From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign Part 6

An incident ill.u.s.trating this feeling was taking place up in the front just about the time we were hearing the news of the General's narrow escape.

As the Texan Brigade of Longstreet's Corps, just come up, dashed upon the heavy ranks of the Federals, they pa.s.sed General Lee with a rousing cheer. The old General, anxious and excited by the critical moment, thrilling with sympathy in their gallant bearing, started to ride in, with them, to the charge. It was told me the next day by some of the Texans, who witnessed it, that the instant the men, unaware of his presence with them before, saw the General along with them in that furious fire, they cried out in pleading tones--"Go back, General Lee.

We swear we won't go on, if you don't go back. You shall not stay here in this fire! We'll charge clear through the wilderness if you will only go back." And they said, numbers of the men crowded about the General, and begged him, with tears, to return, and some caught hold of his feet, and some his bridle rein, and turned his horse round, and led him back a few steps,--all the time pleading with him. And then, the General seeing the feelings of his men, and that he was _actually checking the charge_ by their anxiety for him, said, "I'll go, my men, if you will drive back those people," and he rode off, they said, with his head down, and they saw tears rolling down his cheeks. And they said, many of the men were sobbing aloud, overcome by this touching scene. Then with one yell, and the tears on their faces, those n.o.ble fellows hurled themselves on the ma.s.ses of the enemy like a thunderbolt. Not only did they stop the advance, but their resistless fury swept all before it and they followed the broken Federals half a mile. They redeemed their promise to General Lee. Eight hundred of them went in, four hundred, only, came out. They covered with glory that day, not only themselves, who did such deeds, but their leader, who could inspire such feelings at such a moment in the hearts of these men. Half their number fell in that splendid charge, but--they saved the line, and they gloriously redeemed their promise to General Lee--"We'll do all you want, if you will only get out of fire."

I cannot think of anything stronger than to say that--This General, and these soldiers, were worthy of each other. There is no higher praise!

As the Brigades of Field's division, that followed the Texans, went in, a little incident took place, which ill.u.s.trated the irrepressible spirit of fun which would break out everywhere, and which we often laughed at afterwards. General Anderson's Brigade was ahead, followed hard by Benning's Brigade, gallant Georgians all, and led by Brigadiers, of whom nothing better can be said, than that they were worthy to lead them.

Among the men General Anderson had somehow got the soubriquet of "Tige"

and General Benning enjoyed the equally respectful name of "Old Rock."

On this occasion, Anderson was ahead, and as he moved out of sight into the woods, his men began to yell and shout like everything. One of Anderson's men, wounded, blood dropping from his elbow and running down his face, was coming out, when he met General Benning, at the head of his column, pus.h.i.+ng in as hard as he could go. As this fellow pa.s.sed him, taking advantage of his wound to have a little joke, he pointed to the woods in front and called out to the General, "Hurry up 'Old Rock,'

'Tige' has treed a pretty big c.o.o.n he's got up there; you'd better hurry up or you won't get a smell." The brave old Benning, already hurrying himself nearly to death, flashed around on the daring speaker, and saw at once the streaming blood--"Confound that fellow's impudence," said the disgusted General. "I wish he wasn't wounded, if I wouldn't fix him." The fellow well knew that he could say what he pleased to anybody with that blood-covered face.

I think it was about eleven or twelve o'clock we heard that General Longstreet was badly wounded, and soon after he was brought to the rear, near our guns. With several of the others I went out and had some words with the men who were taking him out. To our grief, we heard them say, that his wound was very dangerous, probably fatal. He had fallen, up there in the woods, on the battle front, fighting his corps, in the full tide of victory. He had broken and doubled up Hanc.o.c.k's Corps, and driven it, with great slaughter back upon their works at the Brock road, and in such rout and confusion, that, as he said, he thought he had another "Bull Run" on them. And if he could have forced on that a.s.sault, and gotten fixed on the Brock road, it is thought that Grant's army would have been in great peril. But, just in the thick of it, he was mistaken, while out in front in the woods, for the enemy, and shot, by his own men. His fall was in almost every particular just like "Stonewall" Jackson's, in that same wilderness, one year before. Both were shot by their own men, at a critical moment, in the midst of brilliant success, and in both cases their fall saved the enemy from irretrievable disaster. Longstreet's fall checked the attack, which after an inevitable delay of some hours, was resumed. But the enemy seeing his danger had time to recover, and make disposition to meet it.

