A War Diary of events in the war of the Great Rebellion. 1863-1865

Preface

. Conforming to my original plan, to record only those battles and events of the War of the Great Rebellion in which I was engaged, or with which I was immediately connected, I have, in these pages from my Diary, con tinued the narrative from its previous ending in the Army of Virginia with Pope's campaign in 1862 (only omitting the Battle of Antietam, the history of which is yet to be written), to the close, in 1865. In two pam phlets, and in the " Second Massachusetts and Stonewall Jackson " (printed for private circulation), now being revised and prepared for publication in a single volume, will be found a similar record, beginning with the organi zation of the Second Massachusetts Regiment in 1861, and ending with the battle of Cedar Mountain in the fall of 1862, — thu3 connecting the two parts of my narrative, and making the record of my Diary complete, with the single exception above noted.

The reader of the present volume should not forget that the actual feeling and spirit which existed during the War of the Rebellion is to be found in narratives of occurrences at the time. If I am accused of needlessly reviving unhappy memories, I reply that I am constrained to follow my notes, aud

PREFACE.

. could not, if I would, after the fashion of later writers, gently intimate that in rebelling against the Government in 1861 the South was pardonably in error and a trifle wrong-headed, for the simple reason that during the war no such sentiment existed. But the war ended long ago, and year by year the angry and bitter feelings it excited have given place to mutual respect and fellowship, until the soldiers on both sides acknowledge and rejoice in the valor displayed by North and South on many battle-fields. If these pages should recall old animosities, or open anew wounds that time has healed, I shall regret exceedingly that my simple desire to present many interesting details of the period of the Great Rebellion has so utterly miscarried. ' ' Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the Judgment-day, Love and tears for the ' Blue, Tears and love for the ' Gray.

G. H. G. Boston, February, 1882. CONTENTS. CHAPTEE I. PAGE On the Potomac 1 II. On the James 32 III. At West Point, Vieginia 55 IV. On the Peninsula 87 V. Appeoaching Richmond 115 With the Aemy of the Potomac 139 VI. With the Aemy of the Potomac {continued') 153 South Caeolina 175 VII. Sea Islands off Chaeleston 179 VIII. Sea Islands off Chaeleston (continued) CONTENTS. VI IX. pag« Hilton Head 29° Florida 293 The Mississippi River 307 X Mobile Bay 332 Army of the Potomac 351 New York City 355 XL District of Eastern Virginia 357 XII. District of Eastern Virginia (continued) .List of JHaps ano Elustratton... PAGE West Point, Virginia (facing) 56 Charleston, South Carolina, and the Sea Islands adjacent „ 210 The District of Eastern Vieginia „ 358 Episcopal Church, Hampton, Virginia 171 Fort Sumter 180 Gunboat on the Mississippi River

Chapter I. Second Year Of The War

— ON THE POTOMAC. ""T^HE battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg, as we called it ■*■ then) was over; and on the 21st of September, 1862, my division of the Twelfth Corps was at Sandy Hook, in Maryland, awaiting an order to cross into Virginia in pur suit of Lee. The perils and labors of the previous week were such as I had never before known, and at first I found difficulty in recalling the incidents in their proper order. Gradually, however, this confusion disappeared, and I was able to retrace the whole course of the battle. It was only seven days since we had marched in triumph through the loyal town of Frederick, in Maryland, and out upon the road which, after running northwesterly through Boons borough and Middletown, divided into two branches, one leading to Williamsport on the north, and the other to Sharpsburg on the south.

Between Middletown and Boons borough, on a spur of the Blue Ridge known as South Mountain, which is crossed by three parallel roads run ning east and west at gaps, as they are called, the Rebel army made its first stand in Maryland. Thither we had hurried through the night, without a halt, until a little before daybreak of the fifteenth. We were to support Burnside in his effort to charge the enemy and drive him from his position towards the Potomac. At daylight I reached the front, and found that during the night the Rebel army, abandoning their dead and wounded, had fallen back across Antietam Creek, satisfied with the heavy fighting of the day before at the gaps, where we had been victorious. Two or three hours went by, and we pushed on in pursuit. McClellan rode past our corps, and was cheered lustily.

