Recollections of a Private. A story of the army of the Potomac ... Illustrated

Preface

. 'THE first few chapters of this book were published under the 1 title of " Recollections of a Private " in the Century Magazine. Herein I have endeavored to speak for my many comrades in the ranks. Could their voices have been heard mine would have been silent. The general of an army, in his reports, gives the anatomy of army movements and of battle. A description of the many incidents of the private soldier's experience shows its living soul. The importance of the views of a private soldier has lately been expressed by Lord Wolseley, adjutant-general of the British army, in his " English View of the Civil War," published in the North Ameri can Review} After pointing out the dangers resulting from popular clamor, "when in the middle of a war, they (the journalists) take it upon themselves, to drive or to force those whom they influence, to decide what the naval or military commander should do," the distin guished author says, " If these Century articles could be as widely read among us as they have been in America, we might possibly be saved in the future from disasters such as were entailed on us in the Crimea by very similar action.

In particular, I should like those articles by Mr. Warren Lee Goss, 'The Recollections of a Private,' duly studied. For, after all, questions of strategy and of tactics, and of the importance of organization of all kinds, turn upon the effect which is ultimately produced on the spirit, and well-being, and fight ing efficiency of the private soldier." 'July, 1S89. in PREFA CE. IV The " Army of the Potomac " was the people in arms. It mirrored the diversified opinions and occupations of a free and intelligent democracy. The force that called it together was the spirit that made a government of the people possible. Its ranks were largely filled with youth, who had no love for war, but who had left their pleasant homes, and the pursuits of peace, that the government they loved might not perish.

To the large numbers of patriotic young men in the ranks is to be attributed much of its hopeful spirit. Thus it was that, though baffled by bloody and disheartening reverses, though it changed its commanders often, it never lost its discipline, its heroic spirit, or its confidence in final success. Its private soldiers were often as intelligent critics of military movements as were their superiors. In every other conquering army its commander has been its life and soul. Napoleon, in substance, once declared, that it was not great armies that won triumphs, but great commanders. Again he said, "It is not men who make armies, but a man," thus deifying great generals. The reverse of this might be said of the "Army of the Potomac." Its final triumph over the army of Northern Virginia, commanded by the genius of Lee, was won by constant hammering and attrition, during which the blood of our common soldiers paid the greater tribute.

In our great army, the private soldier who carried forty rounds of cartridges and a brave heart, who fought without expectation of reward or promotion, was its truest hero and the fittest representative of its conquering spirit. His unselfish sacri fices, and heroic confidence in final victory, saved the nation and preserved the union of states. The title of these papers, " Recollections of a Private," must not be read literally. In them the writer has availed himself of the reminiscences of many comrades known by him to be trustworthy. For convenience and to give a greater sense of reality to the descriptions, he has often made use of the first person in chroni cling the recollections of his comrades.

PREFACE.

. V The author desires to express obligations to Dr. Thomas H. Mann, of Milford, Mass., formerly a private in the 18th Massa chusetts Volunteers, for suggestions. Several incidents in the book are also, by his permission, drawn from his memoranda. He is also indebted to Josiah N. Jones, of the Sixth New Hamp shire, and to William J. Mantanye, of the Seventy-sixth New York, for invaluable material contained in diaries kept by them during the many stirring scenes of their army service. To Captain J. F. Huntington, of Boston, for the use of a valuable manuscript, and to many others of whom space does not permit men tion, thanks are due. W. L. G. Norwich, Conn. CONTENTS. CHAPTER pAGE I. The Young Recruit i II. Campaigning to no Purpose 17 III. Up the Peninsula with McClellan . . . . -27 IV. To the Chickahominy. — The Battle of Seven Pines . . 45 V. Battles and Movements preceding the Retreat to James River 53 VI.

