USA > Wisconsin > History of the 6th Wisconsin Battery : with roster of officers and members; also proceedings of Battery reunions, speeches, &c > Part 2
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I will not undertake to touch with adequate words the thrilling story of that battle on the 3d and 4th of October, 1862. It give to the 6th Bittery its terrible baptism of blood. Corinth is one of Wisconsin's Thermopylæs, for there a few of her sons with heroism equal to Spartan received a flowing tide of unnumbered multitudes un- flinchingly, die they might and did ; yield they could and would not. Here the 6th Battery made good its claim for a permanent niche in the history of your State and Nation. Their part in this battle is a theme for poetry and not for prose. Let him who would fittingly honor it invoke the muses of poetry and song. Let him dip
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ADDRESS BY JENK LL. JONES.
his pen in ink that will not fade as he receives their in- spiration. For deeds such as they often enacted do not die and are not reenacted. They come but once in a lifetime, once in a century-in a nations history. Like the six hundred that rode " into the valley of death"- " There is not a man dismayed, Not though the soldier knew Some one had blundered. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die." Like the six hundred."
Fourteen years ago to-day the battle began. All day long the muttering noise of the impending conflict, the agitations, uncertainties and fatigues of a moving column in front of an enemy on the defensive had exhausted our boys. Marches and counter-marches filled the night, little rest and no sleep, scant food and scanter drink. The morning breaks, finds them on the advanced line. Soon the lurid fires of battle pale the parching southern sun. The enemy are preparing for one last, desperate struggle. The energy of the command and all the hopes of the day are being masked in the woods under the hill. Their ranks are formed four to six deep. At about 9 A. M. they appear at the outskirts an advance in V shaped lines with the angle thrown forward so that vacancies can be readily closed from abundant material. The pickets are driven in, and with rapid, confident steps they advance up the hill-slope, on the top of which stands exposed, un- fortified and practically unsupported an untried Bittery of Artillery-the 6th Wisconsin.
they sure that they have an available line of retreat ? Al- ready they are too near for shot or even shell. There battle be rins where that of artillery generally ends, but now it is one wild storm of noise and smoke. The hill is one black thunder-cloud, pouring one pelting shower of iron canister. The chests are emptied and the advancing line has been staggered, stunned and mowed down. It reach- es the top, but with courage and strength both exhausted. When there was no more ammunition in the chest, the
Will they retire? Are
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6TH WISCONSIN BATTERY.
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enemy, now, not before them, but amidst them, by a fit of courageous inspiration the men and horses slipped from their midst and escaped the grasp of the hand that was too much weakened to seize its prize. It was the work of thirty minutes. In a short time they were in order for service again, but it was victory for the whole line. It was the beginning of the end. The chase continued for days, and that army flushed by victory at Corinth never more knew defeat, nor lagging of energy or cooling of zeal until the serpent treason was throttled to the death at Richmond, and the would-be-head of the new confed- eracy was begging for mercy in woman's clothes in the hands of the boys in blue.
Only ninety-three men in the morning. nearly one- third of these at noon were dead or disabled. What a privi- lege to have been one of such a band and to have had a hand in such a victory ! In the report of the Adjutant Gen- eral of Wisconsin for 1862 I find the following con- cerning our company :
" They took part in the battle of Corinth on the 3dand 4th of October, and lost and killed six, including Lieut. Daniel T. Noyes, and in wounded twenty-one. The 6th Battery went into the battle with ninety-three men all told. They were considered a forlorn hope, but by their severe fighting and dogged bravery. they actually turned the tide of battle in our favor and won the fight. Officers and men, loyal and rebel, all agree that no more desperate or better fighting was ever done than by that battery, at the battle of the 4th of October. Well may our State be proud of our troops."
Says General Rosencrans in his official report of the · battle, speaking of the rebel charge on our entire front, "Parts of our lines were broken into fragments, they (the rebels penetrated as far as General Halleck's head- quarters, the entire division of General Davis gave way when the staunch oli fighting division of Hamilton with the 6th Wisconsin Battery posted on the prolongation of the hill, turned the tide of battle on the right."
