USA > Vermont > A history of the Tenth Regiment, Vermont Volunteers, with biographical sketches of the officers who fell in battle. And a complete roster of all the officers and men connected with it--showing all changes by promotion, death or resignation, during the military existence of the regiment > Part 9
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Finally, the Vermont Brigade, on our immediate left, either by direction from Corps Headquarters, or else upon their own responsibility, arose and darted forward. The Third Division essayed to follow their example, but the first line was thrown into confusion, and finally gave away, or became mingled with the Second, which stood its ground. After this detention they also moved rapidly forward, but with no connection on the left, or steady support on the right. The Second Division, which had dashed ahead, obliqued far to the left, as if following by instinct the original order, and striking towards the enemy's right flank, where they really delivered the first effective blow, and thoroughly broke his line. The Nineteenth Corps had now rallied and moved forward, but with too much impetuosity, and with an irregularity that destroyed its coherence and lost its con- nection on the left, and which also left a gap between its own left and the Third Division, which had been struggling steadily but slowly forward against the enemy's centre, every man nobly striving to redeem the threatened disaster at the start. The enemy instantly rushed into this opening in our lines, and swinging mainly to the left, as they ad- vanced with a yell, threw the Nineteenth Corps, or at least its left and centre, if the irregular condition of its first line could be thus described, into confusion, while at the same time they rubbed off a small part of our right. At one time it seemed as if the battle on this side of the pike would be lost, and it was saved only by the prompt and skillful action of the brave General Russell, who brought up his First Division not an instant too soon, and, with Upton's brigade, struck the charging column of the rebels in flank, drove them back and rectified this part of the line. He then relieved the Third Division, which went farther to the right, and the second line of the Nineteenth Corps took the place of the First Division. In the meantime the Second Division, which had gone so far ahead of everything else, had been
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drawn back, in order to present an unbroken front. Thus order was restored, and the attack had been successful, but at considerable cost. General David A. Russell, the be- loved commander of the First Division, was killed.
At three o'clock the enemy had taken up a new position near Winchester, thinking, perhaps, that the fighting was over, and the battle drawn. But they did not know their antagonist, Sheridan, spent two hours in reassuring his men, issuing ammunition and making new combinations for another attack. Crook's command, which had crossed the Opequan some distance below the pike, had not yet been in the fight. He was now sent, Averill's and Merritt's divis- ions of cavalry joining his force, around our right, to the railroad, and to the east of the Winchester and Martinsburg pike, ready to sweep down upon the enemy's flank and rear, who was drawn up around Winchester, facing north and west. This movement, and the advance along the front, were to be made simultaneously. While these manœuvres were going on, Sheridan, with the fire of heroism flashing from his eyes, rode at a dashing speed along the whole front of his line, amid whistling bullets and screeching shell, say- ing, it is said, to his men: "Hold on here, boys. Crook and Averill are on their flank and rear, and we are going to hustle them out of this." Whether he ever said this or not, certainly his combinations meant it, and his subsequent operations did it.
These lines charged in front, flank and rear, simulta- neously. It was one steady, orderly, resistless movement ; only for an instant did the line seem to waver, and then but seem, as if the shock of dead men falling against the living caused the momentary trembling.
"Then on they press, and here renew the carnage,"
until the enemy broke and fled pell-mell through "Win-
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chester town." It was not a retreat, but a helpless rout, with our men pursuing and shouting with an impetu- osity and vigor that would have been impossible to restrain. Infantry, cavalry and artillery vied in the speed of pursuit, and every man felt that he was a victor. The combined and harmonious movement of all arms of the service, strug- gling for this achievement through the storm of death that , howled around them, without faltering, was a sight for a painter. But when the troops beheld the yielding lines of the rebels, saw their battalions dissolve in their fire, rolling up in fierce enveloping waves, the certainty of victory now impelling them. onward, the scene was grand beyond de- scription. Oh, how wildly did the victors fling their glad shouts into the "troubled air" ! No victory of the war, save the last, inspired such hopes throughout the country, and awakened such a thrill of genuine patriotic joy in every loyal heart. Probably no troops taking part in this battle rejoiced in the enemy's defeat more than those of the Third Division of the Sixth Corps. The enemy had done this very thing, on a smaller scale, for us on the ninth of July, and we were ever afterwards willing to stake Winchester on Monocacy.