Retiring from the Chickahominy 59 VII. Pope's Military Maxims as illustrated by Jackson . . 75 VIII. Two Days of the Second Battle of Bull Run ... 83 IX. McClellan at the Head of the Grand Army ... 95 X. Antietam 104 XI. After the Battle, and McClellan deposed . . . -115 XII. Fredericksburg 120 XIII. After the Battle .... .... 132 XIV. Chancellorsville 140 XV. Chancellorsville — {continued} 154 XVI. The Army Mule 166 XVII. Between Battles 172 XVIII. Washington Tactics 182 XIX. Gettysburg, July i 188 XX. Gettysburg, July 2 198 XXI. Gettysburg, July 3 210 XXII. Incidental to Gettysburg 218 XXIII. After Gettysburg 225 XXIV. Virginia again 233 Ml CONTENTS. VIII CHAPTER PAGE XXV. Mine Run Campaign ......... 242 XXVI. Winter Quarters • .251 XXVII. Grant in Command ......... 261 XXVIII. The Wilderness 266 XXIX.

The Wilderness (Second Day) 273 XXX. To Spottsylvania 279 XXXI. Laurel Hill 289 XXXII. Co-operative Movements. — To Cold Harbor . . 298 XXXIII. Cold Harbor 310 XXXIV. Change of Base 318 XXXV. The Siege of Petersburg 324 XXXVI. The Last Campaign XXXVII. The Race for Life LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Drawn bv J. R. Chapin and W. H. Shelton. Engraved by George T. Andrew. PAGE Leaving for the Front 2 Officers on Pennsylvania Avenue 9 "Those who could get away didn't wait" 13 Stampede of the Baggage Wagons 15 "'Think? think?' he cried, 'what right have you to think? I do the thinking for the regiment'" . . . . . . . . 17 The Runaway Car 21 Pulling Mud in Virginia 24 Mrs. T; leaving her Home 33 General McClellan and Prince de Joinville 36 Bramhall's Battery 39 Rescuing Wounded Comrades ......... 46 Bringing in a Confederate Prisoner ....... 49 " That night we lay under the stars, thinking of the events of the day and the expected conflict of the morrow" . . . . . . 51 The Bugler 53 " Suddenly there came a troop of cavalry wildly rushing upon the artillery" 57 Campaigning through the Swamp 60 " 'Here by the oak,' our men would say, in answer to their calls" . . 65 General Magruder and the Hungry Texan 70 Stuart's Cavalry raiding Catlett's Station 78 Hooker's Men raiding the Box of Chickens 80 " ' Pring up the shackasses ' " . 86 Death of General Kearney at Chantilly 93 A Straggler 96 "For an instant they glared angrily at each other" 100 A Zouave 104 The Zouaves holding the Stone Wall in Front of Sharpsburg . 105 Sharpsburg and the Battle of Antietam ... . . 106 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

X PAGE After the Battle I!° General McClellan taking Leave of the Army of the Potomac . 119 Union and Rebel Soldiers on Opposite Ends of the Burned Railroad Bridge • I22 Fredericksburg I23 The Provost Marshal and Wounded Officers 133 The Burnside Mud March '38 Major Keenan's Charge on the Plank Road 150 Martin's Horse Battery at Hazel Grove 151 Death of Lieutenant-Colonel McVicker at Spottsylvania . 153 General Matt 155 Unionists and Rebels trying to save the Wounded . . . .164 The Troubles of a Mule Driver 166 Reveille. The Army Mule 167 Army Mules on Duty . .169 Cooking under Difficulties 175 Death of Little Day . . . . . . . . . 177 Reynolds and Buford in the Belfry of the Lutheran Seminary . 189 Buford's Cavalry at Willoughby Run 190 Death of General Reynolds 191 Fight in Devil's Den 203 Attack on Little Round Top 205 Farnsworth crossing Plum Run 211 Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg (Frontispiece') 214 Hancock wounded 216 My Friend Tom in a Fix . . . . . . . . . .219 Bigelow's Battery retiring with Prolonges 223 Custer's Charge at Gettysburg 226 Taming a Reb 228 Welcome Back to Virginia 233 Preparing for the Charge 244 "Whiz! went his coffee-cup into the air like a shot" 248 Fishing for a Furlough ...... ,_- 257 My First View of General Grant 2rg Our Friends the Enemy 2g, Grant and Meade in the Wilderness ... . 2gg Things Reversed Planting the Rebel Flag .... ... ->7a LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