="Windrows" of Federal Dead=

Again, at four o'clock, after this interval of comparative quiet, the thunder of battle crashed and rolled. General Lee, himself, fought Longstreet's Corps. The attack was fierce, obstinate, and fearfully b.l.o.o.d.y. Wilkinson, of the Army of the Potomac, an eye-witness of this charge, says, in his book, "Recollections of a Private Soldier": "The Confederate fire resembled the fury of h.e.l.l in its intensity, and was deadly accurate" and that "the story of this fight could afterwards be read by the windrows of dead men." As to its effect he also says: "We could not check the Confederate advance and they forced us back, and back, and back. The charging Confederates broke through the left of the Ninth Corps and would have cut the army in twain, if not caught on the flank, and driven back. Ma.s.sed for the attack on the Sixth Corps, they were skillfully launched, and ably led, and they struck with terrific violence against Shaler's and Seymour's Brigades, which were routed, with a loss of four thousand prisoners. The Confederates came within an ace of routing the Sixth Corps. Both their a.s.saults along our line were dangerously near being successful." Such was the description of a brave enemy, an eye-witness of this a.s.sault. At last, as dark fell, the fire slackened and died out.

The Battle of the Wilderness was done. Grant was pinned into the thickets, hardly able to stand Lee's attack, no thoroughfare to the front and twenty odd thousand of his men dead, wounded and gone. That was about the situation when dark fell on the 6th of May!

That night we drew off some distance to the right, and lay down, supperless, on the ground around our guns; it was very dark and cloudy and soon began to rain. There had been too much powder burnt around there during the last two days for it to stay clear. And so, as it always did, just after heavy firing, the clouds poured down water through the dark night. Lying out exposed on the untented ground, with only one blanket to cover with, we got soaking wet, and stayed so.

The comfortless night gave way, at last, to a comfortless day--May 7th--gloomy, lowering, and raining, off and on, till late in the evening. During the morning, a little desultory firing was heard in front, and then all was quiet and still. We knew enough to know that Grant's push was over at this point. Some of us had gone up to look at the ground over which Longstreet had driven the enemy yesterday. We knew that the Federal troops could never be gotten back over that awful, corpse-covered ground to attack the men who had driven them. We knew we had to fight somewhere else, but where? By and by, talk began to circulate among the men that Spottsylvania, or around near Fredericksburg, might be the place. Of one thing we were all satisfied, that we would know soon enough.

In this waiting and excited state of mind, the long, long, rainy day wore on, and dark fell again. We had managed to conjure up some very lonesome looking fires out of the wet wood lying about (fence rails were not attainable here in the wilderness), and were engaged in a hot dispute about where the next fighting was to be, which warmed and dried us more than the fires did, when "the winter of our discontent" was made "glorious summer," so to speak, by the news that the wagons had got up, and they were going to issue rations. Tom Armistead made this startling announcement in as bland, and matter of course a tone as if he were in the habit of giving us something to eat _every_ day, which he was not, by a great deal. Tom was the dearest fellow in the world, and the best Commissary in the army, and we all loved him. Many a time when, in the confusion of campaign, the wagon was empty, or was snowed in by an avalanche of wagons, far in the rear, he could be seen struggling up to the front with a bag of crackers, sugar, meat, anything that he had been able to lay hands on, across his horse, so that the boys should not starve entirely. Hunting us up through the woods, or along the battle line, he would ride in among us with his load, and a beaming face, that told how glad he was to have something for us. And when, as too often it was, the whole Commissary business was "_dead busted_," our afflicted Commissary would tell us there was nothing, with such a rueful visage, that it made us sorry we did not have something to give him, and made us feel our own emptiness all the more, that it seemed to afflict him so.