I shook hands with him, and rode a short distance by his side. He seemed anxious to over take the enemy, and said he should feel much obliged if they would only stop long enough to let him whip them. We hurried on during the day, encamping, or rather halt ing, at night near where Antietam Creek empties into the Potomac. Behind the creek was Sharpsburg. Early in the morning of the sixteenth, we were aroused and ordered to march forward and attack the enemy, who was supposed to be in position behind the creek. Our line of battle was formed in sight of Lee's army ; but the day wore on and no attack was made, although the answering growls of artillery continued all day. Night came, and we lay down upon piles of straw ; not to sleep, however, for before my eyes were closed, I was ordered to prepare to march immediately towards the right of our line and reinforce General Hooker.

Our corps, formed in compact masses, was soon in motion. We marched nearly all night. Our route carried us across Antietam Creek, to wards the extreme right, where Hooker had preceded us and had taken a position. We halted about two hours before daybreak. Around us were stacks of straw, of which we gladly availed ourselves for a few moments' slumber. We knew that we were near the enemy, and that we should soon meet him, flushed with many victories over both McClellan and Pope, in his first efforts to main tain himself on the left bank of the Potomac ; but I, for one, was so worn out with fatigue, so overpowered with sleep, and had become so passive under the experiences of the past campaigns of the year, that I slept. That mellowing of the darkness, a precursor of the com ing day, was scarcely visible on the seventeenth, when we were aroused by fierce exchanges of musketry.

The long night-march, the deep slumber so rudely broken, the be ginning of the deadly battle in that dim light of the early morning, — all combined to form a picture which I can never forget. We rose to our feet, formed in columns, and moved to a point from which it seemed probable we should be sent to the front to aid Hooker if he required help. General Mansfield, who had been assigned to the com mand of our corps (Banks had been put on other duty when Pope retired), was a reputable man and an experienced officer, who had been wounded in previous wars. He ordered certain precautionary dispositions, that aid might be sent without delay to any quarter; and then, with the thoughtfulness of an old soldier, directed me to allow my troops to use a momentary interval of rest in making coffee if time sufficed, and if not, then the men could " kick over their camp-kettles and move forward."

Instead of preserving the compact columns into which the regiments of my brigade had been thrown, I scattered them to lessen danger from the enemy's shells now howl ing around us. The sun had not yet risen, and the forms of tree and forest were yet indistinct, when I looked in the direction where the Second Massachusetts Regiment had gathered around a cheerful fire, over which the water in camp-kettles was beginning to bubble. I saw Major Dwight writing in his saddle, on a small scrap of paper. In reply to my question he cheerily said, " Oh, I am writing to my mother." The words, " Dear mother, it is a misty, moisty morning," with which he began this last touching line to the one he loved best on earth, were found upon his person, a few hours later, when he lay mortally wounded. The coffee was not ready when the order, " Forward into action !." sent the men to their feet.

They advanced amidst shell and round shot, with such intervals as should insure a proper deployment without huddling ; and the terrific and glorious battle of Antietam Creek was begun. The details of that fearful struggle belong to the historian ; I cannot give them here. From sunrise to sunset we fought, swaying to and fro with varying fortune, until our lines moved forward in final triumph, and the sun, whose rising we had seen with so much apprehension, now, as it sank, lit up our victorious flags. But what a field of carnage lay about us ! Neither time nor change can dim the remembrance of these fields peo pled with corpses ; can shut out the sight too horrible to be real, and yet too real to forget, of that bloody pathway, or of that whole brigade of Rebel dead, with its skirmish line in front, its troops in rear.