Now that we have got fairly started on these reminis-
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ADDRESS BY JENK LL. JONES.
cences it would Be pleasant for me to go on stringing out the story, of the chase, that march into the interior of Mississippi, the bivouac at Davis' Mills, where the treas- onable old mill was started up so suddenly to grind rebel corn into Yankee rations, the night march through the · sombre beech forest, the weird and awful beauty of the devastating fires that illuminated the country around, of Moscow, Holly Springs, Waterford, Abbeville and Ox- ford. Towns so beautiful that one can scarcely be rec- onciled to the thought that they were stained by treason. Then the disappointment and the counter-march when Holly Springs was taken in our rear ; the hard retreat. the race for bread, the dreary Christmas with its dinner of parched corn at Lumpkins' Mills, not enough of that, were our mouths less sore from this monotonous diet. but the richer supper of the fat heifer with the few bushels of sweet potatoes which the foraging squad brought us. I would like to dwell on the sixty miles march of the+ First Section under Lieut. Clark, four teams on the gun, with only the limbers of the caissons, escorting the train of empty wagons, then the refreshing though the demor- alizing touch of the City of Memphis, the city of plenty, filled with life-giving hard-tack. Those of us who were along remember the bottomless pools of mud that awaited the returning train now laden, moving slowly to meet the swiftly moving lines of a hungered army. Then came four months camp life at Buntyn's Station, guarding railroad, where the long winter evenings were spent in discussing the grape vine telegrams and determ- ining how the war might be brought to a close in six months, if, perchance, the administration only had our sense. Dividing the time for amusement between harm- less poker. with a peck of corn for capital, hence the skillful could afford to be generous with their antes and in writing letters to the girls that we never married after all.
You recall, how on the 3d of March, 1863, we em- barked on the Mississippi, those weeks of life on trans- ports, where the passengers daily increased in numbers.
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You remember that awful encampment of a fortnight on a bare sandy island below Helena, Arkansas.
On the 9th of April, 'neath flying colors and with beating drums, we entered upon the most unparalleled experiment in navigation, a sail across lots, a steamboat ride through the woods. It was an attempt to capture Vicksburg by getting in the rear of it, with a lot of steam- boats taken across the country, using, it is true, what waters we could find in the brooks and marshes along the way. The history of this fourteen-day ride through the woods has never yet been written and probably never will be, for it was of a kind which war correspondents and special artists did not care to join.
That splendid dash into Moon Lake, then the banging against trees, the pulling ourselves along by windlasses, making a thousand isles on our own hook, making fast at night in sight of the tree from which we cast loose in the morning, at last disembarking at the Union of the waters which formed the Yazoo, to find that we were caught at our own game, the flood tide of the Mississippi let in upon the country through a break in the levee, brought us there, but it also saved our foes. Fort Pem- berton was guarded by a water-ditch three miles wide, so we made haste to get out, in the same way that we went in, lest the receding waters might show us our Ararat in the Mississippi woods. As we went we left behind us our marks on the top of the trees. If some listless brig- adier of the Confederacy, looking up as he wanders along the banks of the Coldwater catches sight of a board that was once the bottom of a hard-tack box in which board is burned by a hot iron the mystic legend
" Jes-se-K-Bell All Stove to Hell." April ist, 1863.
he may not know what it means but you and I know that that was put there by a 6th Battery boy and that the
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ADDRESS BY JENK LL. JONES.
Jesse K. Bell was the name of the boat that we rode in, that the other line is the soldier's way of saying that the craft was rather the worse for wear, the pilot-house rid- dled by bullet-holes, the glass all broken in the cabin, a dead limb had speared the kitchen and demoralized the pantry, and half the paddles out of the stern wheel were broken ; and you and I know that this expresses the real condition of the Armada, the White Rose, and the dozen other stern-wheel boats that went down with flying ban- ners, and returned without a peg upon which to hang a banner. On the 9th of April we landed again on that desolate island below Helena, known to us by a name which is neither suggestive of beauty or of fragrance, but . @ one suggestive of a terrible reality.
