Personal Recollections and Civil War Diary, 1864

Wednesday, Sept. 7, 1864.

Was happily surprised to find it pleasant this morning; has turned out the finest day of the fall. Lieutenant H. W. Kingsley came up with the day's rations; ate supper with us. The moonlight, band music and charm of the night has killed the monotony.

Thursday, Sept. 8, 1864.

Such freaky weather; cool and rainy nearly all day. Chaplain Roberts of the Sixth Vermont, has called this afternoon. He's a fine man. I have been reading East Lynne. It's very dull in camp. I've written to Aunt Thompson this evening. The papers state the North is jubilant over our recent victories, and well they may be.

Friday, Sept. 9, 1864.

A fair day. Lieutenant H. W. Kingsley ate supper with us. He brought up three days' rations. Pert writes she is having a fine time in East Boylston, Mass. teaching. She sent me a letter from Cousin Byron Bradley. Cousin Abby Pierce is coming East this fall. I have finished reading East Lynne; it's a fine story.

Saturday, Sept. 10, 1864.

It's a cool day. Company and battalion drill was ordered this afternoon but we didn't drill as the Major is on picket. Lieutenant G. E. Davis came out of the Division hospital this afternoon. He's had a boil. I have made my election returns. It's very pleasant this evening in camp, but dull. I have written Pert.

Sunday, Sept. 11, 1864.

A very quiet dull day; am looking for news from the Army of the Potomac; nothing has occurred since we left; those armies watch each other, while we do what little fighting there is done. So much constant chasing of the enemy night and day, frequent brushes, laying on our arms from 3 o'clock till daylight, etc., is very wearing and I shall be glad when Early is licked, as he surely will be for Sheridan fights like a tornado —he does things. He's getting a good ready, and we'll be heard from soon. Ta, ta, Early! Run back to Petersburg! The peace party seems to be dissatisfied with McClellan. In my opinion his stock's below par, at the same time if his party nominate a new man it will be the best thing that can happen for us; wonder if most of Company E don't sympathize with the peace party? Hope my men are not fickle politically – like Jacob's coat of many colors. It takes a strong man in these times, though, to stand up to the rack when there isn't much in it but ammunition, and it's grimly give and take with no white feather mix, and neither army will give up. Wonder if we won't be abused for all this bye and bye by other than copperheads?

Monday, Sept. 12, 1864.

We are having a nice long time in camp, but will probably make up for it when Grant and Sheridan get this little army fixed to suit them. I have been in fights thus far with Companies B, D, and K, having commanded the two latter in a number of hot places, and now I am First Lieutenant Commanding Company E. I don't stay with a Company long enough to learn all the men's names, but they impress me with the idea that they are not dissatisfied with me even if I only know them by sight. Company B is from Barre, Montpelier and Waterbury. D from Burlington, E from Bennington, and K from Derby Line, and the men are splendid fighters, at any rate with me. I don't try to drive them into a fight but am lucky to keep up with the intrepid leaders and most of the rest follow. Except the bravest of them, the others are not apt to go where their Commander won't, and I get better work out of them by keeping ahead of them if I only can. Some of them are so dauntlessly courageous they inspire me.

Tuesday, Sept. 13, 1864.

Well, the papers begin to speak encouragingly, and reinforcements are rapidly being sent Grant and Thomas. We have got but few yet, but rumor says that six hundred left Vermont on the seventh of September for our regiment. It's cloudy and there's a chilly south wind. It threatens rain. McClellan's party is demanding a new candidate. Well, let it have one, it will be all the better for Mr. Lincoln. All's quiet to-night.

Wednesday, Sept. 14, 1864.

Rather a gloomy day. It rained hard from 9 o'clock a. m. until about noon. Lieutenants Davis, Welch and Wheeler have gone on picket with a hundred men from our regiment. There was Company drill this afternoon. It rained so this forenoon that battalion drill was suspended; rained hard this evening, too. Election returns from Maine this evening show that State to be strongly Republican.

Thursday, Sept. 15, 1864.

It was fair until 5 o'clock p. m. when it sprinkled slightly and prevented dress parade. We had battalion drill this forenoon and Company drill this afternoon. The Commissary came up this forenoon, too, with rations. We have received a large mail. All well at home. The Second Division of the Sixth Corps and a brigade of cavalry made a reconnoissance to-day toward Opequan Creek where the Vermont Brigade skirmishers located the enemy just beyond Opequan Creek with its line facing east, its right flank resting on the Berryville pike and its left on the Martinsburg pike with Winchester in its rear. Our armies are about six miles apart.

Friday, Sept. 16, 1864.

It's a delightful evening; has been pleasant all day. There was battalion and company drill this forenoon and afternoon respectively. Extracts from the Richmond Examiner and other Southern journals state that Lee's army about Richmond is in terrible condition, is living on half rations, clothes worn out and no prospect of getting more. It has got so they have to use negroes to transport supplies, etc. I wouldn't blame that army for changing its politics or anything else to get out of the scrape it's in.

