USA > Wisconsin > History of the First Wisconsin Battery Light Artillery > Part 18
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On the 19th we drew out of line into column and proceeded leisurely back to the river. loading the empty ammunition and baggage wagons with our infantry, whose regiments were fear- fully decimated through shot, shell, sickness, marches, trenches and heat. The summer's campaign had made veterans of the recruits. Many a soldier of Europe of 25 years' service had not smelled the powder-smoke of our latest recruit.
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The piers of the bridge across Pearl River were shattered with solid shot, the rebel factories and machine-shops were de- stroyed, and all munitions of war were brought away in our empty wagons. The girls in one cotton factory kept right on making Confederate cloth, and had to be invited to leave be- fore destroying the building. Charlie Hewitt found some in- fantrymen sledge-hammering a locked safe, and pulling a man's cartridge box around took out a few cartridges and poured powder into the keyhole, prepared a match and set fire to it, remarking: "Now, my Joskins, stand back." The explosion blew the door wide open and there was a rush for the contents. Hewitt summed up the incident by "All in the world inside it was a few little old papers and five cents in money, and I didn't get that."
As we neared Vicksburg Lieutenant Webster and Charlie Harrington, who was Ordnance Sergeant under Webster, came - out to meet us. General Osterhaus recognized them and said: "Vebster, come here; I want you mit the Battery. Foster has been gone too long. You come and we'll put bayonets on the guns and make charges with them. It is the best Battery I ever saw. Twice they gets into the fight ahead of my skir- mishers." An officer of the Battery wrote: "The fact was, however, that a commanding officer of that Battery was only necessary as a medium through which to receive orders and draw supplies. When it came to work or fight they all knew what to do and did it. I conscientiously believe it was the most independent and best-equipped organization for emergen- cies ever mustered into the service."
We crossed the river April 29th with 9,000 men in the divi- sion; on the 29th of July we could put but 1.500 bayonets into line. We read of Gettysburg for the first time, and how the great heart of the Nation went out to the wounded in sanitary stores and supplies; that there was a large surplus of cots and blankets. A few hundred pounds of those stores would have saved the life of many a boy now lying in the cemetery at Vicksburg, and our wounded were glad of a blanket and a dry floor to lie upon.
Cameron gives his opinion of Jackson thus: "It was verita- bly the splintered fire of a shattered hell. The warmest place our section of the Old First ever got into. All the gold in the Treasury wouldn't tempt me to repeat it. Our gun and car- riage was struck in 16 or 18 places. Just think, seven guns behind elegant fortifications, at short range, concentrating on two worn-out guns, and our infantry not close enough up to annoy the cannoneers. Contrast that with what we did at Thompson's Hill. At Jackson one shell in three went astray. The center section shell were better adapted for the worn creases."
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Nutting reports nine men wounded at Jackson. Kegwin reports us as losing three men killed and three wounded, and as dismounting a siege gun, but fails to report Hewitt as blow- ing open that safe and failing to get the 5 cents it contained.
Buell, of Battery B, closes an article by saying: "There is a certain sort of agony about a situation like that which is in- describable, and this agony, I think, is much more dreadful to artillerymen than to troops of any other branch of the service. My wonder now-30 years afterward-is that any sane man could have been induced by any persuasion to put himself in such jeopardy. And yet they say now that men who faced this sort of thing are 'pension frauds.'"
M. Quad writes:
"Did you ever see a battery take position ?
"It hasn't the thrill of a cavalry charge, nor the grimness of a line of bayonets moving slowly and determinedly on, but there is a peculiar excitement about it that makes old veterans rise in their saddles and cheer.
"We have been fighting at the edge of the wood. Every car- tridge box has been emptied once and more, and a fourth of the brigade has melted away in dead and wounded and miss- ing. Not a cheer is heard in the whole brigade. We know that we are being driven foot by foot, and that when we break back once more the line will go to pieces and the enemy will pour through the gap.
"Here comes help !