Of the campaign down the river, the two-weeks halt at Miliken's Bend, where our boys faded of the awful blight of that sickly flat, and the levee that kept back the water of the Mississippi, was strengthened by the bodies of the Union soldiers, as the only land in which a grave might be sunk unflooded. I cannot speak words more than moments are wanting. Then came the march of more than sixty miles through Louisiana, where the sight of strange cypress knees, weird Spanish moss, festooning with funereal aspect the boughs above us, and the log-like roll of the lazy alligators in the Lagoons gave diversion to our mysterious march. Now the cross- ing of the Mississippi, below Vicksburg, at Bruinsburg on transports that have run twelve miles of rebel arma- ment, now on the battle-field of Port Gibson ere the powder-smoke has cleared away. Then pushing hard on the enemy day and night, for nineteen successive days, fighting them regularly on each alternate day. Then oc- curred the brush at Jones' Creek, where the old howitzer of the Third Platoon in which your speaker held the exalted position of rider of the swing-team, was thrown forward on the skirmish line. The noise it made started our boys into a cheer, that broke the enemies line and captured many prisoners. Raymond's bloody field we reached by six miles of "double-quick," in time to help
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put another star on the shoulder of John A. Logan. At Jackson, Mississippi. the 6th Battery, always with the tendency to use its cannon as men usually use their broad-swords, in close quarters, join the charging line, presenting a scene, I believe unparalleled in the history of war ; viz .: a brass battery in full equipment, making a bayonet chargeand coming out victorious. You re- member how properly and proudly we entered the capi- tal city of Mississippi, expecting a few days respite, in which we might enjoy our honors and forage the town, but we marched in only to march out again. Next morning with the early dawn we took up a counter- march, in order to be en hand in the terrible contest of Champion Hill, where in reality Vicksburg, 'The Key of the Miss." was fought for in fair field fight and won by the loyal troops. You remember the position, how, in the hurried march, we became separated from our com- mand, and General Pemberton's whole army was pouring its deadly fire upon the few divisions of McPherson that were on the ground. You remember the magnificent line of Logan, the most exciting battle line we ever saw, per- hans; that line. nearly a mile long, coming its grand left wheel upon the enemy's left. This but drove them more fiercely upon the fatigued remnants of Hovey's Division, in the thick woods to our front and left. Time and time again, had his exhausted lines met the rebel columns and fallen back. Things looked dark, when here comes the quaint okl Col. Holmes at the head of his Secon 1 Brigade, peering as none other could over his Germain spectacles as he cried, "Give way to de left for my men," and down into the woods he led his line with a cheer, but it seemed hopeless; in a short time, they were compelled to fall back bleeding and torn. It was dark yet. The infantry gathered in helpless clusters around the colors on our lett. The artillery were ordered to retreat, lest they be flanked, when, lo, there appeared just over the crest. McPherson, brave and beloved above all others! At about the same instant. Capt. Dillon. whose judgment was never so reliableas in times of great-
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ADDRESS BY JENK LL. JONES.
est danger, on his own responsibility, threw the Battery into action, and the guns of the 6th fired to and for the right. Its brazen arguments quickened the steps of Mc- Pherson's fresh troops, and by the sudden transition which often happened on our Western battle fields, victory came as sudden as it was overwhelming, the hardest faught and perhaps the most significant battle of the West was won.
Vicksburg was besie ged, and in due time it capitu- lated. On the 19th, the first day of investment, the 6th Battery was thrown out on one of the boldest points nearly opposite Fort Hill. There we fortified our- selves, and remained until the surrender, in the foremost . line. There for forty-seven days, we lay, now chatting with and again bombarding the brethren just over the line, now lazily sleeping the aimless hours away, on the clayey shelves we had scooped for ourselves out of the hill-sides, and again taking our lives and running the gauntlet where hissing minnie balls would spit about us, in order to save drawing water for our horses or for the sick, or for the sake of a pail full of blackberries.
But, never mind, that was a grand old 4th of July cele- bration we had on Independence Day, 1863.
Then some more hot weather, more sickness, when the hospital stewart marshalled a longer line than the orderley Sergeant, more men drawing quinine and whis- key than there were to stand guard. Then up the river, from Memphis across lots over the Cumberland Mount- ains, up the steeps of Mission Ridge to the release of Thomas at Chattanooga. Then the muddy chase, and at last the rest during the remainder of the winter of '63 and '64.
Winter days diversified again by literature that has il- lustrated pages in fifty-two leaves to a volume, with false alarms concerning brother Rhoddy and, on the part of a few of you, thoughts of tenderness toward savage- eyed maidens of high degree, who wore butternut pins. The following summer found us bound for Atlanta, until we reached Etawah, where ripe peaches did more for
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6TH WISCONSIN BATTERY.
the Confederacy than their bayonets ever did in giving them three of the 6th Battery boys as prisoners. It was not for us to go with Sherman to the Sea, but our horses went, while we returned with Thomas to defend Nash- ville against Hood, during the bleak winter months, our equipments being a grotesque collection of old cannon, rusty muskets and stubborn mules. That over, we returned again to Chattanooga, there to wait the final summons, the "Well done" of the U. S. Govern- ment which came in July, '65.
