USA > Wisconsin > History of the First Wisconsin Battery Light Artillery > Part 27
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Captain Webster at once began putting things in shape by overhauling the Battery in all its parts. The harness was ยท cleaned and oiled, the guns and carriages were cleaned and such repairs as were necessary made and lost equipments re- placed. Drills were instituted and the recruits thoroughly instructed. On the 6th of January the whole force at the post of Baton Rouge were ordered out to witness the execution of the sentence of a court-martial in the case of a soldier of a Kentucky regiment for killing an officer in a billiard room. The man was a member of the same regiment of the man who was hung at Manchester the first day after leaving Cumberland Gap.
When the Battery was put in good order Captain Webster reminded General Bailey and General Heron of the promise made him concerning a leave of absence, and as it was conceded
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that there would be no campaigning for the Battery before spring, he made application for the leave to go home. It was approved by both the above officers and forwarded to General Hurlbut, then commanding the Department of the Gulf, at New Orleans, for his approval. The Captain was so sure that it would come back approved that he had made all prep- arations and arrangements to go up the river on the same boat that should bring the said leave. The boat was sighted com- ing one morning when his traps were gotten together and car- ried to the levee to be ready to go on board as soon as he could get from the headquarters to the boat. As soon as the mail was received at General Herron's office the Assistant Adjutant- General selected the letter that he thought most likely to con- tain the coveted paper and opened it at once. The application was there but it was returned with the following endorsement : "Disapproved. Captain Webster will report to these head- quarters immediately for special duty." He took the first boat to the city and reported to General Hurlbut and was assigned by him to the office of Acting Chief of Artillery of the Department of the Gulf, and was not with the Battery again until it was ordered home to be mustered out of the service, at which time he was with General Canby, having been assigned to duty by him upon his assuming command of the Department of the Mississippi, which embraced the De- partment of the Gulf. From now until we embarked for home and mustered out the Battery was commanded by First Lieu- tenant O. F. Nutting.
February 14th we moved to the evacuated camp of the 18th New York Battery where we found substantial houses of wood and brick, holding from four to six soldiers, containing fire places, and some of them with cistern attached, from which water was drawn by small. tin pumps. Facing the three sides of the quadrangle was a house for headquarters, and beside it Crocker pitched his large quartermaster's tent. To the north were mess houses. West of these the Battery was parked and to the east was our large stable.
At Morganza Heckman. always a terror to the men whose penchant it was to lie around camp dosing, smoking and scratching, or playing loo, conceived the idea that the stock would better thrive by being shaded. Presenting his diagram and scheme to Lieutenant Webster, a rough scaffolding of poles was erected and the whole covered with boughs in full foliage. At the fort in Baton Rouge Heckman again incu- bated a plan for shelter and squads were sent out with axe, beetle, wedge and frow to prepare a frame and rive shakes, and soon the stock was sheltered from sun and rain. As we
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went in armed squads, outside the picket line, these details were sought, for it was a day in the woods under delightful skies and weather. Such past masters in wood-work as Burke, Rynes, Hewitt, Dartt, Starling, Wade and Whipple teaching us inexperienced ones how to select an oak, fell, cross-cut, split into bolts and rive it into shakes. The man who swung the "beetle" was for the moment dubbed "Old Abe," and Frank McClintock and John McKeeth were master hands with the maul. Lieutenant Nutting rode out one noon just as we were gathering to the coffee kettle and the scout was returning from the sound of a distant cow-bell with canteens of milk. Turn- ing out a cupful I handed it to him, who returned the empty cup with a far-away farm-boy look, remarking, "That's pretty quick, my son." Thereafter Nutting, or Hackett, or both, rode out each day "to see how we were getting along," and inva- riably reached us about the time the scout was getting in with the milk.
