Part 17
We are camped just outside the works around Yorktown, on a plateau overlooking the York river and, far off to the east, the blue waters of Chesapeake Bay—on the whole, a very pleasant location. The first night we were here we had no tents, but they came the next day, although not as many as we needed, and we are, consequently, somewhat crowded. It was the intention to give Jess. Dewey and I a tent together, but we will have to wait. But at the rate our subs are deserting there will be tents enough and room enough before long. About a hundred have made tracks, so far.
Yesterday the Fourth U. S. Colored Regiment left here. One of the officers went out of this company. They are going to Point Lookout. The fellow I would have gone to Washington with if things had not shaped themselves to my liking in the regiment, is back with a captain’s commission. You see what I escaped. Col. Bailey tells me I ought to go up anyway, whether I accept or not—it would help pass the time away. But I tell him I am getting along very comfortably as I am, that I can enjoy myself better with the regiment than I could loafing around Washington, and that if I had wanted a commission I could have had one long, long ago. I am quartering now in the cook-tent, and have very good accommodations. It is understood we are going to Williamsburg soon. Hen. Pillsbury says Col. Bailey is determined to go home when the old men do, and most of the officers are of the same mind. We have just drawn rations of cracked pease, beans, rice, smoked sides, &c., so there are no signs of immediate starvation.
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_CXL_
YORKTOWN, VA., _April 13, 1864_.
Not a bit of mail have we had, until yesterday, since our arrival here. Then George Colby came down from Point Lookout, bringing what had accumulated there.
We are expecting to have a military execution of a deserter this afternoon. He is one of our subs, going under the name of John Egin. He was taken while trying to make his way into the rebel lines, was tried yesterday by court martial, and condemned to be shot today between the hours of five and six o’clock in the afternoon. He was making for the rebel lines when he met a man in a gray uniform, and he gave himself dead away. He didn’t know that a gray uniform between the lines was pretty sure to cover one of our scouts, so he unbosomed himself, and was then about-faced and marched back to Yorktown.
Just outside our camp is the grave of a man who was executed a little over a month ago. He was on guard over a prisoner, at Williamsburg, whom he allowed to escape, carrying important information to the rebels. Most of the large number who have deserted since we got here have been picked up at one place or another. Their utter ignorance of the geography of the country has in many instances led to their undoing. It is probable that several of them will meet the same fate that has been decreed for Egin. The second of Gordon’s precious subs, made corporals to spite the old men, made tracks day before yesterday, but was picked up and brought back yesterday. When the bulk of the old men are discharged, and the subs have all run away, and most of the officers have been mustered out, where will the glorious old Second Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers be? I am glad I have not got to stay and serve any longer, for it can never again be the old Second except in name.
Close to our camp is a contraband settlement familiarly known as “Slab City.” There are several hundred houses. It is laid out in streets, the shanties, built of slabs, split logs, &c., averaging about half the size of an ordinary New Hampshire woodshed. Jess, and I have explored it from one end to the other, and it was as good as a circus. They have quite a corps of teachers, both white and black, and there is more religion to the square inch than in any other part of the United States. There are stores, with little stocks of goods that wouldn’t inventory twenty dollars apiece, and the signs are fine examples of phonetic spelling. Here is one: “GROSERIS STOOR.” And on two that we saw appeared the magic word “GROSEYS”—the orthography evidently dictated from the same fount of knowledge. The mechanical execution was on a par with the spelling.
_Friday, April 15._
This forenoon I witnessed the execution of two deserters from our regiment. One was the John Egin I have spoken of before, who was respited for a day. The other was a man who has gone by the name of Holt, but who last night acknowledged that his name was McGuire, and that he was from Yorkshire, England, where he had a wife and two children. The Second Regiment was drawn up in line, facing the execution ground, with two loaded cannon in position to rake it, one negro regiment in line to the rear of the Second, and another drawn up at right angles, on its left. When the troops were in position, the two condemned men rode upon the ground, each seated upon his coffin in the bottom of a wagon. Arriving at the spot where they were to be shot to death, they got down from the wagons, their coffins were taken out and placed end to end before the open graves. Then the firing squad of twelve men were drawn up about a dozen paces in front of them. They knelt by their coffins while a Catholic priest, who had come up from Fortress Monroe, conducted the appropriate offices of the church. Then they arose, their handcuffs were taken off, and they removed their coats and vests. Their eyes were bandaged, their wrists tied with white handkerchieves, and each seated on his coffin. What an awful moment it must have been for them when they heard the click of the gun-locks as the executioners cocked their pieces. The next instant they fell back across their coffins, each pierced by five bullets. Holt did not die for several moments, and raised his hands a number of times. There are some eighty or ninety deserters under guard down town, and more will follow in the way these two have gone.