XI Breastworks on Fire 277 Confederate Sharpshooter. Death of Sedgwick .... 284 Barlow's Division holding the Enemy 287 " Wedged between two trees" 2S8 " 'These soldiers will never go into a fight again'" ..... 294 The Sleep of Death 295 Sketching the Homestead 303 A Philosopher in his Way 305 "'What's the matter, Johnnie?'". . . . . . . . .316 The Wounded Drummer 316 In the Trenches at Cold Harbor • . 318 Behind the Apple-Tree 322 Building Abatis 327 The Shell takes the Pot 330 The Dying Confederate 34° Sheridan at Five Forks 343 The Flag of Truce 350 Surrender of the Army of Virginia 350 Feeding the Rebs A STORY OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. f

Chapter I. The Young Recruit

BEFORE the war had really begun I enlisted. I had read the papers, and attended flag-raisings, and heard orators declaim of "undying devotion to the Union." One speaker to whom I listened declared that "human life must be cheapened," but I never learned that he helped on the work experimentally. When men by the hundred walked soberly and deliberately to the front and signed the enlistment papers, he didn't show any inclination that way. As I came out of the hall with conflicting emotions, feeling as though I should have to go finally or forfeit my birthright as an American citizen, one of the orators who stood at the door, glowing with enthusiasm and patriotism, and shaking hands effusively with those who enlisted, said to me : " Did you enlist ? " "No," I said. "Did you? " No ; they wont take me.

I have got a lame leg and a widowed mother to take care of." Another enthusiast I remember, who was eager to enlist — others. He declared the family of no man who went to the front should suffer. After the war he was prominent among those in our town who at town-meeting voted to refund the money to such as had expended it to procure substitutes during the war. He has, more over, been fierce and uncompromising toward the ex-Confederates since the war closed, and I have heard him repeatedly express the wish that all the civil and general officers of the late Confederacy might be court-martialled and shot. T I was young, but not unobserving, and did not believe, from the first, in a sixty days' war ; nor did I consider ten dollars a month, and the promised glory, large pay for the services of an able-bodied young man.

Enlistment scenes are usually pictured as entirely heroic, but truth compels me to acknowledge that my feelings were mixed. At this Leaving for the Front. moment I cannot repress a smile of amusement and pity for that young recruit — myself. It was the news that the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment had been mobbed by roughs on their passage through Baltimore which gave me the war fever. When I read Governor Andrew's pathetic telegram to have the hero martyrs " preserved in ice and tenderly sent forward," somehow, though I felt the pathos of it, I could not reconcile myself to the ice. Ice in connection with patriotism did not give me agreeable impressions of war, and when I came to think of it, the stoning of the heroic " Sixth " didn't suit me ; it detracted from my desire to die a soldier's death.

I lay awake all night thinking it over, with the "ice" and "brickbats" before my mind. However, the fever culminated that night, and I resolved to enlist. "Cold chills " ran up and down my back as I got out of bed after the sleepless night, and shaved, preparatory to other desperate deeds of valor. I was twenty years of age, and when anything unusual was to be clone, like fighting or courting, I shaved. With a nervous tremor convulsing my whole system, and my heart thumping like muffled drum-beats, I stood before the door of the recruiting-office, and, before turning the knob to enter, read and re-read the adver tisement for recruits posted thereon, until I knew all its peculiarities. The promised chances for "travel and promotion" seemed good, and I thought I might have made a mistake in considering war so serious, after all.

"Chances for travel!" I must confess now, after four years of soldiering, that the " chances for travel " were no myth. But "promotion " was a little uncertain and slow. I was in no hurry to open the door. Though determined to enlist, I was half inclined to put it off awhile ; I had a fluctuation of desires ; I was faint-hearted and brave ; I wanted to enlist, and yet . Here I turned the knob, and was relieved. I had been more prompt, with all my hesitation, than the officer in his duty ; he wasn't in. Finally he came, and said : " What do you want, my boy ? " " I want to enlist," I responded, blushing deeply with upwelling patriotism and bashfulness. Then the surgeon came to strip and examine me. In justice to myself, it must be stated that I signed the rolls without a tremor. It is common to the most of humanity, I believe, that, when confronted with actual danger, men have less fear than in its contemplation.