The estimated losses to the enemy, probably not far from exact, were five thousand prisoners, five pieces of artillery, seven thousand small arms, four thousand killed and wounded, besides many battle flags. At Winchester we saw among the captures of the day, Alexander's Battery wagon, lost at Monocacy. Our losses, every way, were between four and five thousand. The casualties of the Tenth were ten killed and forty-six wounded. Four officers were wounded, two mortally, one severely and one slightly. Major Dillingham fell, with his leg twisted off by a solid shot, while attending to the alignment of his regiment, under the first shock of the enemy's fire, and lived but a few hours. Lieutenant Hill was wounded at the first advance of our
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line, by a part of the contents of a case-shot. His limb was carefully amputated at the upper third of the thigh, but he died a few weeks after in the hospital at Winchester. Lieu- tenant Abbott was severely wounded, and Captain Davis slightly. After the fall of Major Dillingham the command fell to Captain, since Major, L. T. Hunt, who reported both officers and men as having nobly performed their part in the operations of the day. Conspicuous among the brave, was Adjutant, since Major, Wyllis Lyman, who, by his admirable soldierly conduct, became a stimulating example to others, and what is said of him may be said of both officers and men.
Darkness alone prevented the complete destruction of Early's army. At what hour of the night he ceased his flight we do not know; but following our cavalry, which moved at dawn the next morning, we pursued along the Strasburg pike and did not come in sight of his rear guard until we approached the high ground beyond Cedar Creek. Crossing this stream, we went into camp on the night of the twentieth, upon the same ground we had occupied just four weeks before, and the enemy, now as then, was in the same respective position. But somehow we felt now as if we had a sort of presumptive right to do so-we were the royal purveyors of the soil.
Fisher's Hill.
Coming in between Winchester and Cedar Creek, in the order of time, the battle of Fisher's Hill, at this late date, seems a mere episode to vary the grand monotony of Sheri- dan's victorious march up the Valley. Yet it was a brilliant, a wonderful battle. This height, the scene of this battle, is thirty miles south of Winchester, within a mile of Stras- burg, and near the mouth of the Luray Valley, which de- bouches into the Shenandoah a short distance to the east, as
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one stream flows into another. Here the width of the Shen- andoah Valley, averaging, below, fifteen miles, is pinched up to four miles, between what are called the Massanutten and the Little North Mountains, the former on the left as you go south, and the latter on the right. The river washes the broad foot of the Massanutten, and borders the eastern edge of the Valley. Fisher's Hill is so formed that it ap- pears a huge, high-fronted billow of earth and rocks, which had some time been rolling down the Valley, and become strangled between these two mountains and held still, with its frowning crest looking northward, where it now sternly faced our advance.
The enemy was posted upon this crest, immediately behind fortifications, with his front protected by a lower range of hills, ploughed between by ragged ravines. The railroad, also running generally north and south, facing the lines of either army, gashed these hills, crossed, at a tremen- dous elevation, a brook that found its crooked way here, along down to the river. All these furnished good shelter for our men from the enemy's sharpshooters and his artil- lery, when we lay in position. But there were many exposed points to be crossed, and difficult acclivities to climb, as well as some broad, open spaces to traverse, in gaining his position. The soldiers, though now trusting implicitly in Sheridan, thought that our passage up the Valley was successfully disputed.
On the evening of the twentieth, when the Sixth Corps filed into the woods north of Strasburg, the Nineteenth deployed into the meadows just south of the town, in battle line across that part of the enemy's front. So we rested over night. The twenty-first was spent in reconnoitering and putting the army in position for definite and determined operations. The Sixth Corps was placed upon the right of the Nineteenth ; the cavalry was sent up the Luray Valley, and so expected to reach New Market in the rear of the
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enemy. Crook's two divisions were not brought into service, but concealed in the woods northwest of Strasburg. There was little fighting on this day, and little advance made, if we except one brigade of Getty's division, and the Second Brigade of our Third Division. These two brigades fought for an advanced position, which the enemy seemed unwilling to relinquish, and gained it just as night fell. They cleared a splendid elevation of ground for artillery, which was at once occupied by Lamb's Rhode Island Battery. During the night the balance of the Second Division moved up, and threw up intrenchments. The First Brigade of the Third Division also went forward and joined the Second Brigade. This division now constituted the extreme right of the army.