The present rations were quickly distributed, and as quickly devoured, and not a man was foundered by over-eating! Then we sat around the fires and discussed the news that had been gathered from various sources.

CHAPTER III

BATTLES OF SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT HOUSE

It was just ten o'clock and each man was looking around for the dryest spot to spread his blanket on, when a courier rode up, with pressing orders for us to get instantly on the march. In a few moments, we were tramping rapidly through the darkness, on a road that led, we knew not whither. We were, as we found out afterwards, leading the great race, that General Lee was making for Spottsylvania Court House to head off Grant in his efforts to get out of the Wilderness in his "push for Richmond." We were with the vanguard of the skillful movement, by which Longstreet's Corps was marched entirely around Grant's left flank, to seize the strong line of the hills around Spottsylvania Court House and hold it till the other two Corps could come to our aid.

We marched all night, a hard, forced march over muddy roads, through the damp, close night. Soon after the start from our bivouac, a brigade of infantry had filed into the road ahead of us, and we could hear, behind us on the road, though we could not see for the darkness, the sound of other troops marching. The Brigade ahead of us, we soon found, to our gratification, to be Barksdale's Mississippi Brigade, now under command of General Humphreys, since the gallant Barksdale fell at the head of his storming columns at Gettysburg. This was the Brigade to which we had belonged in the earlier organization of the artillery. It was a magnificent body of men, one of the most thorough fighting corps in the army, as they had showed a hundred times, on the bloodiest fields, and were soon, and often to show again. There was a very strong mutual attachment between the First Richmond Howitzers and Barksdale's Brigade, and we were much pleased to be with them on this march. We mingled with them, as we sped rapidly along, and exchanged greetings, and our several experiences since we had been separated.

The morning of the 8th of May broke, foggy and lowering, and found us still moving swiftly along. The infantry halting for a rest, we pa.s.sed on ahead, and for some time were marching by ourselves. I well recall the impressions of the scene around us on that early morning march. Our battery seemed all alone on a quiet country road. The birds were singing around us, and it seemed, to us, so sweet! Everybody was impressed by the music of those birds. As the old soldiers will remember, the note of a bird was a sound we rarely heard. The feathered songsters, no doubt, were frightened away, and it was often remarked, that we never saw birds in the neighborhood of camp. So we specially enjoyed the treat of hearing them, now and here, in their own quiet woods, where they had never been disturbed. All was quiet and still and peaceful as any rural scene could be. It seemed to us wondrous sweet and beautiful! All the men were strangely impressed by it. They talked of it to one another. It made our hearts soft, it brought to the mind of many of those weary, war-worn soldiers, other quiet rural scenes, where lay their homes and dear ones, and to which this scene made their hearts go back, in tender memory, and loving imagination. All the eyes did not stay dry as we pa.s.sed along that road. We talked of this scene many a time long afterwards. And I expect some of the old "Howitzers" still remember that quiet Spottsylvania country road, winding through the woods, on that early Sunday morning, when the birds sang to us, as we hurried on to battle.

Well! the morning wore on, and so did we. By and by, the sun came out through the fog and clouds, and began to make it hot for us. The dampness of the earth made this an easy job. The sun got higher and hotter every minute. The way that close, sultry heat did _roast_ us was pitiful. We would have "larded the lean earth as we walked along,"

except that hard bones and muscles of gaunt men didn't _yield_ any "lard" to speak of. The _breakfast_ hour was not observed, _i. e._, not with any ceremony. "Cracker nibbling on the fly" was all the visible reminder of that time-honored custom. We were not there to eat, but, to get to Spottsylvania Court House; and _steps_ were more to that purpose than _steaks_, so we omitted the steaks, and put in the steps; and we put them in very fast, and were putting in a great many of them, it appeared to us. At last, just about twelve o'clock our road wound down to a stream, which I think was the _Po_, one of the head waters of the Mattaponi River, and then, we went up a very long hill, a bank, surmounted by a rail fence on the left side of the road, and the woods on the other.