To recapitulate with a few figures :
Original strength 157
Received of recruits of every kind
S5
Re-enlisted 34 .
Total 276
Killed in battle
6
Died of disease 22
Discharged for sickness 36
Total 64
Leaving 112 who served their term of service.
Comrades, shall the bugle be blown ? Orderly Ser- geant, call the roll. Where are the boys? Oh, they are beyond the reach of our voice! Some of them cannot make their "Here" heard to-day! Some on Western prairie, some mid northern pines, some in town, in coun- try many ; some are discharged, others reported this morning to the sick call and are off duty ; in their veins the old diseases are preying ; and some, perhaps, as of old, like the hero of Will Carleton's Poem, are "Over the hill"-to the poor-house. Boys, we welcome the few Yes, the few, for
"Ah me! not all! Syne come not with the rest, Who went forth brave and bright as any here! I strive to mix some gli iness with my strain, But the sal strings complain and will not please the ear ; I sweep them for pean but they wane, Again and yet agun Into a dirge, and die away, in pain.
In these brave ranks I only see the gaps, Thinking of the dear ones whom the dumb turi wraps, Dark to the triumph which they died to gain.
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ADDRESS BY JENK LL. JONES.
Fitlier may others greet the living, I, with uncovered head, Salute the sacred dead. Who went, and who returned not."
Call the roll, Sergeant; Lieut. Noyes, Corporal L. B. Honn, Privates-Gilbert Thomas, George Brown, George Barney.
Translated were they in the fiery chariot, the Corinth Holocaust. They fell with their faces to the foe, with the light that illumines the brave resting upon their brows. The mangled bodies rest sweetly in the most honored grave of a soldier, unnumbered and unnamed battle trench.
Gunner, Alvah Page, he who carried the manliest of hearts with the steadiest of hands, lived long enough to see the flag of truce over the ramparts of Vicksburg, and then fell, lamented and beloved.
Sylvester J. Gould, His is a guarded grave in the Cemetery of Wyoming across yon river. He fell in the eager promptness to excel in bravery, not less honored than they who fell before the leaden hail.
Dear Comrades, the dust of our boys mingles with that of many a hill-side. It enriches the soil they went forth to save.
Albert Hauxhurst's body was left at New Madrid. Hoskins, Hungerford, and Ben Johnson, on the Corinth slopes: Solomon Wheeler, at Rienzi. Coulter Camp- bell at Vicksburg. Ephraim Perry at Memphis. John Rogers at St. Louis. Menzo Tennant, in the National Cemetery at Keokuk. Martin Weaver at Cairo. Enoch Johnson. Pess Moss, and Michael Murphey at Hunts- ville. Robert E. Banks, at Chattanooga. Bradley Ben- son and Fred King, at Nashville. Gordon at Etawah, faithful Eilenstine, sank in the turbid waters of the Talla- hatchie In this solemn roll, we must write the names of Capt. Hood, the gentle Alba Sweet, who wore his stripes so modestly that we forget the Lieutenant in our respect for the man, and George Spencer, names that re- mind us that sudden dangers and unexpected deaths
i
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6TH WISCONSIN BATTERI.
await us at home as abroad, in peace as in war. These are the first names we call in our roll to-day. Not their death, but their lives, though, do we most celebrate. As we call the roll, we look for our wounded ones. Here is Christian Berger, with his two mangled stumps, all that is left of two royal hands, let them be held up to testify against us who, with unmaimed hands, perhaps, fail to win for us and for ours, bread as honest, as these crippled hands win for him and for his. Where is Flan- nery, with his mangled face, and Goodman with that long neck of his, a capital place to expose now and then to view an honorable scar. Let them and their fellow- sufferers and our fellow-comrades step forth, to teach us present duty for dangers escaped, and for lives spared. But it is time you are released, comrades, from the past. Let us conserve no drop of bitterness, no thought of ha- tred, but may we re-enlist, to-day, in the old company. Let us be mustered in anew into the fellowship and com- panionship of arms, not, let us hope, the murderous arms of war, but the life-fostering service of peace. In every case, let us "touch elbows and dress to the right." Again, I salute you, again, I thank you.