Although Sheridan here occupied a line a mile and a half in extent, it was not a continuous line. He seized and held prominent points, easy of defence, and affording pro- tection ; nor did his divisions, brigades and detachments face the same parallel throughout, but here bent back around a hill or jutting point, and there dropped forward into a ravine, as the case required. The Third Division curved back towards the left, a proper defence of the right, and the high ground, requiring this conformation.
Thus the morning of the twenty-second of September found the opposing armies of the Valley fronting and frown- ing at each other, apparently with all the probabilities of success in favor of the rebels, although three days before they had been wofully beaten. The strength of their posi- tion defied assault, but the hopes of our army were now too high to leave possible success unattempted ; besides, a deter- mination to conquer burned in the heart of Sheridan. The first business of the morning was a thorough inspection, by Sheridan and his lieutenants, of the enemy and his works, and the ground stretching far away to his left ; to penetrate, if possible, his purpose, and learn what new disposition he had made during the night. They were satisfied that he
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only purposed to defend himself against a direct assault, that probably appearing to be all that was necessary.
General Crook now started upon an expedition similar to that performed so successfully at Winchester. In the meantime, to divert attention from Crook's movement, and to gain a position from which we could move rapidly to his assistance at the decisive moment, the Third Division swung out from the right, brushed away the enemy's skirmishers, and formed a line immediately threatening his left flank. To make the deception still more complete, Averill's divi- sion of cavalry was moved to our right and rear, as if that was the extent of operations in this direction. The enemy faced his lines and turned his guns to meet any further advance from this quarter, went to work with the spade, and seemed content.
Say now it is four o'clock. Crook has toiled with his command westward, up the steep side of the Blue Ridge, and then moved south far enough to gain the rear of the rebel works; then facing east, crawled stealthily yet rapidly to his assigned position. He is now in the edge of the timber, his whole column lapping the enemy's flank, ready to rush upon his rear. An instant more, wholly unex- pected he dashes out and leaps forward. At the same time Ricketts's division, seconding Crook's command from the position taken in the morning, and in anticipation of this very thing, sprang forward, quickly traversed the field before them, mounted the rebel works in front and cleared them instantly. The work here was done. The rebels, those who did not at once yield themselves as prisoners, fled terri- fied, leaving everything that might encumber their flight. In the meantime the troops on our left were nobly carrying out their part of the programme. Under a heavier storm of deadly missiles-and they were under it, for it was quite impossible that the rebels should keep a perfect range on this uneven ground-they rapidly closed in and helped to
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complete the victory. For the enemy it was a terrible rout. The strong position at Fisher's Hill gave Early an advan- tage, probably equal to five thousand men, over Sheridan. It was wrested from him, however, by superior strategy. We captured sixteen pieces of artillery, sixteen stand of colors, and eleven hundred prisoners. Our division claimed to have captured four hundred prisoners and six pieces of artillery. But it was only because they happened to be on that part of the line which we attacked. Everybody cap- tured prisoners and guns that day. The Tenth Regiment lost only five wounded and less than that number killed. Captain John A. Hicks, acting on the First Brigade staff, from this regiment, was severely wounded.
Without waiting to see the results of this victory, Sheridan sent what cavalry he had at hand in pursuit. He immediately followed with the Nineteenth and Sixth Corps, nor halted until he reached Woodstock, twelve miles away. The pursuit was resumed on the afternoon of the twenty- third, and continued as far as Harrisonburg, which point we reached on the twenty-fifth, where Early took to the moun- tains, whither cavalry and artillery could not pursue.
During the time required to make this distance, we were almost constantly skirmishing with the enemy, so closely was he followed. At Mount Jackson and at New Market he enacted the farce of resistance, turned about, displayed something like a line of battle, and hurled railroad iron at us from his batteries, but it only lasted a short time, like a spasm brought on by over taxation of the nervous system.