"Down the crowded highway gallops a battery, withdrawn from some other position to save ours. The field fence is scat- tered while you count 30, and the guns rush for the hill be- hind us. Six horses to a gun-three riders to each gun. Over dry ditches where a farmer would not drive a wagon, through clumps of bushes, over logs a foot thick, every horse on the gallop, every rider lashing his team and yelling-the sight behind us makes us forget the foe in front. The guns jump two feet high as the heavy wheels strike rock or log, but not a horse slackens his pace, not a cannoneer loses his seat. Six guns, six caissons. six horses, eighty men race for the brow of the hill as if he who reached it first would be knighted.
"A moment ago the battery was a confused mob. We look again, and the six guns are in position, the detached horses hurrying away, the ammunition-chests open, and along our line runs the command, 'Give them one more volley and fall back to support the guns!' We have scarcely obeyed, when boom! boom! opens the battery, and jets of fire jump down and scorch the green trees under which we fought and de- spaired.
"The shattered old brigade has a chance to breathe for the first time in three hours as we form a line behind the guns and
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lie down. What grim, cool fellows those cannoneers are. Every man is a perfect machine. Bullets plash dust in their faces, but they do not wince. Bullets sing over and around them, but they do not dodge. There goes one to the earth, shot through the head as he sponged his gun. That machinery lost just one beat-missed just one cog in the wheel-and then works away again as before.
"Every gun is using short-fuse shell. The ground shakes and trembles,-the roar shuts out all sounds from the battle- line three miles long, and the shells go shrieking into the swamp to cut trees short off-to mow great gaps in the bushes -- to hunt out and shatter and mangle men until their corpses cannot be recognized as human. You would think a tornado was howling through the forest, followed by billows of fire, and yet men live through it-aye! press forward to capture the battery! We can hear their shouts as they form for the rush.
"Now the shells are changed for grape and canister, and the guns fire so fast that all the reports blend into one mighty roar. The shriek of a shell is the wickedest sound in war, but nothing makes the flesh crawl like the demoniac, singing, purr- ing, whistling grapeshot and the serpent-like hiss of canister. A round shot or shell takes two men out of the rank as it crashes through. Grape and canister mow a swath and pile the dead on top of each other.
"Through the smoke we see a swarm of men. It is not a battle line. but a mob of men desperate enough to bathe their bayonets in the flame of the guns. The guns leap from the ground, almost, as they are depressed on the foe, and shrieks, and screams, and shouts blend into one awful and steady cry. Twenty men out of the battery are down, and the firing is in- terrupted. The foe accepts it as a sign of wavering and come rushing on. They are not ten feet away when the guns give them a last shot. The discharge picks living men off their feet and throws them into the swamp, a blackened, bloody mass.
"Up now, as the enemy are among the guns! There is a si- lence of 10 seconds, and then the flash and roar of more than 3,000 muskets, and a rush forward with bayonets. For what! Neither on the right. nor left, nor in front of us is a living foe! There are corpses around us which have been struck by three, four, and seven bullets. and nowhere on this acre of ground is a wounded man! The wheels of the gun cannot move until the blockade of dead is removed. Men cannot pass from caisson to gun without climbing over windrows of dead. Every gun and wheel is smeared with blood-every foot of grass has its horrible stain.
"Historians write of the glory of war. Burial parties saw murder where historians saw glory."
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JACOB KIRCHER.
بستهدم
ء سـ
CHAPTER XIV.
FROM VICKSBURG TO THE GULF.
"A good whole holiday! Leave to go and see my wife, Whom I call Belle Aurore."
A FTER General Grant had gathered his forces in and around Vicksburg, sent General Parke and the Ninth Corps up the river and cared for his sick and wounded, while awaiting instructions from Halleck, he issued orders permitting every tenth man who had actively participated in the campaign and siege to go North on a 30 days' furlough. Captain Foster, who had returned from his 60-day leave and assumed command, allowed us to cast lots, and the fortunate ones went home " to see Rachel." Riffenburg failed to draw a prize, so getting a statement from Lieutenants Nutting and Hackett to the effect that he had been in active and continu- ous service from start to finish as gunner, he presented the same to General Grant, was promptly furloughed, and went off sounding his caliope. The sounding of that same caliope as "Duffie" came down the levee in the dark above Carrollton, announced his return.