Saturday, Sept. 17, 1864.

Warm and pleasant: gentle south breeze; looks like a southern storm. General Grant came to-day, but has gone. It looks like a move. Fifty men from our regiment went on picket this afternoon. We have been moving camp, another indication of a move. Let it come. Orry Blanchard and Nate Harrington have been over this evening.

Sunday, Sept. 18, 1864.

It's cloudy with a gentle south breeze. We had company inspection at 9 o'clock this forenoon and monthly at 4 o'clock this afternoon. The supply train came at 8 o'clock a. m. with four days' rations. We got orders at 3 o'clock p. m. to strike tents which we did, and march at once, but the order was countermanded. We shall probably move early in the morning. There's a high south wind this evening, but it doesn't look like rain. Sheridan's army now consists of three infantry corps, three divisions of cavalry and the usual complement of artillery, in all about 30,000 men, as follows; The Sixth Corps, Major General H. G. Wright, U. S. V. commanding; the Eighth Corps, Major-General George Crook, U. S. V. commanding; the Nineteenth Corps, Brevet Major-General W. H. Emery commanding; Brevet Major-General A. T. A. Torbert, U. S. V., Chief of Cavalry; the First Division of Cavalry, Brigadier-General Wesley Merritt, U. S. V. commanding; the Second Division of Cavalry, Brigadier-General W. W. Averell, U. S. A. commanding; and of the Third Division of Cavalry, Brigadier-General James H. Wilson, U. S. V. commanding. Lieutenant-General Jubal A. Early commands the Confederate army with about the same force.

Monday, Sept. 19, 1864.

We received orders at 10 o'clock last night to march at 2 o'clock this morning which we did. Daylight brought us up near Opequan Creek on the Winchester-Berryville pike. Wilson's Cavalry had charged and carried the enemy's picket line and earthworks protecting the pike near both the East and West entrance of the gorge through which this road runs, taken a goodly number of prisoners, and it looked like business again. A large number of troops moved in two or more columns across the Opequan for about a mile and then up the narrow winding pike in one column through a little valley or gorge, known as the Berryville canyon to us, but as Ash Hollow locally, with second growth or scrub oak and ash trees and underbrush coming close down its scraggy abrupt banks two hundred feet high more or less in places after crossing Abraham Creek, to the road and rivulet winding along the gorge for nearly three miles – the source of which stream is wrongly given on all maps pertaining to this battle – on past General Sheridan near the west end of the canyon towards Winchester sitting on his horse a little off the road to the right in the open field on slightly ascending ground watching the column our brigade was in which, owing to its plucky fight under great disadvantages at the Battle of the Monocacy which largely saved the city of Washington barely nine weeks before, he had selected for the most important point in his line of battle at the head of the gorge on the pike to Winchester with our valiant regiment and the Fourteenth New Jersey planted across it even the colors of each which were in the centre of the regiments, being in the center of the pike and the rest of the army ordered to guide on us. Surely this was the place of honor in the battle that day for the Sixth Corps followed the pike in all the assaults of the day which was quite crooked including the first one until the enemy was driven completely routed through the city of Winchester when night put an end to the fighting Sheridan restlessly urged the men across a small ravine opposite where he sat, his eyes wandering occasionally everywhere over the large open space which gradually rose to the vast comparatively level but slightly rolling battlefield in our front, as the men looked curiously at him so near I could touch him as we marched, little dreaming that three years after I should be honored for my work that day, which he saw, by being a member of his staff, or that he would be instrumental in saving my life when ill with malignant yellow fever and threatened with fatal black vomit in New Orleans, La. in 1867, by sending his cook, a faithful old colored woman, who was an expert nurse of yellow fever patients, to care for me. It was the nearest we had ever been to him, and as our regiment passed slowly by fours, the line being congested ahead, the men took a good look at him for he was already famous and every soldier's ideal hero; and as they did so they unconsciously slackened their sauntering pace a little which was what caused Sheridan to urge them on.