Houser moved his medical stores into a house on a square to the north and was thereafter our only doctor. Fred served for a high privates' pay, but simple justice should have put the "M. S." on his shoulders and his pay increased about seven hundred per cent. He was kind, patient and skillful, but had little use for a malignerer, or as the boys dubbed them a "play off." One of these latter, a large, husky recruit, reported regularly at sick call. got a harmless remedy for some alleged disease and mayhap believed himself ill and was excused from duty. Slouching to his quarters one morning with his pow- ders in his hand he met Carlie Ward who mysteriously took him aside, asking him in a sympathetic manner how he felt this morning and imparted to him the intelligence that Houser was expecting to graduate from the service as a doctor and was experimenting on the men; that he was selected as an experiment in poisons, and asking if he did not feel quite sick on alternate days. Receiving an affirmative, Carlie told him that Fred gave him a poison one morning and an antidote the next. Gus. Dexereaux coming up at that moment Carlie appealed to him for confirmation. Not having an idea of what, Deveraux, all the same, immediately stoutly corrob- orated all Carlie had related. Back to Fred went the soldier, a stormy scene ensued, the powders were thrown at Fred and the recruit went on duty. considering it less dangerous.
When arranging to move over to our last camp Heckman thoroughly inspected the immense barn and began plans for its internal improvement. He would diagram some more, ride over and reconstruet his plans. It is needless to add that when we moved the stock, forage and wagons in, it was as Heckman planned.
Some of the recruits, 1865, received bounty or were sub-
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stitutes and there was not that cordial comradeship that existed between the old vets. They were taken into fellow- ship, and were most of them good soldiers, but nothing can draw men so close, knit heart to heart, as those who have stood time and again together in the red line of fire. The younger of these recruits, who were not old enough to get out in 1861, like Powers, Holmes, Parks and others, we loved like younger brothers.
Captain Webster was seriously ill or off at New Orleans on detail a large part of the time. Lieutenant Nutting com- manded the Battery, and under him the right section got a show and was sent on the raids when one section only was ordered out. One evening the right section being ordered out Jim Malbon, gunner of the left piece, asked Cameron, gunner of the right, if his squad was full; did he not want a cannoneer ? Cameron replied that he had a complement. but over there was a recruit getting his equipments together who looked sickly around the gills at the prospect of a cold skirmish for the morrow's breakfast; Malbon might arrange going out in his place. Malbon sauntered in and encouraged the recruity by tales of how the column would be bushwhacked during the night march and run up against General Wirt Adams' full brigade at daylight. Cameron stopped at the door to suggest to recruity that he had best make final arrangements for many were liable not to return. Finally Malbon reluctantly accept- . ed ten dollars and rode out at sunset, happy. It is needless to add that the "ten" was divided between two.
In January the right gun went out with a squad of the 4th Wisconsin Cavalary. (The 4th Wisconsin Infantry were first mounted and after the muster-out of the non-veterans the veterans and recruits were designated the 4th Wisconsin Cav- alry.) We went but a few miles north and returned the next morning.
Later in the month the Battery. supported by detachments of the 6th Missouri. 4th Wisconsin, and Sth Illinois Cavalry, marched out to the Amite River after sundown, camped, and returned the next evening. The river was out of its banks but the cavalry dismounted. pushed a skirmish line across and bushwhacked wit hthe rebels all night. The rebel bullets came over to us and some of the recruits sat up by the camp fires all night watching for them.
In March General Bailey with the Battery, supported by the Texas Cavalry and the 4th Wisconsin, left the picket line at sundown. struck the rebels at the Amite, and rushed them to the Olive Branch road, where we halted. The next day the wagons were sent out for forage escorted by the Texas Cav- alry. and Crocker taking a squad and the light wagon fell in with the column intending to load it with something to eat.