Comrade Hiram Carter was one of the mildest mannered men in the 1st Wisconsin Battery, yet was always where duty called him. Though quiet, unassuming and retiring by nature, when aroused was nobody to fool with. He was one of the lucky ones to get a furlough after the surrender of Vicksburg. and as there was to be nothing done but visiting he left his gun in the Battery with his other paraphernalia of war. On his return to the Battery. and while on the cars in Illinois en route, a squad of Copperheads boarded the train for the purpose of rescuing a deserter who was under arrest at a station on the road and who was to be placed on the cars and taken back to the army. At Odin Junction the train slacked up before arriving at the depot, when the Copperheads, seven in number, each seized a stick of wood in one hand and flourishing a loaded revolver in the other, rushed out of the car and toward the passenger waiting room. The trains. however. started up briskly and arrived as soon as they. Colonel J. M. Rusk and a Captain of the 9th Wisconsin were the only soldiers on the train, aside from Carter. They got off the cars just in time to see the single soldier guard at the depot. a boy about nineteen years old, seized. shoved out of the room and disarmed by the
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mob, and to observe one of the latter striding through the depot, flourishing a revolver and shouting at the top of his voice, "We have come for him. we have come for him," and as he passed Carter the latter, unarmed as he was, "jumped" him, threw him on his back, seized his throat and shut his wind off with one hand while with the other he caught and held the "sympathizer's" pistol hand. At this juncture Colonel Jerry Rusk came up and took the pistol from the man. Carter then called for a rope, which was promptly brought, the man tied hand and foot, put on the cars, carried to Cairo and deliv- ered to the provost marshal. Carter made the fellow think, for a time, that they would hang him, which caused him to groan with fear.
Halleck, who could assert himself. criticise and cavil, after a campaign, censured Grant for paroling the captured garrison; and the disaffected press of the North took up the refrain and expatiated upon the irreparable evils sure to follow. These furloughs were food for added criticisms, and to read the grumbling press one might imagine Grant had disbanded his army; but these men were back with us in time for business, robust with health, while the miasmatic. malarial vail that set- tled down upon that lowlevel camp knocked a large percent- age of us who remained out of duty for many weeks and even months. Burke, Ward. Cameron and others here got a dose of malarial poisoning, aggravated by subsequent service in the Louisiana flat lands, from which they never recovered. Through all this criticism of the press and people this cool, calm, able, imperturbable soldier, who was "drunk at Bel- mont," "intoxicated at Pittsburg Landing:" who had "re- turned to his former bad habits." kept right on smoking and evolving the successful settlement of the war.
General Halleck officially says of the Vicksburg campaign: "No more brilliant exploit can be found in military history.
"In my opinion this is the most important operation of the war. The capture of Vicksburg is of more advantage than 40 Richmonds. General Grant never disobeyed an order or in- struction, and never complained." And 18 months before he tried to put disgrace all over Grant. Of Grant's crowd around Vicksburg, Confederate General Johnston wrote Jeff Davis: "They are worth double the number of Northeastern men." And Johnston had had experience with both, knowing whereof he wrote.
The official figures of that campaign are: 10.000 rebels killed and 37,608 prisoners captured: 209 guns of all sizes; 38.000 artillery projectiles; 58,000 pounds of powder, besides 4,800 cartridges.
On August 10th we moved to the low lands below the town and on the 12th turned over our six wornout 20-pounder Par-
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rotts and drew four 30-pounder Parrotts. The right gun, if not one other, now stands in the court house square at Mar- shalltown, Iowa.
A comrade writing of these guns says:
"At each corner of the beautiful court house at Marshall- town, Iowa, pointing outward, mounted stationary, are four 20-pounder Parrott guns. In the summer of 1887, sitting in an office with some Marshalltown G. A. R. boys, looking across the grounds to the guns, I remarked that we wore out a bat- tery of that kind and caliber and it would be strange were they our guns. Could I tell our guns ?
"Looking through a little book that I had with me I found the number of my watch, revolver and the right of the right's 20-pounder Parrott and 10-pounder Rodman. Handing the book to the Adjutant of the Post for his inspection we ad- journed over. The first gun was numbered across the rein- force; not ours. The next was numbered on the lip of the muz- zle. I wet my finger and polished off the dust and the number corresponded with that in my book. I was kneeling, facing the gun and my forehead went down on to the iron face, the tears jumped to my eyes and I thought more in a minute than I can write in an hour. I dashed away the tears and jumped up ashamed. Those grizzled veterans had their hats off. They would have respected me had I blubbered like a baby; that is true comradeship."