We were on the eve of the most brilliant spectacular battle of the war, at any rate that I had seen, and my ideal genius developed by the great Civil War – Sheridan was to lead us; and the valor of the renowned Sixth Corps, his pet of all the splendid corps of as grand and valiant an army as ever existed – the Army of the Potomac – was about being placed by him at the most important point in line of battle ready to do and die for him, the Vermont troops or "Green Mountain Boys," as we were called through every city we passed, and especially our regiment being one of two to occupy the keystone position or place of honor on the famous historic Berryville and Winchester pike in the great assaulting line on a battlefield slightly rolling but level in places as a house floor when once fairly on it, to take another stitch out of rebellion, and to help immortalize our hero, and we did both. Aye! we shall glorify Sheridan continually as a military genius, even as he has honored us as his ideal soldiers and fighters heretofore, now and probably will evermore, the grand old Sixth Army Corps which fights everything everywhere, and rarely gives up fighting till called off, but, alas! which will soon only be a hallowed, glorified memory; and – still – I like to think of it in reflective moments as in a celebrated painting of a bivouacked army at night asleep watched over by an army of hovering angels in midair; that it as a hallowed spiritual body finally at peace in a heavenly paradise, will go marching on throughout the boundless everlasting realms of eternity ever to hover approvingly when occasion shall require over other mortal armies of dauntless valor and constancy such as it has been in the great Civil War —one of God's instruments for the betterment of humanity and civil liberty– the most admired, honored, trusted and beloved by military geniuses of its period.

After passing Sheridan about two hundred yards we arrived at the height of the land westerly from Opequan Creek where the Sixth and Nineteenth Corps were finally formed in lines of battle running about North and South behind a narrow belt of timber, except a little in front of the reserve, facing nearly west toward Winchester about two miles away. The formation of the ground at this point occupied by the Tenth Vermont and Second Brigade was unusually peculiar.15 The turnpike from this place virtually runs along the divide westerly towards Winchester between the nameless Creek we came up after crossing the Opequan and Abraham Creek, now on our right and north and the latter on our left to the south for a goodly distance the reason for which is obvious as in all such cases where streams have abrupt banks, while at the point where we debouched from the gulch we came up and formed line of battle was another little divide running north and south the east slope of which is partially an easterly watershed for Opequan Creek, and the west slope for the ravine or nameless rivulet running south about two hundred and fifty yards in front of where we first formed line of battle in which was the enemy's infantry in strong force – probably two divisions or more – in front of our Third Division but not shown on any map of this battlefield I have ever seen, not even the official government one used in Haynes' "History of the Tenth Vermont Volunteer Infantry." (See No. 3, 6, 7 and 8 illustrations). It is the ravine through which the little short rivulet runs shown on said map just in front of our "First position" running southerly into a tributary of Abraham Creek. I am emphatic in this statement as having been on the battlefield twice since the fight occurred within a year (1908) for the purpose of trying to correct false history and maps, I know whereof I write. I desire to impress this on all historians for I know of no one living who, owing to my elevated advanced position on the battlefield knows more of it. These two small divides before mentioned meet each other at right angles forming a letter T. The pike crosses the horizontal part of the T on leaving the gulch we came up from the Opequan in, and virtually runs along the first mentioned divide slightly to the left of all rivulet sources running southerly, forming the perpendicular part of the T towards Winchester.

About a half mile to the right or north of the pike and about two hundred and fifty yards in front of our line of battle before advancing, a little to my right, the rivulet before mentioned, where the enemy was, heads, running in a partial semicircle the slightly convex side towards the right half of the Tenth Vermont and the concave side caused by a bend in the rivulet virtually at its source was largely in front of the Second brigade; (See No. 8 illustration) the stream runs southerly and drops rapidly after crossing the pike thus forming a gulch similar to the one we came up from the Opequan in, but apparently deeper and narrower near the left front of the Second Division. This sudden drop to the left of the turnpike made the divide here running north and south quite decided being fully ninety feet high or more which will probably partly account for the enemy's mostly being to the right of the pike there being no protection immediately west from the divide running North and South. In my front on the right of the pike this divide was about fifty feet high running out rapidly on to almost level ground in front of the right of the Second Brigade of our division to my right,16 which made its position untenable as the ground was swept by both the enemy's artillery and infantry.

The formation in front of the Nineteenth Corps which was our infantry right in the noon or first assault of the day was entirely different. (See Nos. 4 and 5 illustrations). Its whole front after about three hundred yards down a gentle slope was broad and comparatively level with slight breaks several hundred yards across, but not probably impassable for infantry at any point, where three or more small rivulets apparently headed with banks so undefined and flat as to give no defensive protection in a military sense so the enemy had no men or infantry there so far as I could see, but did have at least a small showing of artillery which I could see far across the breaks. These rivulets run northerly probably into the rivulet we came up from the Opequan or the Red Bud, but I do not know this. They help to form a morass it is said, probably about a mile more or less from where I was about fifty feet wide in front of where Crook's Corps was later in the day and it was probably here that Colonel R. B. Hayes (Nineteenth President, U. S. A.) later in the day, at the head of his brigade plunged in on his horse which at once mired when he dismounted and waded across alone under fire followed as soon as he waved his hat to them to join him, by about forty of his men to try and capture a battery which, led by him, they did after a hand-to-hand fight with the gunners, the enemy having deemed the battery so secure that no infantry support had been placed near it,17 which indicates that in this assault the bulk of the enemy's infantry force confronting our infantry was at first largely in front of our division on the pike. The trees in number 4 illustration along the breaks in 1864 were not there then. The open foreground is the divide running east and west in this illustration so it can be easily seen why the Nineteenth Corps had no considerable fighting to do here.