I will, however, make one exception in favor of the first shell I heard uttering its hoarse anathema and its blood-curdling hisses, as though a steam locomotive were travelling the air. With this exception, I have found danger always less terrible face to face than on the night before the battle. My first uniform was a bad fit : my trousers were too long by three or four inches ; the flannel shirt was coarse and unpleasant, too large at the neck and too short elsewhere. The forage cap was an ungainly bag with pasteboard top and leather visor ; the blouse was the only part which seemed decent ; while the overcoat made me feel like a little nib of corn amid a preponderance of husk. Nothing except "Virginia mud" ever took down my ideas of militaryspomp quite so low. After enlisting I didn't seem of so much consequence as I ex pected.

There was not so much excitement on account of my military appearance as I deemed justly my due. I was taught my facings, and at the time I thought the drill-master needlessly fussy about shouldering, ordering, and presenting arms. At this time men were often drilled in company and regimental evolutions long before they learned the manual of arms, because of the difficulty of obtaining muskets. These we obtained at an early day, but we would willingly have resigned them after carrying them for a few hours. The musket, after an hour's drill, seemed heavier and less ornamental than it had looked to be. The first day I went out to drill, getting tired of doing the same things over and over, I said to the drill-sergeant: "Let's stop this fooling and go over to the grocery." His only reply was addressed to a corporal : " Corporal, take this man out and drill him like h — 1 " ; and the corporal did.

I found that suggestions were not as well appreciated in the army as in private life, and that no wisdom was equal to a drill-master's "Right face," "Left wheel," and "Right, oblique, march." It takes a raw recruit some time to learn that he is not to think or suggest, but obey. Some never do learn. I acquired it at last, in humility and mud, but it was tough. Yet I doubt if my patriotism, during my first three weeks' drill, was quite knee high. Drilling looks easy to a spectator, but it isn't. Old soldiers who read this will remember their green recruithood and smile assent. After a time I had cut down my uniform so that I could see out of it, and had conquered the drill sufficiently to see through it. Then the word came : On to Washington ! Our company was quartered at a large hotel near the railway sta tion in the town in which it was recruited.

Bunks had been fitted up within a part of the hotel but little used. We took our meals at the regular hotel table, and found fault with the style. Six months later we should have considered ourselves aristocratic to have slept in the hotel stables with the meal-bin for a dining-table. There was great excitement one morning at the report that we were going to be sent to the front. Most of us obtained a limited pass and went to see our friends for the last time, returning the same night. All our schoolmates and home acquaintances "came slobber ing around camp," as one of the boys ungraciously expressed it. We bade adieu to our friends with heavy hearts, for lightly as I may here seem to treat the subject, it was no light thing for a boy of twenty to start out for three years into the unknown dangers of a civil war.

Our mothers — God bless them! — had brought us something good to eat, — pies, cakes, doughnuts, and jellies. It was one way in which a mother's heart found utterance. Our young ladies, (sisters, of course) brought an invention, generally made of leather or cloth, containing needles, pins, thread, buttons, and scissors, so that nearly every recruit had an embryo tailor's shop — with the goose outside. One old lady, in the innocence of her heart, brought her son an umbrella. We did not see anything particularly laughable about it at the time, but our old drill-sergeant did. Finally we were ready to move ; our tears were wiped away, our buttons were polished, and our muskets were as bright as emery-paper could make them. How our buttons and muskets did shine ! We were brilliant there, if nowhere else.

" Wad " Rider, a member of our company, had come from a neighboring State to enlist with us. He was about eighteen years of age, red-headed, freckle-faced, good-natured, and rough, with a wonderful aptitude for crying or laughing from sympathy. Another comrade, whom I will call Jack, was honored with a call from his mother, a little woman, hardly reaching up to Jack's shoulder, with a sweet, motherly, careworn face. At the last moment, though she had tried hard to preserve her composure, as is the habit of New England people, she threw her arms around her boy's neck, and with an out burst of sobbing and crying, said : " My dear boy, my dear boy, what will your poor old mother do without you ? You are going to fight for your country. Don't forget your mother, Jack ; God bless you, God bless you !