George Colby is down here, and is going into a little sutler business on his own hook, as he does not think Mr. Bailey will take the risk and bother of doing business under present conditions.
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_CXLI_
YORKTOWN, VA., _April 21, 1864_.
Today is, I believe, the third anniversary of my entrance upon a military life. It is entertaining to hear the old fellows count up the number of days that lie between them and home. The 9th of May appears to be the generally accepted date of release, but I am afraid the wish is father to the thought. The first thing I hear in the morning is something like this: “Well, only eighteen days more!” or “Only eighteen loaves more of army bread for me!”
Since I wrote last we have moved our camp about a mile, and are now in a delightful location, on a smooth, grassy slope close to the river and near the spot where Egin and Holt were executed. At the right of the camp is the last parallel in which I put in a night’s work two years ago. The very tree under which I shoveled so diligently is still standing, close by an angle of the trench. I sometimes catch myself imagining the siege is still going on, and when the sunset gun is fired, involuntary duck my head below imaginary earthworks and listen for the rush of the shell.
A great army is being gathered here. Troops are pouring in, by regiments and by brigades. Several regiments have arrived from Hilton Head, S. C., among them the Fourth New Hampshire. I hear the Third is expected. The negro troops who have been stationed here during the winter are going to Fortress Monroe, and from there, I understand, to Port Royal, and troops are coming here from Norfolk and Portsmouth. The Tenth and Thirteenth New Hampshire are on the way and will be here today. We will soon be ready for another advance on Richmond, and, to tell the truth, I rather like the idea of seeing a little more of
## active service before I go home. Gen. Smith [W. F.—“Baldy,”] who, it
is supposed, will lead this column of advance on Richmond, arrived yesterday, and was escorted to headquarters with great parade, which there were indications was not exactly to his liking. He is a western general, one of Grant’s favorites, a big, rough-looking, grizzled old fellow, without any frills, and I hope will not disappoint expectations.
It was at first intended to send this regiment to Williamsburg, but there were so many desertions it was not deemed advisable, and we may be kept here. But the execution of the two deserters has had a good effect, and there has not been a single case of desertion since that time.
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_CXLII_
WILLIAMSBURG, VA., _April 20, 1864_.
Since my last letter we have made our first hitch up the Peninsula, and are now about two miles from Williamsburg and one mile from the spot where, two years ago the 5th of May, we had the little scrimmage known as the battle of Williamsburg. We got our orders to march last Friday afternoon, started about sunset, and marched until one o’clock, when we arrived at our present location. Now, who do you suppose I saw last Friday? None other than our old friend Frank Morrill. I was just out of camp at Yorktown, heading for town so as to get my mail off before we started up here, when I heard my name shouted, and turning around, saw some one galloping toward me. And who should it be but Frank! The Third Regiment has not come up yet, and it is not definitely known that they will come, but Frank is signal officer on Gen. Terry’s staff and so came up with the General. [I never saw him again. He was mortally wounded, before Petersburg, in July.]
I have to go clear to Yorktown, now, for my mail. I leave here about one in the afternoon and get back about sunset. For a horse they have given me a great, stout, rawboned “buckskin,” a hard-rider, and the immediate physical effects on a fellow as soft and out of practice as I am have been slightly disastrous. The first day I wore out the seat of my pants, and it didn’t stop wearing when it got through the cloth. As I have to make the trip every day, I am having a pretty tough time getting acclimated, as it were.
Everything here indicates that we will soon be on the move. Orders were issued, day before yesterday, limiting the personal baggage of officers below the rank of brigadier-general to one small valise—to become operative in five days. There are to be only two wagons for each regiment, one of these exclusively for the hospital department. We may not move, though, for a fortnight. Whether or not we are to be discharged before the 4th of June is the main subject of discussion now. If we are not, we may, and probably will, have a chance to see “the dirty Chickahominy” again, and possibly the city of Richmond. When we old fellows are discharged, the Second Regiment is likely to be still further reduced in numbers by transfers to the navy, as permitted by recent orders. Now that I am counting my time by days, I am not troubling myself about how large or how small the regiment may be.