=Stuart's Four Thousand Cavalry=

Just as we got to the top (our Battery happened just then to be ahead of all the troops, and was the first of the columns to reach the spot), the road came up to the level of the land on the left, which enabled us to see, what, though close by us, had been concealed by the high roadside bank. A farm gate opened into a field, around a farmhouse and outbuildings, and there, covering that field was the whole of Fitz Lee's Division of Stuart's cavalry. These heroic fellows had for two days been fighting Warren's corps of Federal infantry, which General Grant had sent to seize this very line on which _we_ had now arrived. They had fought, mostly dismounted, from hill to hill, from fence to fence, from tree to tree; and so obstinate was their resistance, and so skillful the dispositions of the matchless Stuart, that some thirty thousand men had been forced to take about twenty-six hours to get seven or eight miles, by about forty-five hundred cavalry. But, it was incomparable cavalry, and J. E. B. Stuart was handling it. It was some credit to that Corps to have marched any at all! Thanks to the superb conduct of the cavalry, General Lee's movement had succeeded! We had beaten the Federal column, and were here, before them, on this much-coveted line, and meant to hold it, too.

I note here in pa.s.sing, that this Spottsylvania business was a "white day" for the cavalry. When the army came to know of what the cavalry had done, and _how they had done it_, there was a general outburst of admiration,--the recognition that brave men give to the brave. Stuart and his men were written higher than ever on the honor roll, and the whole army was ready to take off its hat to salute the cavalry.

And, from that day, there was a marked change in the way the army thought and spoke of the cavalry; it took a distinctly different and higher position in the respect of the Army, for it had revealed itself in a new light; it had shown itself signally possessed of the quality, that the infantry and artillery naturally admired most of all others--_obstinacy_ in fight.

As was natural, and highly desirable, each arm of the service had a very exalted idea of its own importance and merit, as compared with the others. In fact the soldier of the "Army of Northern Virginia" filled exactly the Duke of Marlborough's description of the spirit of a good soldier. "He is a poor soldier," said the Duke, "who does not think himself as good and better than any other soldier _of his own army_, and _three times as good_ as any man in the army _of the enemy_." That fitted our fellows "to a hair;" each Confederate soldier thought that way.

It was not an unnatural or unreasonable conceit, _considering the facts_. It must be confessed that _modesty_ as to their quality as soldiers was not the distinguis.h.i.+ng virtue of the men of the Army of Northern Virginia, but, it must be considered, in extenuation that their experience in war was by no means a good school for humility. An old Scotch woman once prayed, "Lord, gie us a gude conceit o' ourselves."

There was a certain wisdom in the old woman's prayer! The Army of Northern Virginia soldiers had this "gude conceit o' themselves,"

without praying for it; certainly, if they did pray for it, their prayer was answered, "good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over." They had it abundantly! And it was a tremendous element of power in their "make up" as soldiers. It made them the terrible fighters, that all the world knew they were. It largely explains their recorded deeds, and their matchless achievements.

For instance, here at the Wilderness! What was it that made thirty-five thousand men knowingly and cheerfully march to attack one hundred and fifty thousand men, and stick up to them, and fight them for twenty-four hours, without support or reinforcement? It was their good opinion of themselves; their superb confidence. They felt _able_ with thirty-five thousand men, _and General Lee_, to meet one hundred and fifty thousand men, and hold them, till help came; _and didn't they do it_?

Well! they did _that kind of thing so often_ that they couldn't get humble, and _they never have been able to get humble since_. They _try to_--but--_they can't_!

But I return from this digression to say, that the different Arms of the service had something of this same feeling, this good opinion of themselves, as compared with one another. Each one had many jokes on the others, and whenever they met, all sorts of "chaffing" went on. In all this, the infantry and artillery felt closer together, and were rather apt, when the occasion offered, to turn their combined guns on the cavalry.