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They reached a large plantation ; the wagons were being loaded with corn and Crocker with his squad was ballasting the little wagon with pigs and poultry when a brigade of rebel cavalry pounced down upon them "like a chicken on to a lump of dough." The Texans put up the best fight possible, but they were armed with the Burnside carbine only,-their revolvers having been taken from them for too freely using them upon the nigger provost guard who controlled municipal affairs at Baton Rouge-and were forced back by numbers, and flanked. The wagons were captured, and afterwards burned. The driver, seeing that he was cut off from the road, abandoned our wagon and put for the woods. Shod with high boots he sat down to remove them, as an aid to locomotion, but after removing one and observing that he was being singled out for capture, he sprang up and lit out with one foot only adorned with a boot. He was captured and some weeks thereafter ex- changed, returning to us with his feet thus unequally shod. The little wagon and the team we never again saw. A Captain on General Bailey's staff, and Crocker and his squad broke around the rebel flank amid a shower of bullets and got into Bailey's headquarters. He had boots and saddles sounded and in three minutes we were under way to the rescue. Too late; the wagons were burning, rebels and stock gone. Allen Johnson on his ola white horse, Reckless, was of Crocker's squad and he recounted the thrilling part as: "I just laid down on.old Reck and gave him all the encouragement I could with the spur, saying, 'Reckless, do your duty ; Allen's on you.' "
We lay here two days, scouting the vicinity without further fight. The night before leaving the rain came down heavily nearly all night. Our camp was the site of a former brick yard, grassed over, and the water spread over it causing many of the boys to seek refuge upon the debris of the kiln. Sleep was impossible and able-bodied foragers invaded General Bailey's Quartermaster's tent, and all canteens that could be gathered from the Battery came back filled with commissary. The boys on the kiln spent the night filling themselves with commissary and the welkin with song. Daylight disclosed a suggestion of Proctor, Ky., on the retreat from Cumberland Gap.
Twice thereafter we raided Jackson, La., but without adven- ture of note.
CHAPTER XVIII.
"Never again to ride or march, In the dust of the marching column; Never again to hear the bugles, Thrilling, and sweet, and solemn; Never again to call comrade,
The men who were brothers for years."
I N these closing days the men were drilled in cavalry tactics and used as such. In the absence of the mounted men the dismounted cavalry were put on picket and we furnished a mounted courier at each post to ride in to headquarters with messages. At times we furnished the mounted vidette picket posts and experienced the delicious sensation of sitting alone in the saddle, of a dark night, feeling with our ears for a sneaking rebel. A colored regiment succeeded the white as provost guard, but the friction was so great with the Missouri and Texas Cavalry that they were removed and latterly we furnished a mounted squad to patrol the streets and were the only police force in the city. Notably, upon the day news of the assassination of President Lincoln was received a squad of cannoneers under a Corporal was the entire police force of the city. He dismounted his men, took charge of the horses under a spreading china tree and told his men to disperse through the city and shoot any man heard rejoicing over the Presi- dent's death. There was no necessity, the disloyal were a frightened community.
The infantry disappeared and none but our Battery and cavalry were in sight, and we began to talk about home. The town filled up with refugees and every night was a dance. Discipline relaxed and horse and foot racing and draw poker prevailed. Dudes cropped out. Houser wore a white vest and a paper collar, Hackett and Crocker each donned a duster that contained linen enough to clothe a gun squad, and Curtis, or some other exquisite in the left section, imported a clay pipe. On parade or inspection none ever approached in mag- nificence the Battery in their red plumed hats. The practice with the foils and the gloves was kept up to the last and our assumption of cavalry duty kept up the saber drill.
Some of the older mnen of the latest recruits were unaccus- tomed to horses, or the saddle, and when the command "Charge as foragers" was given it was fun to see a recruit loaded with his unaccustomed saber, forty-four and other equipments go sailing across rough country upon an unmanageable horse, hitting the landscape only on the high places and his posteriors pounding the saddle.
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A comrade writing to the Sun says: "One evening while I sat writing, Heckman and Ward returned from down town and not finding a cup, pumped water into the tin wash basin,- pump, basin and stand being in a corner of our cabin,-drank and insisted upon my joining in the wassail. Rising and tak- ing the basin, I dashed the water over Ward and fled. Heck- man retired and put out the light. Ward, lying perdu with a dish of water dashed it at me upon my approach and lit out. When I had finished writing-about 12-I loaded a bucket with water and went in search of him. He and Mains occu- pied a bunk on the left flank, he below and Mains in the upper bunk. In the rear, just over the lower bunk was a circular hole for ventilation. Ward suggested that as Mains was on guard that he-Mains-occupy the lower bunk and not dis- turb him by climbing over him. Mains assented and the pair went to sleep. Of course Ward expected me sometime during the night, which was warm. I appeared in due season and poured the bucket of water through the aperture full on to Dave's stomach, which was uncovered. His first whoop re- vealed all to me. As I scurried away in the darkness I heard Ward shout: "That was Cameron, Dave; I saw him." Of course there was no difficulty in his recognizing me in the dark, through a brick well. I passed the night in the third story of the lookout, while Dave spent a portion of it looking for me.