In the dim light our guards came upon it, at the most advanced point that it was deemed prudent to take at night. " A line of battle here on duty ! " exclaimed the officer in command ; " there must be some mistake, for I was told that this would be my front, and here is a whole brigade of men. Who are they, Sergeant ? Do you know them ? Ask them from what corps they came." For some moments both officers and men were staggered at this mystery. That confusion might arise along our front, at such a time, was possible enough ; but that at such a place a whole brigade of guards could be found buried in sleep, almost in presence of the enemy, filled them with amazement. The sergeant now vainly attempted to arouse the man nearest him, with his foot ; he stooped, shook the man, and cried out, " Halloo !

I say ! wake up ! " Then the truth beginning to dawn upon him, he put his hand upon the head, the face, and found it cold ; he listened, but heard no sound of life. Another : no answer ! nor from another still, nor yet from any of those silent men lying there, stiff and stark, in the pale moonlight on that battle-field. Along the plain, over the hill, the line extended ; until, lost in obscurity, nothing but dark masses appeared. Throughout the night the moon filled the scene with mystic images and unreal shapes. If phantoms from the spirit world could ever come forth to bewilder mortals, sure never was there time or place or sight so seasonable. It was a marvel to the living, and so continued until the moon faded before the dull light of day, and the awful truth was revealed. A whole brigade of Rebel dead lay there, a ghastly battle line, as if they too were keeping watch upon the field.

Poor Dwight, the Major of the Second Massachusetts Infantry, was mortally wounded about noon of the seven teenth, before a wooded knoll which held the Dunkard church. Colonel Andrews and Dwight were together, scarcely sheltered from a murderous fire by a fence of com mon posts and rails, when a musket ball entered near the latter's hip, lodged in his body, and he fell, crying, " They have done for me ! " When the line fell back, Dwight was left upon the field. There, alone, he finished that letter begun at the camp-fire at daylight, with, " I am wounded so as to be helpless. Good-by, if so it must be." As soon as possible he was brought back to our lines in a blanket, suffering intense pain, and yet so cheery and brave that he gave back my words of sympathy with, " Don't mind me ! only whip the enemy."

When an attempt was made to remove him to the rude hospital, the brave sufferer con trolled himself, although every muscle was rigid with torture. He only said quietly, " This carrying is more easily commanded than borne; it is pretty painful." He lingered about two days ; during his last hours he was coura geous and tranquil. To unflinching pluck he added an ardent patriotism, and a soul filled with a noble loyalty to his country. He believed that the war would not only kindle, but stimulate into activity, exalted sentiments in his countrymen. Not for gold, not for fame, not for political reward did Wilder Dwight sacrifice a becoming ambition in his cherished profession of the law, in which, though young, he was full of promise. " Few men have spent their lives better, have done more good in their time, or died a more fitting death," are words written to me at the time by one of the most eminent members of the bar, who knew Dwight well.

I know the loss to the Second Massachusetts was great ; but to his home ! — it is irre parable. Our victory was gained by the desolation of many firesides ; the joy of the nation brought mourning to the people. But little more than one year ago we were near this place, before Harper's Ferry, under the shadow of these rocky heights, with nearly one thousand men in the ranks of the Second Massachusetts Regiment of Infantry. To day it numbers scarcely two hundred ; and yet its losses, grave as they have been, do not mark its greatest change. But six of those officers who marched away from Massa chusetts, in July of 1861, are here to-day to thank God for their preservation at Antietam. On the 23d of September, 1862, I occupied Maryland Heights with my division, for the defence of Harper's Ferry ; the main line stretching above us as far as Wil liamsport.