The general point of the jokes and gibes at the cavalry was their _supposed_ tendency to be "_scarce_" when _big fighting_ was going on.

It wasn't that anybody doubted the _usefulness_ of cavalry, but their usefulness was imagined to lie in other respects than fighting back the ma.s.ses of the enemy. And, it wasn't that anybody supposed that the cavalry did not have plenty of fight in them, _if they could get a chance_. We knew that when they were at home they were the same stock as we were, and we believed, that if they were along with us, they would do as well; but in the cavalry, well! we didn't know!

The leaders of the cavalry, Stuart, Hampton, Ashby, Fitz Lee and others, were heroes and household names to the whole army. Their brilliant courage and dare-deviltry, their hairbreadth escapes, and thrilling adventures, their feats of skill, and grace were themes of pride and delight to us all. These cavaliers were the "darlings of the army."

_Still_, the army would guy the cavalry every chance they got.

It was said that Gen. D. H. Hill proposed to offer a "reward of Five Dollars, to anybody who could find a dead man with spurs on." And Gen.

Jubal Early once, when impatient at the conduct of certain troops in his command threatened "if the cavalry did not do better, he would put them _in the army_."

One day, an infantry brigade on the march to Chancellorsville had halted to rest on the pike, near where a narrow road turned off. A cavalryman was seen approaching, in a fast gallop, plainly, in a great hurry. The infantry viewed his approach with great interest, prepared to salute him with neat and appropriate remarks as he pa.s.sed, by way of making him lively.

Just before he got to the head of the brigade he reached the narrow road and started up it. Instantly a dozen "infants" began to wave their arms excitedly, and shout in loud earnest voices--"Mister, stop there! don't go a step farther; for heaven's sake _don't_ go up that road." The trooper, startled by this appeal, and the warning gestures of the men, approaching him, pulled in his fast-going horse, and stopped, very impatiently. He said in a sharp tone, "What is the matter, why mustn't I go up this road? Say quick, I'm in a big hurry." "Don't go, we beg you; you'll never come back alive." "Humph! is that so?" said this trooper (who had been near breaking a blood vessel in his impatience at being stopped, but cooled off a little, at this ominous remark)--"But what's ahead? what's the danger? The road seems quiet?" "Well, Sonny, _that's_ the danger. Haven't you heard about it?" "Now, Sonny," was a term of endearment, which from an "infant" always exasperated the feelings of a cavalryman to the last degree; turned the milk of kindness in a horseman's breast into the sourest clabber; and it instantly stirred up this trooper. "Look here men, don't fool with me. Tell me what is the danger up this road," "Well! we thought we ought to let you know, before you expose yourself. General Hill has offered a reward of Five Dollars for a dead man with spurs on, and if you go up that lonesome road some of these here _soldiers_ will shoot you to get the reward." "Oh pshaw!"

cried the disgusted victim, clapping spurs to his horse, and away he rode, leaving the grinning and delighted "infants" behind, and leaving, too, his _opinion_ of them, and their joke, in language that needed no interpreter.

This sort of thing was going on, all the time. The infantry and artillery _would_ do it. With many, particularly the artillery, who knew better, it was _only joking_, the soldier-instinct to stir up _any_ pa.s.ser-by. But with many, especially the infantry, who were not as much "up to snuff" as the artillery, these gibes at the cavalry expressed a serious, tho' mistaken idea, they had of them. Upon the advance of the enemy, of course, we were accustomed to see cavalrymen hurrying in from the outposts to the rear, to report. So the thoughtless infantry, not considering that this was "part of the large and general plan," got fixed in their minds an a.s.sociation between the two things,--the advance of the enemy, and, the rapid hurrying off to the rear of the cavalry, until they came to have the fixed idea, that the sight of the enemy _always_ made a cavalryman "hungry for solitude." They reasoned that, as a mounted man was much better _fixed_ for running away than a footman, it was, by so much, natural that he _should_ run away, and was, by so much, the more likely to do it.

