cut," by which name it seemed to be known officially, and yet in this same connection it is often styled " Pass." The " Newman's," however, sufficiently identifies it as the same spot, whether eut, pass, or tavern. Company C was on pieket duty, and through the night many of our escaped prisoners, captured at Gettysburg, who had managed to elude the vigilance of their guards as they passed over the mountains in the darkness, came through its lines.
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