Next morning an ambassador negotiated a cessation of hos- tilities while I convinced Mains that Ward was the true cul- prit.
Special Order No. 1.
Headquarters District of East Louisiana. Baton Rouge, May 30, 1865.
The organization known as the Cavalry Brigade of the Northern Division of Louisiana is hereby discontinued.
By Command of Brigadier-General M. K. LAWLER. EDWARD HEMMINGWAY, Capt. and A. A. G.
And we passed out from our last brigade.
In June the men who joined us at Cincinnati, amongst whom were Mains, Ryan and Hewitt, were mustered out. Wild rum- ors were prevalent. One scheme was to muster out our com- missioned officers and consolidate us with the 4th Wisconsin Cavalry and send us across Louisiana and Texas to the borders of Mexico. Captain Webster, at New Orleans, as Chief of Artillery, getting on to these schemes wouldn't have it that way, insisting that we go, or stay, together "as we were," and carried the point.
Bugler Jerome Fuller was in the hospital. crippled with rheumatism, and John Kelly, second bugler, blew the calls.
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But Jerome hobbled over occasionally of an evening with his key bugle and awoke the sensuous night air with the most sweet and thrilling music that ever greeted the ears of artillery. Sergeant Norman Webster was sometimes left in command of the camp and all garrison equipage when the Battery was sent out on raids and expeditions and we marched light, strip- ped of all impedimenta. Upon return all carriages were loaded, and the plunder was like unto that of Pandora's box. Officers were allowed to purchase at an appraised figure two horses each, and some of the frugal men got cavalry efficers to purchase some of our better horses for themselves and took them to Wisconsin. Among these was Sergeant Hoyt's "Right Wheel" that was drawn at Louisville, the only horse to go through with us from the start to finish. Sergeant Kimball's big black was another. Many a boy would have rejoiced to have the Government land him in Wisconsin with the horse which he had so long campaigned with as his final pay. The "lines" were taken up and many Confederates were returning from the armies of Lee and Johnston. None of the latter ever met us without remarking, when they learned the name of our Battery, "Boys, we take off our hats to you'ns." We rode out to the stockade, to Clinton, Jackson, even to Liberty, and met no harsh look or word. Men and women were relieved that the strain of war was over and had words of praise for Grant and Lincoln. Occasionally an ex-Confederate would confi- dentially ask what our government was likely to do with them and seemed to be slow to imbibe the thought that we were all American citizens of one government.
A comrade writes:
"Mrs. White owned and occupied a ranch that backed up near our mess house while occupying the 'Black Horse Bat- tery camp.' Heckman was. Sergeant in charge of a detail policing camp and when he got around in her vicinity knock- ed at the kitchen door and upon her appearance suggested that she have her niggers clean up around the premises. The lady gave it to Heckman hot, and in very bad language, which stuck in his Mohawk craw. Just after taps that evening I came in and found Heckman and Ward discussing schemes of reprisal and suggested that the loop of a lariat tossed over the top of that huge chimney which she had turned out of doors would create a diversion, were proper force applied to the other end of the riata. They embraced the scheme with alacrity and I got the riata from my saddle, made the broad loop and caught the chimney at second cast, but it took our utmost strength and considerable surging to bring it down, and then only about a third of it broke off. While Mrs. White, and incidentaly the camp, was waking up we were get- ting to sleep. The next day she engaged Summerfield to re-
J. C. HEWITT.
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build the chimney, which he did the following day, and then refusal to pay the stipulated price on the ground that, 'You fellows pulled it down, you fellows built it up." The next night the chimney came down again and as it struck the ground and we fled into the darkness her angry voice followed with : 'Pull it down, damn you; I can build it up as fast as you can pull it down.'