From Harrisonburg, Sheridan pushed out on the twenty- ninth as far as Mount Crawford, with the Sixth Corps, and sent the cavalry to Staunton and Waynesborough, where they destroyed vast amounts of public property. Here the pursuit ceased, and the troops returned to Harrisonburg. The supply train came up, and several paymasters, issuing provisions and greenbacks, the former being in much the
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greater demand, at least a supply of coffee and sugar. Colonel Henry also rejoined the command at this point. On the sixth of October, the army started back toward our base of supplies at Harper's Ferry, a hundred miles away, and reached Strasburg on the afternoon of the eighth.
In retiring down the Valley, General Sheridan literally obeyed the instructions of General Grant, delivered to Gen- eral Hunter on the fifth of August and soon after turned over to his successor in command. He reports this terrible business as follows :
"In moving back to this point the whole country from the Blue Ridge to the North Mountain has been made untenable for a rebel army. I have destroyed over two thousand barns, filled with wheat and hay, and farming implements, over seventy mills, filled with flour and wheat, have driven in front of the army over four thonsand head of stock, and have killed and issued to the troops not less than three thousand sheep."
He also went beyond the instructions above referred to, and burned a large number of dwellings, but assigns the following reasons for his action :
"Lieutenant John R. Meigs, my engineer officer, was murdered beyond Harrisonburg, near Dayton. For this atrocious act all the houses within an area of five miles were burned. Since I came into the Valley from Harper's Ferry, every train, every small party, and every straggler, has been bushwhacked by the people; many of whom have protec- tion papers from commanders who have been hitherto in the Valley."
This, every living soldier who was in this campaign knows to be true. The people were meek-faced citizens by day, and in the presence of any considerable body of Union troops ; but, as soon as the troops were out of sight, when
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darkness came on, they became desperate and bloodthirsty guerrillas ; and in this character they stole upon our men like savages, and shot them down or dragged them away to the woods, where some of them were found hung up by their heels with their throats cut. Colonel Toles, Chief Quarter- Master of the Sixth Corps, and Captain Buchanan, our Division Commissary Officer, were thus waylaid and shot. And this kind of warfare (?) was recommended by some of the leaders of the rebellion. Concealed in their houses, or in the guise of friends, they made bloody capital of our conversation, counted our files for the Confederate Chief, and pounced upon the weary soldier who, lame and panting, had fallen a few rods behind the column, to drag him away a prisoner, or butcher him on the spot. Could anything justify their course ? Could any punishment be too severe?
A rebel force, somehow collected, pursued Sheridan down the Valley. On the eighth, their cavalry charged spitefully upon the rear of Custar's Division, that was cov- ering the march. So the next day, Torbert, with all of our cavalry force, turned upon them, and in a very short but decisive engagement, defeated them, capturing three hundred prisoners and all of their "rolling stock" except one piece of artillery, and then chased them back to Mount Jackson. It might have been supposed now that either Early had withdrawn from the Valley, or that his force was so reduced and demoralized that a less number of troops could take care of him. Therefore, the Sixth Corps, under orders for Petersburg, took up the line of march for Washington, via Ashby's Gap, on the tenth of October. Halting at Front Royal until the thirteenth, the corps then moved on a dozen miles or so, and was in the act of crossing the Shenandoah River, when it was ordered back to Middleton, and into a position on the right of the army we had left four days since ..
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Cedar Creek.
In the succeeding pages of this chapter it may be well to say that a complete description of the battle of Cedar Creek will not be attempted. It is very doubtful whether a description in detail can be given with accuracy. So terri- ble was the confounded confusion produced by the enemy's first blow in the morning, so complicated and all uncertain were the movements undertaken, almost despairingly for a time, to meet it, and the helplessness of corps and division commanders, left in some instances without a man to exe- cute their orders-in one word, so complete was the rout of almost the entire army in the early part of the day, and so wonderful the victory achieved afterwards-a victory won at last on the field of "the awful conflict," and regained by the very men who lost it-that the thought is baffled at description, as if following the thread of mystery. Only a general account of this battle, therefore, will be here pre- sented, and that will be confined principally to the operations of the Sixth Corps.