Over the river the enemy was taking it more leisurely than we thought proper, after his flight across the Potomac. In the mean time, the President had called for more troops, and issued his proclamation of freedom to the slaves. This measure was believed to be essential to a more vigorous prosecution of the war. Had we been apa thetic thus far ? We may, it is true, have thought more of Constitutional constructions than of the construction of enormous and well disciplined armies, may have had more fear of being called Abolitionists than of being whipped ; we may not have appreciated that if the South, in order to form a more perfect Union by rebellion, was willing to es tablish its government on the corner-stone of slavery, we, to hold fast the whole Union, had never been willing to establish it on the corner-stone of freedom ; we had not, perhaps, rightly appreciated that the Constitution was made for the country, not the country for the Constitution, and that it was a thousand times better that it should be broken in every line and precept than that the South should be permitted to break up the Union itself : we can re-establish the Constitution if it should be necessary to do so ; but if it is once severed, we cannot reunite the nation.

We had suffered under these distractions, the South had not ; it had not sought in divergent and paralyzing ways to carry out a feeble purpose, — feeble, because held in check by a peaceful instrument called a constitution. The principles of the peo ple's party, as I read them in the papers of that* day, caused no inspiration of vengeance, such as our armies needed to insure success. In Maryland, by the side of Antietam Creek, we went to battle to protect our homes. For another ad vance into Virginia the army needed, I thought, a new in spiration from a proclamation for the freedom of the slave. It would be vain to deny that at this period there was a despondent feeling in the army. After all the sufferings and reverses of nearly two years, the end seemed no nearer now than when our army, a rabble of undisciplined fugi tives, crowded over the long bridge into Washington, after the first battle of Bull Run.

With doubts of the future came doubts of the polity of our government. " This is its first great strain," said the faint-hearted, " and it cannot survive. On a calm day and over unruffled seas the ship will float happily into port, but she will founder in a storm." Among many who expressed these views was a brother of the famous Henry Ward Beecher, a man whom I found here as chaplain of a New York regiment, and who had been a settled (or unsettled minister as he said) in Elmira, New York. Very odd, like all the Beechers, he was nevertheless fascinating in conversation. In politics he was a Democrat of the old school. He even now, with the proclamation of freedom ringing in his ears, did not hesitate to declare that the negro girl in a log-house near my tent did not belong to the same human family with himself.

As an atom in the armies contending for the establishment of equal rights and equal brotherhood, he avowed that he was himself by no means a republican, and that he thought the republic a failure. " The Democratic party," he urged," forced into our governmental polity in 1832-33 an element that overcame in man all reverence for law, human or divine, all reverence for obedience as a principle in life." Obedience, he thought, lay at the bottom of all national as well as all spiritual progress. " I have made," he continued, " my calculations ; others may make their own. I sit with my instrument pointed towards the heav ens ; it is almost the hour for the eclipse. I shall rejoice if I am mistaken ; but soon I look to see a shadow stealing over this splendid luminary, never to be removed." By the side of this desponding observer there were many more hopeful watchers of the same phenomena, who denied this forecast of coming events, and utterly refused to be lieve these gloomy predictions of our futureruin.

By the sixteenth we had begun forward movements from Harper's Ferry and Martinsburg to Charlestown, which we entered with little resistance. The condition of my command at this town would not have filled the heart of the observer with thanksgiving for temporal blessings, or with regrets that he could not participate in our. luxurious life. If he could have looked upon the dim light that came from the little canvas kennels where ten thousand poor fellows, many of them without blankets, were trying to keep warm in these chilly October days, or peer into an adjoining bam filled with sick men dying from typhoid fever, with neither proper medicine nor food, it would have been plain that with all its excitements this life was a vexatious and a perplexing one, — a hard life, and one with all its glories better to think of than to endure.