"She went over to headquarters, rapped vigorously on the door and to the inquiry of what's wanted, replied, 'Lieutenant Nutting, Lieutenant Nutting, your men are over to my house pulling down boo, hoo, h-o-o, ow, wow, e-e-e-dam.' I'd skinned around through the park, laid low, and was returning by way of the northwest corner house when I ran up against Lieutenant Nutting in his stocking feet, and halting me he queried : 'What hell are you raising now? Where is the rest of the gang?" I professed ignorance of any untoward event, claiming to have been over to Houser's medical shop. 'What makes you tell such damn lies? Get to your quarters and stay there, and I'll settle with you in the morning,' replied the Lieu- tenant commanding, and continued his search for the balance of the gang.
"Ock always had such a broad humanity, even when he was ringing a culprit down, and I'd rather be caught in deviltry by any other officer.
"Mrs. White got Summerfield to rebuild the chimney and insure that we'd leave it alone, but got his pay in advance for both rebuildings."
The little Rodmans were last used to fire the Fourth of July salute. The right gun went into Battery for the last time at the corner front of the Sumter House. The other guns tak- ing post at the succeeding corners down river, and thirty-six, one for each state, rounds were given, thus rounding up the salutes at Cumberland Gap, Vicksburg, New Orleans. As the right gun recoiled it was not run forward to place about the third round, thus bringing it between the tall Sumter House and an opposite building, confining the sound and air waves, and a few panes of glass dropped out of the hotel. A can- noneer stepped over and suggested to the proprietor, or clerk, that a bottle of claret sent out to the boys would insure the running of the gun forward and leave the house safe. He re- ported a surly answer. Two and three cartridges were there- after rammed home and the gun allowed to recoil further and further back and after each discharge a rain of glass would strike the sidewalk and a rain of plaster inside.
The next day the guns were turned over to the Quarter- master. And the park was silent.
None but a soldier can "sense" the affection with which a cannoneer regarded his gun, Even now when the old boy
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meets up with an army piece at Madison, St. Paul or Wash- ington he looks it over curiously; noting the old familiar points of gun, carriage, and caisson. The pungent scent of battle lingers in muzzle, vent and equipments. He is not satis- fied until he raises the limber lid, when, lo, what a host of emotions and memories float through his brain as the old, old intimate odors of primer, fuze, cartridge, wood, and iron shell penetrates his nostrils. If the chest has been empty a quarter of a century, like the vase, the scent remains there still. Were a limber chest, packed for a campaign, opened near a sleep- ing cannoneer to-day, as the aroma entered his nostrils he would rise up with the impression that Gabriel was perform- ing the long-looked-for cornet solo and that he was called to enter artillery Heaven.
On July 6th the stock was turned over at the penitentiary stables. A group of men gathered upon a hill watching with moist eyes the long string of horses, under the detail, winding away towards the stables, and as they disappeared Jim Cava- nar voiced the sentiment as he turned and burst out sobbing, "Taddy's gone."
And the stables were silent.
The last days were spent disposing of our surplusage and settling accounts. The gloves were taken over to the 8th Illi- nois Cavalry and they were advised to learn how to "put up their hands." Several swarms of bees had been dinned down from the sky and were comfortably hived near the mess house. These brought five dollars a swarm. The poor people flocked like buzzards, for clothing, blankets, bake kettles and private camp and garrison equipage. The last of the detailed men returned to the 6th Missouri Cavalry. On July 7th we knew that on the morrow the few of us left would take boat for the North, and a quiet sadness seemed to settle down upon the camp, instead of exuberant jovousness. We gathered in groups as the evening grew older and talked in subdued tones . of the past four years; of our absent comrades; those who had left us but a few days before. after three of the hardest years of service; those loval and leal men who had foregathered with us as details from the gallant infantry regiments, some of whom veteranized into the Battery and were mustered out as of us: of the graves of comrades. like milestones scat- tered from the Ohio to the Gulf. Kelly and Fuller sounded some of the old calls, and as nine o'clock approached the last tattoo for us in the redeemed Southland went up, and
The wild notes waved and lingered, And fainted along the air: Sometimes like defiance. And sometimes like despair.
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HOME.
They come through the still, green ways, To their pleasant homes once moe,
To lie in the shade through the summer days Till their weariness is o'er,
And the silence grows a familiar thing After the battle's roar.
On July 8, 1865, we shouldered our personal belongings, shook the sacred soil of Louisiana from our boots and took the steamer for Cairo. And our last camp was silent.
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