On the morning of the nineteenth of October, 1864, three corps of infantry and one corps of cavalry were in position between Middletown and Cedar Creek, occupying several prominent overlooking points on its northern bank. The general direction of this stream, if its crooked course can be defined, is east ; it therefore strikes the Shenandoah, which takes a course at this point north and south, at right angles. The Winchester and Staunton pike is the main traveled road of the Valley, and from Middletown to Stras- burg it follows the course of the river, perhaps a mile from its west bank. Beyond the river, on the east, rises high and steep the Massannutten Mountain. The general direc- tion of the pike, the river and the creek, it will now be observed, describes three sides of a rectangular parallelo- gram. General Crook's command, consisting of two small
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divisions, was in this space. He commanded a view of the junction of the two streams and of the river for a long distance, running past his left, his line facing south and east. On his left and rear was a small provisional division, com- manded by General J. H. Kitching. The Nineteenth Corps was on the right of the pike, somewhat to the rear of Crook, with its left resting upon it, and the centre thrown forward toward the Creek. Still farther to the right and rear, away towards the Blue Ridge, were the camps of the Sixth Corps. The Union army held a line three miles long, and was as near en échelon as anything not thus mechanically designed could be. Our Third Division lay nearest to the Nineteenth Corps ; the First joined our right, and the Second was on the extreme right of the infantry ; the cavalry lay still to the right of Getty's division. Our force has been given at twenty-five thousand, including all arms of the service, all under the command of Major-General H. G. Wright. Sheridan was at Winchester, "twenty miles away." The rebel army was at Fisher's Hill, five miles distant, estimated at twenty thousand. Early's plans for attack were to make a feint against our right with cavalry, move two large divisions and forty pieces of artillery against our centre, and the rest of his army, three divisions, as a flanking column around our left. As soon as this flank movement should prove successful, and the attack should be made there, it was to be followed by a stunning blow at the Nine- teenth Corps. Here is a rebel account of the movement :
"It commenced a little past midnight. While demon- strations were made against the Federal right, where the sound of musketry already announced a fight on the picket line, the flanking column of the Confederates, toiling along seven miles of rugged country, crossed the north fork of the Shenandoah by a ford about a mile east of the junction of Cedar Creek with that stream. The march was performed
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in profound silence. Many places had to be traversed by the men in single file, who occasionally had to cling to the bushes on the precipitous sides of the mountain to assist their foothold. At dawn the flanking column was across the ford, Gordon's Division in front, next Ransom's, and Pegram's in reserve. Early had brought his column unper- ceived to the rear of the left flank of the Federal forces ; it remained now but to close in upon the enemy and fight rapidly."
Here also is another account, by a Union officer in the Nineteenth Corps :
"His cavalry and light artillery had orders to advance upon our right, so as to occupy the attention of Torbert's Cavalry and the Sixth Corps. His infantry marched in five columns, of which Gordon, Ransom and Pegram were to place themselves by daybreak on the left rear of the whole Union position, while Kenshaw and Wharton should at the same hour be close up under the intrenched crest held by the army of Western Virginia.
"The management of this advance was admirable. The canteens had been left in camp, lest they should clatter against the shanks of the bayonets; the men conducted themselves with the usual intelligence of the American sol- dier, whether Northern or Southern ; and this fearfully peri- lous night march, under the nose of a powerful enemy, was accomplished with a success little less than miraculous."
Of course there was scarcely a soldier in the army who believed that the enemy would venture upon an attack after he had been so often beaten, much less that he would make this hazardous attempt where the untimely clink of a horse's hoof against a stone, or the accidental discharge of a musket, would have invited sure destruction. Probably it was this unwarrantable conviction of security, coupled with some
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contempt for a whipped foe, that accounts for any want of vigilance on the part of our men. There is also a reason- able view of the case. The ground over which they must move to the attack was thought to be impracticable. But the night was dark and the atmosphere was rare, conditions unfavorable for conveying sights or sounds, and the sturdy column stole on while we were all unconscious of its approach. Only once was there a suspicion of anything wrong, although they passed within four hundred yards of the sentinels ; then it was an undefined, uncertain sound, muffled in the distance, and was treated as a fancy. So the hours of night wore away. With morning came the crash. A heavy fog hung upon the river, and spread over the land, veiling everything in its unbroken sombre cloud, so conceal- ing the clever trick that was to be sprung upon us. That cloud bred us mischief. In it grew the many-headed mon- ster, that first, a little thing, came pattering and screaming upon our right in the gray dawn of day and disappeared, then like a terrific thunderbolt burst upon the left, shattering whatever it touched.
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