Also, our orders to move and to go into battle were always brought by hors.e.m.e.n; so the hors.e.m.e.n were thought about as _causing others to fight_ instead of _doing it themselves_. So, in short, it came to pa.s.s, that this innocent infantry had a dim sort of notion that the chief end of the cavalry was, in battle time, to run away and bring up other people to do the fighting, and in quiet time, to "range" for b.u.t.termilk and other delicacies, which the poor footmen never got. Hence the soubriquet of "b.u.t.termilk ranger" universally applied to the cavalry by the army.

But, I a.s.sure you, that all this was dispelled at once, and for good and all, at Spottsylvania. Here had these gallants gotten down off their horses. They hadn't run _anywhere at all_; didn't want anybody else to come, and fight for them. They had jumped into about five or six times their number of the flower of the Federal infantry. They met them front to front, and muzzle to muzzle. Of course they had to give back; but it was slowly, _very slowly_, and they made the enemy pay, in blood, for every step they gained. They had worried these Federals into a fever, and kept them fooling away nearly twenty-six hours of priceless time; and made Grant's plan _fail_, and made General Lee's plan succeed, and had secured the strong line for our defence.

It was a piece of regular, obstinate, b.l.o.o.d.y, "bulldog" work. We knew, well as we thought of ourselves, that not the staunchest brigade of our veteran "incomparable" infantry, or battery of our canister-shooting artillery, could have _fought_ better, _stood_ better, or _achieved more_, for the success of the campaign. We felt that General Lee,--that the whole army,--"owed the cavalry one," "_several_," in fact. The army, even the infantry, had come to know the cavalry, at last. Obstinacy, toughness, dogged refusal to be driven, was their test of manhood, and this test the cavalry had signally, and _brilliantly_ met. Everybody was satisfied, the _cavalry would do, they_ were "all right." We couldn't praise them enough, we were proud of them. The remark was even suffered to pa.s.s, as nothing to his discredit particularly, that our "Magnus Apollo," General Lee, himself, had once been in the cavalry, and no one resented it _now_. We knew that it was when he was _younger_ than now.

We, of the "Howitzers," knew very well what arm of the service, and what corps of that arm, the experienced old General would join, if he was enlisting in the Army of Northern Virginia, now, when he knew more than he did. Still! he had been a cavalryman; admit it!

And we all _admired_ the cavalry; _honored_ the cavalry; _shouted_ for the cavalry, from that time! Occasionally, from force of habit, the infantry (the artillery never) would fall from grace at sight of a pa.s.sing cavalry column, and let fall little attentions, that sounded very like the old-time compliments, but they were not _meant that way_.

It was the soldier-instinct to salute pilgrims. Just as, on a village street, if a dog, of any degree, starts to run, every other dog in sight, or hearing, tears off after him in pursuit, and if he can catch up, instantly attacks him,--not that he has anything against the fugitive, but, simply, because he is running by. The act of running past makes him the enemy of his kind. So, I think, the Confederate infantry a.s.sailed, with jokes and gibes, _anybody in motion_ by their camp, or column. They had nothing against him; they attacked him because he was pa.s.sing by. "It was their nature to." Of all living men, General Lee, _alone_, was sacred to them in this. The cavalry _always_ had their full share, and never suffered for want of notice.

This account of the false idea that prevailed, the fun that came of it, and the way it was dispelled, is part of the history of the time. It went to make up the life in the Army of Northern Virginia; it lives in the recollection of that good old time. No record of that old time would be complete without it. So I make no apology for falling into it, in this informal reminiscence.

At one o'clock on Sunday, the 8th of May, we reached the top of the hill near Spottsylvania Court House and suddenly came upon Stuart's cavalry ma.s.sed in the yard and field around a farmhouse. They had finished their splendid fight, the van of the army was on the spot to relieve them.

They had been withdrawn from confronting the enemy, and were now drawn up here, preparatory to starting off, to overtake Sheridan's raid toward Richmond; which they did, and, at "Yellow Tavern," two days after, many of them, the immortal Stuart at their head, died and saved Richmond.

=Greetings on the Field of Battle=