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2D REUNION, AT AVOCA, IS77-
The second reunion was held at Avoca, May 22d, 1877. A large crowd of citizens and soldiers was present, some forty of the Battery boys registering. A cannon had been brought from Madison, and the boys went through the drill, handling the swab and the lanyard as gracefully as in the past. A splendid dinner was provided by the citi- zens of Avoca, who spared no pains to make the meet- ing a success, and their efforts were not fruitless. Capt.
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ADDRESS BY H. S. KEENE.
Dillon presided, Jenk Ll. Jones was chaplain and H. S. Keene delivered the annual oration, as follows :
Mr. President, Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen : We are assembled to-day beneath the shadow of the old banner of the Stars and Stripes; we hear the swelling bugel blast and the roar of cannon ; yet we listen in vain for the hissing bullet or shrieking shell, for the groans of the wounded or wail of the dying. These war-like sounds such as we hear to-day are not the harbingers of coming conflict ; they do not denote the gathering in battle array to bring grief, agony, suffering and death to man ; but they are, on the contrary, the tokens of peace ; and to us, the emblems of pleasure. True, they carry the soldier back, in imagination, to many a death strug- gle, and while the retrospect of war may start the tear of sorrow, it is soon dissipated by the sunshine of present peace, and the pleasant thought that to the consummation of this glorious peace, he was a humble contributor. To the outside world there may appear but little occasion for our assembling to-day, an assembly which calls from their various occupations men so widely separated, to meet merely for a social purpose. But to those who have together borne the fatigues of the march and felt the gnawings of hunger ; who have together faced the driv- ing snow and sleet of winter and sweltered under the scorching heat of the summer's sun-who have together braved the dangers of the battle-field there is a fraternal tie that renders such a meeting a bright oasis in the desert of life.
We meet to-day to renew the fond friendships formed amid these trying scenes-friendships cemented by the blood of mutual friends in those memorable days of the past ; we meet to clasp the hands of those survivors who have passed that fiery ordeal, and to pay the tribute of a soldier's tear to the memory of those of our com- rades whose lives were given in defense of their country.
We meet to-day with decimated ranks, and vainly look for the happy faces that were in our first meetings in '61.
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6TH WISCONSIN BATTERY.
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And although we now meet untrammelled by the excite- ment which then pervaded. all classes, free from the dark foreboding of coming strife ; free from anxiety concern- ing our country's fate : and the pleasure of our meeting enhanced by the knowledge that our little band forms a part of those to whom the country is indebted for its peace and unity ; still our minds solemnly revert to those who have fallen from our ranks. Their. accustomed places in our ranks are vacant, but in the hearts of their surviving comrades their memory is still enshrined.
With our surroundings to-day, how vividly those days of '61 come back to us ! Sixteen years have passed since then-years fraught with the vicissitudes of joy and sorrow, ,of hope and despair, of success and failure, of life and death-years that mark the epoch of some of the most thrilling events in the world's history ; and yet we look bevond them all, back to our first meetings, as though it was but yesterday.
The war cloud that had so long been hanging on our horizon, dark and threatening, had burst upon the land in all its fury; enshrouding the nation in its terrible gloom, and deluging the land in blood. We had but just emerged from an exciting political campaign charac- terized by more than its wonted crimination and recrim- ination ; and although secession and war had been openly threatened by a large element of one of the three con- tending parties, in the event of its defeat, it was regarded by most as an idle threat, uttered only to influence the then pending political struggle. Thus full many, in their blind zeal to further the interests of their party, had tac- itly nurtured treason, and were apparently more devoted to party than to country. It was said, and by men emi- nent for their sagacity, that, in America, patriotism was dead. It was thought that love of party had smothered love of country, and upon this supposition treason stalked the more openly. But patriotism, though dormant, was not dead, nor was it confirmed by party lines. .. The re- verberations of the first gun fired upon Sumpter had scarcely died among the distant hills when that patriot-
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ADDRESS BY H. S. KEENE.
:
ism was aroused! An answering shout arose simulta- neously, from the farm, the factory, the office and the counting house, and the demand of the government for troops was promptly supplied.
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