" We felt as if the mother's tears and blessing were a benediction over us all. There was a touch of nature in her homely sorrow and solicitude over her big boy, which drew tears of sympathy from my eyes as I thought of my own sorrowing mother at home. The sympathetic Wad Rider burst into tears and sobs. His eyes refused, as he expressed it, to "dry up," until, as we were moving off, Jack's mother, rushing toward him with a bundle tied like a wheat sheaf, called out, in a most pathetic voice, "Jack! Jack! you've forgotten to take your pennyroyal." We all laughed, and so did Jack, and I think the laugh helped him more than the cry did. Everybody had said his last word ; we were on the cars and off. Handkerchiefs were waved at us from all the houses we passed, and we cheered till we were hoarse, and then settled back and swung our handkerchiefs.

Handkerchiefs did double duty that day. Just here let me name over the contents of my knapsack, as its contents were a fair sample of what all the volunteers started with. There were in it a pair of trousers, two pairs of drawers, a pair of thick boots, four pairs of stockings, four flannel shirts, a blouse, a looking-glass, a can of peaches, a bottle of cough-mixture, a button stick, chalk, razor and strop, the "tailor's shop" spoken of above, a Bible, a small volume of Shakspere, and writing utensils. To its top was strapped a double woollen blanket and a rubber one. It was boiling over, like a ripe cotton-pod. I remember, too, many other things left behind because of lack of room in or about the knapsack. We would have packed in a portable cooking-stove each had there been room. On our arrival in Boston we were marched through the streets — the first march of any consequence we had taken with our knapsacks and equipments on.

Our dress consisted of a belt about the body, which held a cartridge-box and bayonet, a cross-belt, also a haversack and tin drinking-cup, a canteen, and, last but not least, the knapsack strapped to the back. The straps ran over, around, and about one, in confusion most perplexing to our unsophisticated shoulders ; the knapsack giving one constantly the feeling that he was being pulled over backward. We marched along the streets, my canteen banging against my bayonet, both the tin cup and bayonet badly interfering with the butt of my musket, while my cartridge-box and haversack were constantly flopping up and down — the whole janglin°- like loose harness and chains on a runaway horse. I felt like old Atlas, with the world on his shoulders and the planetary system suspended around him. We marched into Boston Common, and I involuntarily cast my eye about for a bench.

But for a former experience in offering advice, I should have proposed to the captain to " chip in " and hire a team to carry our equipments. Such was my first experience in war harness. Afterward, with hardened muscles, rendered athletic by long marches and invigorated by hardships, I could look back upon those days and smile, while carrying a knapsack as lightly as my heart. That morning my heart was as heavy as my knapsack. At last the welcome orders came : " Prepare to open ranks ! Rear, open order, march ! Right dress ! Front ! Order arms ! Fix bayonets ! Stack arms ! Unsling knapsacks ! In place, rest ! " The tendency of raw soldiers is to overload themselves on their first march. Experience only can teach them its disadvantages, and the picture I have attempted to draw is not exaggerated.

On the first long march the reaction sets in, and the recruit goes to the opposite extreme, not carrying enough of the absolutely necessary baggage, and thereby becoming dependent upon his obliging com rades when a camp is reached. Old soldiers preserve a happy medium. I have seen a new regiment start out with all the indescribable material carried by raw troops, sometimes including sheet-iron stoves, and come back after a long march covered with more mud than bag gage, stripped of everything except their blankets, haversacks, can teens, muskets, and cartridge-boxes. These were the times when the baggage of the new recruits was often worth more than their services. During that afternoon in Boston, after marching and counter marching, or, as one of our farmer-boy recruits expressed it, after "hawing and geeing " around the streets, we were sent to Fort Inde pendence for the night for safe-keeping.