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_CXLIII_
WILLIAMSBURG, VA., _May 4, 1864_.
This letter may be the last I will write you from the army, as there is a prospect of our being discharged on the 9th of May. Our “final statements” were made out yesterday and forwarded to headquarters. But they may decide at headquarters that our time is not up until June. In that event we will have a chance to march a piece in this “On to Richmond” movement. A big pier is being built on the James River, about three miles from here, indicating that we are to take boats there for some point—perhaps to go up the river as far as Fort Darling and attempt to take it as a preliminary to the capture of Richmond.
We are having nice weather now, but night before last we had a great thunder shower. It came up very suddenly, about sunset, and was the blackest, ugliest-looking sky I ever saw. The rebels have, for some time, been very busy planting torpedoes in the roads leading toward Richmond, and a few days ago a squad of four were scooped in while engaged in this laudable undertaking.
Day before yesterday two regiments of negro cavalry came up from Norfolk, and yesterday I rode up from Yorktown with a couple of the troopers. They kept me in a roar of laughter relating their experiences in the army, which were inexpressibly funny.
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_CXLIV_
CAMP BETWEEN BERMUDA HUNDRED AND PETERSBURG, VA., _May 9, 1864_.
I have just time to write a short letter before going to the Landing to attend to my mail. The indications are that we are going to have a fight today. The Corps has marched out toward the rebel lines, and now a long train of ambulances is going by, which is ominous. This is the day when the old men of Company I figure their time is out, and it is not impossible that some of them may get their final discharges today. I shall go to the Landing, about four miles, for my mail, at ten o’clock, and then hurry out to the front to see how matters are progressing.
We broke camp at Williamsburg on the 4th and embarked from a temporary wharf on the James River. The next morning the bulk of the expedition came up from Fortress Monroe, and it was a great spectacle. As far as the eye could reach swarmed vessels of every description—transports, tugs, ironclads and gunboats. About dark we were at Bermuda Hundred, at the mouth of the Appomattox River. We mounted men were on a different boat from the regiment, and after a vain hunt of a couple hours we gave up trying to find the Second that night and camped by the roadside, picketing our horses and with our saddles for pillows. The next day the troops advanced to our present position, and Heckman’s brigade, of our division, had a smart little fight. Yesterday our boys were throwing up a redoubt down by the Appomattox, but today the work is discontinued and the men have gone out to fight.
I met John Hynes yesterday, on the road to the Landing. [John R., an old-time Manchester printer, in the Third N. H. Regiment.]
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_CXLV_
CAMP NEAR BERMUDA HUNDRED, VA., _May 13, 1864_.
Yesterday morning the Second set out, with the rest of the army, for a raid on the Danville Railroad, and are expected back today, as they took rations for but two days. My duties required that I should stay here, and right glad was I, as it rained nearly all day and through the night, and I was much more comfortable under a good shelter tent than I would have been plugging through the mud. There were about half a dozen left in my camp squad, and we had a jolly time of it. We bought a beef liver and some potatoes for dinner, and sirloin steak and potatoes for supper, and Johnny Powell and I fixed up a tent in which we slept as snug as a bug in a rug.
Day before yesterday Gordon got instructions to make out our final statements, which are the preliminaries to a discharge. He was at work on them when marching orders came, when, of course, he suspended operations until he gets back from this raid, which will probably be today.
_May 17._
I think it is about time to finish this letter. The army has been for five days on a movement against Fort Darling, and got back today. [Here follows an account of the Fort Darling expedition, substantially as given in the succeeding letter, and the reason for duplicating which is made clear in that letter.]
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_CXLVI_
HEADQUARTERS SECOND N. H. V., POINT OF ROCKS, VA., _May 18, 1864_.
This morning I received your letter, dated from Manchester. Yesterday I sent a letter off directed to New London, but as you have concluded not to go there I suppose your chances of getting it right off are not very good. So, to relieve your anxiety, I write again. Our date of discharge has at last been definitely settled, and you need not expect me before the 7th of June. That is General Butler’s fiat, which is law.