What a campfire it would be should we gather with those old guns, could they talk. In the old days they spoke in their own language words of encouragement to every man in the division.
Soon Captain Foster was inducting us into the mysteries of siege-piece drill. The comments on the change from light to heavy artillery were varied as the individuals discussing the subject, a large majority being satisfied with most any kind of a gun that would shoot.
Sutlers flocked down and opened up gay stocks of goods. The cotton speculator was very much in evidence, and the gambler and the all-around crook; and Grant had delicate legal problems to adjudicate and displayed ability in their adjustment that is now regarded as phenomenal. Also came lawyers seeking pelf and pastures new. Cameron tells this: "One day while up town I met a college mate some years older than I, and after greeting and exchange of latest mutual news he imparted the information that he had just pocketed his first legal fee since he struck the town. He was down to his last serip when he met a cotton speculator whom we both knew in the North, who wanted professional advice about re- leasing cotton that was held by military orders. Seemingly a question of true ownership. 'Dud' elicited all the points,
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gave profound opinions, accompanied him over to the pro- vost marshal's office, and after emerging suggested a line of action. The next morning as 'Dud' was going up the street pondering on his fee, urged by necessity to say $40, but fear- ing that the very adequate fee of $20 would be the limit, he spied our friend, who came briskly up, informing him of the success of their mutual efforts in releasing the cotton, and queried 'How much?' Pulling out a roll about the size of a trunnion he began laving $50 bills in 'Dud's' hand. Upon de- positing the fourth bill he looked up, asking how that would do. 'Well.' said 'Dud,' 'guess you had better lay down another 50,' which he did.
An able-bodied forager drove up with a mule, harness and buggy, and other mules being levied the buggy seldom rested by daylight. A yawl was foraged and in the expansive eddy fronting camp the boys "gigged" for catfish, and some im- mense fellows were captured. Some of us have never again wanted catfish to this day.
General Osterhaus went North on leave and we saw him no more. The corps was reorganized and the battery assigned to the Fourth Brigade, First Division, Major-General C. C. Washburn commanding.
General Morgan had fine executive abilities and excelled in many qualifications going to make up a successful commander. Bob Hodge remarked, "He's a fine old man, but no warrior." Certainly he leaned on DeCourcey in an emergency.
General Osterhaus was a splendid man. officer, fighter and commander of a division or corps. In sending him to Black River Bridge with his division to stand off General Joe John- ston General Grant showed his estimate of him as General of an independent command.
General Washburn excelled in all. A fine old man,-not so old, though,-a gentleman, a splendid fighter, entirely capable of an independent command and of superior executive ability as a commander of a department. His stay with us was all too short ; but they needed him in a more extensive field. As com- mander of a district he rendered superb service in connection with General N. T. J. Dana. (who, in 1865. commanded the reorganized Thirteenth Corps), in preventing General Kirby Smith's forces from crossing the river. He also sent General A. J. Smith out from Memphis to smash Forrest. and it is needless to say that when A. JJ. was sent out under such instruc- tions, the other fellow got smashed.
Early in the year General Grant wrote Banks to come up and join the forces, help clear out Western Mississippi and he "would give him as good a corps as there was in the United States armies" to afterwards clear the rebels out of Eastern Louisiana. General Banks chose to linger about Port Hudson,
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which was but a picket post for Vicksburg, and in spite of the defection Grant wrote Lincoln that he had men enough for the work in hand, not believing Pemberton would allow him- self to be shut up in Vicksburg. Port Hudson surrendered upon news of the fall of Vicksburg and the Father of Waters flowed unvexed to the sea.
Lincoln wrote Rosecrans that Grant was frugal in corre- spondence, dispatches and reports, but a lavish fighter. In- deed during the hot days of '63 while Rosecrans was keeping the wires between Tennessee and Washington in a torrid condition, Grant worried Lincoln by not more fully posting him as to details. Stanton remarked that while Mcclellan after a battle lay down in the mud and yelled for reinforce- ments, men and material were forced upon Grant. Banks urged Grant for the offered corps notwithstanding his failure to respond to Grant's request, and the Thirteenth Corps was sent him, and we may remark were used to the poorest possible advantage.