A company of regulars held the fort ; guards walked their post with a stiffness and upright ness thatwas astonishing. They acted more like pieces of mechanism than men. Our first impression of these old regulars was that there was a needless amount of "wheel about and turn about, and walk just so," and of saluting, and presenting arms. We were all marched to our quarters within the fort, where we unslung our knapsacks. The first day's struggle with a knapsack over, the general verdict was "got too much of it." At supper-time we were marched to the dining-barracks, where our bill of fare was beefsteak, coffee, wheat bread, and potatoes, but not a sign of milk or butter. It struck me as queer when I heard that the army was never provided with butter and milk. The next day we were started for Washington, by rail and boat.

We marched through New York's crowded streets without awakening the enthusiasm we thought our due ; for we had read of the exciting scenes attending the departure of the New York Seventh for Wash ington on the day the Sixth Massachusetts was mobbed in Baltimore, and also of the march of the Twelfth Massachusetts down Broadway on the 24th of July, when the regiment sang the new and thrilling lyric "John Brown's Body." The following morning we took breakfast in Philadelphia, where we were attended by matrons and maidens, who waited upon us with thoughtful tenderness, as if they had been our own mothers and sweethearts instead of strangers. They feasted us and then filled our haversacks. God bless them ! If we did not quite appreciate them then, we did afterward. After embarking on the cars at Phila delphia, the waving of handkerchiefs was less and less noticeable along the route.

We arrived in Baltimore late at night and marched through its deserted streets silently, as though we were criminals instead of patriots. On our arrival in Washington the next morning, we were marched to barracks, dignified by the name of " Soldiers' Retreat," where a half loaf of "soft-tack," as we had already begun to call wheat bread, was issued, together with a piece of "salt junk," about as big and tough as the heel of my government shoe, and a quart of coffee, — which constituted our breakfast. Our first day in Washington was spent in shaving, washing, polishing our brasses and buttons, and cleaning-up for inspection. A day or two later we moved to quarters not far from the armory, looking out on the broad Potomac, within sight of Long Bridge and the city of Alexandria. We were at the front, or near enough to satisfy our immediate martial desires.

The weather was so mild in that February, 1862, that many of us used the river for bathing, and found its temperature not uncomfort able. Here and there the sound of a gun broke the serenity, but otherwise the quiet seemed inconsistent with the war preparations going on around us. In the distance, across the wide bay, we could see the steeples and towers of the city of Alexandria, while up stream, on the right, was the Long Bridge. Here and there was to be seen the moving panorama of armed men, as a regiment crossed the bridge ; a flash of sunlight on the polished muskets revealed them Officers on Pennsylvania Avenue. Page 9. to the eye ; while the white-topped army baggage-wagons filed over in constant procession, looking like sections of a whitewashed fence in motion. The overgrown country village of that period, called Washington, can be described in a few words.

There were wide streets stretching out from a common centre like a spider's web. The Capitol, with its unfinished dome ; the Patent Office, the Treasury, and the other public buildings, were in marked and classic contrast with the dilapidated, tumble-down, shabby look of the average homes, stores, groceries, and groggeries, which increased in shabbiness and dirty dilapidation as they receded from the centre. Around the muddy streets wandered the long-faced, solemn-visaged hog, uttering sage grunts. The climate of Washington was genial, but the mud was fearful. I have drilled in it, marched in it, and run from the provost guard in it, and I think I appreciate it from actual and familiar knowledge. In the lower quarter of the city there was not a piece of sidewalk. Even Pennsylvania Avenue, with its sidewalks, was extremely dirty ; the cavalcade of teams, artillery caissons, and bag gage-wagons, with their heavy wheels, stirred the mud into a stiff batter for the pedestrian.

Officers in tinsel and gold lace were so thick on Pennsylvania Avenue that it was a severe trial for a private to walk there. The salute exacted by officers, of bringing the hand to the visor of the cap, extending the arm to its full length, then letting it drop by the side, was tiresome when followed up with the industry required by this horde. Perhaps I exaggerate, but in a half-hour's walk on the avenue I think I have saluted two hundred officers. Brigadier generals were more numerous there than I ever knew them to be at the front. These officers, many of whom won their positions by political wire-pulling at Washington, we privates thought the great bane of the war ; they ought to have been sent to the front rank of battle, to pursue the enemy instead of Old Abe and the members of Congress from their district, until they had learned the duties of a soldier.