This army has had some fighting to do since it landed here. At this very moment the rebels are attacking a portion of our intrenched line not half a mile from where I am sitting, and there is a terrific uproar of cannon and musketry. A week ago the army went out on an expedition to stir up the rebels. They skirmished with them, drove them toward Fort Darling, and took the outer line of rifle-pits. I took the regimental mail up, and found the boys within five hundred yards of a large rebel fort, over which two big garrison flags were floating. They were behind a good log breastwork, and our skirmishers were well out in front, behind logs and stumps, popping away so industriously that the rebels were not working a single one of their cannon. I stayed as long as I could find any excuse, to distribute my mail and to watch the sport, then rode back to camp. The next morning, before I had rolled out of my blankets, I heard heavy firing up the river, and knew that a battle was on. It was a couple hours before I could get started with my mail. The road, after I had gone a piece, was full of wounded men on foot and ambulances loaded with mangled humanity. One driver told me he had in his wagon the body of Captain Platt, who was killed by a bullet in the head.
When I reached the regiment I learned the full story of the fight The morning was a very foggy one, and the rebels crawled silently toward our lines, and then rushed for our breastworks. But there was an obstacle in the path that they hadn’t dreamed of. Our fellows had busied themselves during the night in weaving telegraph wires among the stumps out at the front, and when the rebs charged they suddenly found themselves sprawling every-which-way, while our boys were pumping lead into them as fast as they could load and fire. The rebs came on again and again, until the ground in front of the Second was carpeted with dead and wounded rebels. But the rebels managed to get through the lines to the right and the left, and the army fell back and formed a new line of battle a mile or less to the rear of the old position. Although there was light skirmishing all day, at some points, the rebels had done about all the attacking they cared to for one day.
I stayed with the regiment all day, to see the fun if there was any more going. One time I thought there would be. The brigade was called to attention and moved forward in battle line, across the fields, toward the woods where the morning’s fight had taken place. Old “Buckskin” and I thoughtlessly jogged along behind the Second. Before we were within ordinary rifle range of the woods, a bullet “pinged” by not far from me. Pretty soon there was another. And then another! Looking up and down, I saw I was the only mounted man on the line, and it dawned upon me that some sharpshooter with a long-range rifle had picked me out as the boss of the expedition and was trying to get me. And he could shoot, too. My pride wouldn’t let me turn and run, badly as I wanted to, and I was about to drop to the ground and walk when the bugles sounded a halt, and we about-faced and marched back—and I was mighty glad to go.
During the night our army came back into the camps. This morning the rebels appeared in front of our lines and lively skirmishing has been going on all day. The army is engaged in throwing up intrenchments, the Second working as hard as any of them.
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_CXLVII_
HEADQUARTERS SECOND N. H. V., NEAR PETERSBURG, VA., _May 24, 1864_.
The discharge of veteran regiments in this command has already begun. Yesterday I went down to Bermuda Hundred with my tentmate, Johnny Powell, and on our way back we met the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery on their way home, their time having expired. The present camp of the Second is delightfully located, in a beautiful pine grove, shady, cool and clean, just to the rear of our rifle-pits. I now have about fifteen minutes’ work each day, carrying the outgoing mail down to brigade headquarters, a distance of a dozen rods, and bringing the regimental mail up over the same course.
Colonel Bailey is determined to go home when we do, and probably will. The regiment will then be reduced below the minimum entitling it to a colonel. Also, if War Department orders are enforced, it will have to be consolidated into companies of one hundred men each and superfluous officers mustered out. Bailey has written to Major Davis, Gen. Butler’s Assistant-Adjutant-General, expressing his wish to be mustered out with the old men and stating the facts in regard to the regiment. His wife, I know, has set her foot down against his staying in the army longer than he is obliged to—just as mine did.
We are having a very quiet time along the lines, just now. For two or three days there has hardly been a shot fired. We have intrenchments behind which we can defy the whole rebel army. But the other night we had noise enough down a little to our right. I had just turned in when it started, and in five minutes there was such a riot that the regiment turned out and manned the breastworks. But our section of the line was not molested, and in half an hour the firing had degenerated into an occasional straggling shot, and the regiment turned in again.
Well, as Bill Pendleton says, “Every day is like an inch on a man’s nose.”
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_CXLVIII_
HEADQUARTERS SECOND N. H. V., NEAR PETERSBURG, VA., _Friday, May 27, 1864_.