The announcement that we were to go to the Gulf was not received with unqualified joy. It was complimentary to be selected; we, the only corps ever commanded by Grant as corps commander, in fulfilment of offer to send as good as there was. We had the soldier's restlessness and desire for change, and knew that we would see our largest tropical city with its varied nationalities and customs, but we disliked to be divorced from General Grant, our Western army, and join an army composed almost entirely of Eastern men. But the Battery was now the survivor of marches, privations, maladies, sieges and battles. Sunburnt, grave, patient, quietly enduring, calm almost to brutality to the eye of a sensitive soul and took any change philosophically.
Early in September the right section, guns and men, under Lieutenant Hackett, went aboard a boat and steamed down to Carrollton, encamping along the levee. Captain Foster soon followed with the remainder of the Battery, all remaining long enough to do the city and environments. After the corps was assembled at Carrollton General Grant came down and we were reviewed by him and General Banks, after which he bid us good-bye and we never again served under him as a corps. But in after years, after he had been General, President, and feted by half the crowned heads of the civilized world, "I was of the Thirteenth Corps," was an open sesame to his presence and a warm clasp of the hand; and he assured more than one of the old boys that he remembered the 1st Wiscinsin Battery, and remembered it well. Sending the fever-stricken to the hospital. we crossed the river to Algiers. loaded onto cars and debarked at Brashear City under command of Lieutenant Nut- ting, Gen. C. C. Washburn commanding the division. As each
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company, regiment or battery disembarked during the night it emitted an old time yell, being answered by those already ashore. The Eastern troops encamped in the outskirts, turned out and stood under arms in puzzled wonderment at the novel turmoil. Their philosophy never thoroughly reconciled this constant yelling by these Westerners, but when we came to go into battle together they admitted that it was a bracer. Among our new industries was fishing for crabs in Berwick Bay, which were highly relished. When a yell started on the wharf, spread to the surrounding camps and was echoed from across to Berwick City and adown the bay, the Easterner was wont to remark, "There; the Thirteenth Army Corps has caught another crab."
One hundred barrels of "commissary" (whisky) lay along the platform inside the spacious freight depot the night we landed. Three barrels were promptly confiscated, we getting away with but one. The next morning we were assigned an immense wooden building and the guns and horses were parked in an adjacent square. The "commissary" was set up on a soap box in our midst, a faucet inserted and a tin cup placed on top. Before the contents were exhausted Fred Houser re- turned from furlough, bringing a keg of the same lubricant, mellowed by age and not so searching, the gift of Brookliss, of La Crosse. But one case of intoxication occurred from barrel and keg. Rations of "commissary" were issued in which to disguise our quinine, but one day a drouth occurred and in- quiry developed the fact that Colonel Tarbell, commanding the Eastern brigade and post to which we had been left, had issued orders to stop further rations. Lieutenant Nutting rode to his headquarters and put in a protest and received an earn- est assurance that "This order. Lieutenant, was meant to apply to my own men; it was not meant to apply to your bat- tery. I know you Western men must have your whisky. I will give orders to have all you require issued."
Soon we moved over the bay to Berwick City and Captain Foster, who had come up, was chief of artillery for the divi- sion. After camping here a few days the corps, under General Washburn, moved on up the Teche country and saw some sharp fighting. Our guns were elected as too heavy for fall campaigning and recrossing the bay we camped below Brashear City, taking possession of a brick sugar house for our stock and began fetching Berwick City across the bay in detail to build quarters. Tastes in archiecture differed with squads and many styles were exhibited, from Grecian to Gothic. Houses were built entirely of windows. The walls of others were of green window blinds, the roof being of doors. Armed scouting par- ties of rebs rode into Berwick City and we were ordered by Colonel Tarbell to desist from excursions across the bay. Need-
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ing some finishings. Lieutenant Nutting asked permission to send over an armed squad to gather the same. Tarbell con- sented, remarking pensively as he surveyed the dilapidated city across the water, "About one more raid on that town, Lieuten- ant, and there will be nothing left." No town is there now, and Brashear is changed to Morgan City.
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