By the 24th of October there were many signs of bad weather, precursors of wintry days in which the camps would be wet, the soldiers uncomfortable, and every thing cold and cheerless. Our position on the mountain was a very exposed one ; but this was necessary in order that we should overlook Harper's Ferry, the bridge, and the ford, and cover our troops in Virginia in case of need. Six miles from the river hostile pickets confronted each other on the road to Charlestown ; beyond, at Winchester, the enemy was said to be in force. From our lofty en campment I could see, in a clear day, the dust of his wagons and the smoke of his camp-fires. Our position was strongly guarded. The Potomac cuts the Blue Ridge in twain where it washes the ruins of Harper's Ferry. Ages have passed since these waters began to roll at the foot of these heights ; from the river's brink to the mountain summits the falling rock has made a gentle slope, which is now covered with dark pines.

Besides the Maryland Heights and the Loudon Heights on the other side, there is another height in Vir ginia, lower than the others, which forms part of the system of our defences. Where the Shenandoah flows into the river at Harper's Ferry, the land rises to the crest of a ridge, which forms the western bank of the Potomac. This ridge between the two rivers, known as Bolivar Heights, is occupied by our troops. In peaceful days these splendid rivers and these lofty hills were extolled by travellers as the most picturesque in our country ; and even a scoffing officer of my staff was moved to growl out that the view was " darned magnificent." In these grand days of war a new glory was added to the scene. The ruins of Harper's Ferry, the charred wreck of the superb railroad bridge, the army of wood-choppers felling trees for defences and clearing away for fortifications on Mary land Heights, with my own tent in a little shelf of the cliff and my division of sixteen thousand men in a picturesque group below, form a picture of rare beauty.

Up the river as far as Williamsport, and down to Alex andria we were guarding Maryland from invasion, my own line extending eight miles above until it met that of Fitz John Porter. It was a pleasure in a clear day to ride along that picket line. One mile above Harper's Ferry a dam turned the waters of the Potomac into a canal, which supplied the Government works at the arsenal ; the river below is a sad and unsightly jumble of rocks, but above, it is as smooth as glass, as it placidly flows between green banks fringed with pine trees. Nothing more poetic than picket duty here in fine weather can be conceived. So long a line as this of McClellan on the Potomac was necessarily attenuated ; and, mortifying as it was to us, it was not strange that Stuart succeeded in making his raid into Pennsylvania.

We cannot blame any one that this raid was begun ; but blame is certainly due to some one that it did not end with Stuart's capture. It seemed to us to be the most foolhardy piece of business we had ever known ; had the Rebels made a raid in balloons we could not have been more amazed. Between seven and eioht in O the evening of Friday, Oct. 1, the Rebel cavalry reached Chambersburg, and it was at noon of the nineteenth before they arrived at the Potomac again to recross into Virginia, having in two days passed to the rear of the Army of the Potomac. By the 27th of October the movement into Virginia be gan. Burnside moved first, and we were under orders to follow. The newspapers, echoing the cry of an ignorant and inconsiderate people, clamored for a winter campaign. The weather was most unpropitious, and although the leaves had not begun to fall, November-like winds blew cold and cheerless, as if foreboding a protracted storm.

But the American people demanded a movement, it was said ! Ah, if those who demanded it were only obliged to make it ! While the campaigns of the last two years were beginning to tell upon the old soldiers, the cold, wet, and inevitable exposure of camp, with the depression of attendant home sickness, was hurrying raw recruits in fearful numbers to the hospital and the grave. That dreadful scourge, typhoid fever, notwithstanding all the precautions my position enabled me to provide, had begun to develop its premoni tory symptoms of headache and strange pains, and the sur geon prescribed medicines and rest; and this, too, at the very moment when the whole army was under orders to move into Virginia on the twenty-fifth, at ten A. M. On the twenty-ninth, while our troops were moving across the river and being massed on the west bank of the Potomac, I marched at nine P. M. with my brigade to hold the Potomac river from Antietam Creek to the mouth of the Opequan, — arriving at Antietam in the night, and oc cupying on the morning 'of the thirtieth Antietam ford, where I relieved General Fitz John Porter's command, and stretched my own up the river as far as I could.

Having established my headquarters at Sharpsburg, I proceeded to study the river, that I might bestow my small com mand of infantry, one regiment of cavalry and artillery, where they could oppose a crossing by the enemy. On the thirty-first the day began with a ride to Knoxville to relieve a colonel there, and order him to Hagerstown ; then to the Shepherdstown ford, where orders were given for a change in the arrangement of guards, and for a vital amendment in the performance of picket duty ; to Mercersville, where I conferred with a few loyal Virginians at an old hotel in a dark room upstairs, and from whence I sent a scout to Bunker Hill in Virginia, and made arrangements to capture pickets ; studied the river, its fords, its banks, and its courses, and the best place for batteries for effective work ; sent out general orders containing governing rules for maintenance of guards, — in the doing of which I rode thirty miles, and exhausted the daylight.

This was but an epitome of every day, varied only by alarming rumors and startling despatches. On the 14th of November, General Slocum at Harper's Ferry advised me that all the reports brought to him went to prove that Stonewall Jackson returned to Winchester last Mon day with a large force, and that A. P. Hill's command returned to a point between Winchester and Berryville on Tuesday, — all of which pointed to a raid into Mary land at some point above my position, or an attack on his own ; and if the latter should occur he would eudea vor to concentrate on Maryland Heights ; but if the former, then (in the event of a crossing at Shepherdstown or An tietam Iron Works) he would advise me to try to reach him through Solomon's Gap, and if this were not possible to fall back to Hagerstown. It was very thoughtful of Slocum to write of the rumors that were flying about, even though he knew (as he wrote to me) that I was not under his command, and to suggest for my consideration a plan for a time of action when there might be no opportunity for reflection.

The fifteenth brought with it no relief, but more dis quieting rumors. Scouts were sent to Martinsburg ; roads from fords to the eastward were examined, -and a startling report came through General Morell from Gen eral Kenly at Hagerstown that Wade Hampton, commanding a Rebel cavalry brigade, was in Martinsburg yesterday ; that his scouts, dressed as Federal cavalry, were patrolling the road between there and the river ; and that Jackson, with an estimated force of forty thousand men, was at Bunker Hill, preparing to turn our right on the upper Potomac. On the sixteenth, one hundred Rebel cavalry, disguised in Federal uniforms, entered Shepherdstown, heralding — so rumor had it — the presence of Jackson at Winchester and its vicinity. But on the seventeenth a heavy rain rendered the fording for the time more difficult, if not impossible, — a great relief to my anxiety and to my labors.

While the whole army of the Potomac, save Slocum's com mand and mine, was advancing under Burnside to near the farthest southern point reached by us in Pope's campaign, it might have been supposed that the country between the Potomac and Manassas would have been free from the en emy ; and yet here was this ubiquitous Jackson turning from his southward march to reappear at Winchester with his reputed army of forty thousand, extending his pickets to the river, and keeping me daily and sometimes nightly in the saddle, riding over twenty-six miles of territory in the endeavor to hold many fords easily passable and often used by the Rebels on marauding excursions. At this time there arose a great commotion about us, and, as it often happens, from a very inadequate cause. The sound of cannon somewhere on the Potomac, followed by the usual report of an attack, alarmed all the towns within twenty miles of the river.

At Chambersburg, empty cars were hurried in to remove Government stores ; at Hagerstown wagons were packed, and every measure taken *for flight from an expected raid. The rumor of an attack arose as follows : — About nine o'clock on the morning of the 19th of No vember, a«citizen, one Dunn, employed on the canal, handed to the commander of the Twenty-seventh Indiana Regi ment of my brigade a note from the canal superintendent, in which was represented that it would enhance the pub lic interest if this man could be permitted to move his family and furniture from the Virginia to the Maryland side of the Potomac. Dunn's expressed wish to cross at the guard-lock, about one mile above dam No. 4, with four or five men and a scow, was granted upon the sole condi tion that an officer should attend at the point of debarkation to prevent the transportation of contraband of war.