The left of the enemy's line of infantry in the ravine in my front, so far as I could see, ended about nine hundred yards to my right at the head of the ravine as there was no cover further north except beyond the divide running east and west a good distance away to the north in front of the Nineteenth Corps, and its line was bent to conform to the ravine's direction in my right front; (See No. 8 illustration) the head of the rivulet had quite flat banks the convex side of the creek and its near and most abrupt bank being toward us in my front, but the reverse at the head of the ravine. This was the point in the enemy's line where the gap in our lines occurred mentioned further on which owing to the flat artillery and musketry-swept ground was untenable for the Second Brigade or any force except large enough to drive the enemy's infantry from its cover as was Russell's. (See Nos. 4 and 5 illustrations). If the historian hereafter accuses the Third Division of breaking in this assault, it will be but fair to state extenuating circumstances, for a portion of the First Brigade was similarly situated and we got no direct effective flank help from our critics on either flank during the fight. The pike from our line of battle ran in an air line about nine hundred yards directly towards Winchester (See Nos. 2 and 9 illustrations) and was practically level except where it crossed the divide and little rivulet near my front where in the ravine the enemy had such a strong force in front of us about a regiment of which moved there across the pike from in front of the left of our First Brigade, (See No. 6 illustration) the Second Division having nothing in its immediate front in the ravine and the Vermont Brigade only a weak force in its distant left front beyond, but what a regiment could probably have easily handled and probably less than that did; but, nevertheless, that part of the Second Division next to us obliqued to the left to attack it which was what caused that Division to pull away from the Third Division's left at the same time the Nineteenth Corps pulled away from our right causing wide gaps – as the position which should have been occupied by the Second Brigade was vacant, too – thus leaving our brigade and especially our regiment, alone at a critical time when the gallant General Russell with his magnificent Division so grandly marched in and filled the gap on my right and lost his life in the act. (See No. 5 illustration). Our colors were on the pike thus bringing the right half of our regiment to the north or right side of it on open ground (See Nos. 3 and 5 illustrations) and leaving only about three regiments of our Division to the left of it on the wooded side hill (as shown in Nos. 3 and 7 illustrations) soon sloping abruptly towards the ravine in front which gave all our troops to the left of our colors on the pike some welcome cover but the right of our regiment and the Second Brigade, none. (See Nos. 3, 4, 5 and 6 illustrations).

The distance locally from where we crossed the Opequan to Winchester is called five miles; and to where we formed line of battle three miles, and from thence to Winchester two miles. The local distance from Winchester to Stephenson's Station by the railroad is six miles and to Summit Station twelve miles. There is no map in existence known to me giving the correct position of the enemy's infantry in the ravine in front of the Third Division, Sixth Corps; it is placed nearly a half mile too far back or west, and nearer where the second assault of the day was. The illustrations which of course must be correct herein place the enemy right in front of the Third Division and I can make oath to it, in the first assault when I was twice wounded. But I will now return a little and endeavor to describe this brilliant battle.

We were drawn up as before stated, in two lines of battle at the west entrance of the canyon facing west on an open field about midway between Abraham Creek on the south and Red Bud Creek on the north just in rear of a long narrow strip of woods which served as a great curtain to a grand, broad, slightly rolling plain several miles in extent in every direction in our front, which was to be the stage that day with the city of Winchester in the background, of one of the most dashing, picturesque battles probably ever fought in ancient or modern times at first with beautiful, silent nature about the only witness. The Third Division, Sixth Corps, was in the left and most important center of the line in two lines, the Tenth Vermont on the Berryville-Winchester pike, the most important, dangerous and stubbornly contested point in the whole line; the Nineteenth Corps was on our right in two lines; the intrepid Second Division, Sixth Corps in which was the gallant First Vermont Brigade, was on our left, one of the easiest places in the line; General Russell's valiant First Division, Sixth Corps, as reserve was stationed en masse a short distance in rear of where the right flank of the Third Division, Sixth Corps, and the left flank of the Nineteenth Corps joined, which was within a short distance and in plain sight of where I was, and our three Divisions of dashing, picturesque cavalry – including Wilson on our left along Abraham Creek running south of Winchester and Senseny Road, and Merritt and Averill on our right along the railroad and the Martinsburg pike – was massed on either flank for assault at the right moment on the enemy's flanks or as occasion might demand, while Crook's Eighth Corps was about a quarter of a mile en masse about in rear of the right flank of the Nineteenth Corps.

At noon in the midst of a perfect bedlam caused by the roar of artillery, shrieking, bursting, hurtling shells, and the voices of many officers pitched high so as to be heard above the din, giving orders, the assault was made through the thin strip of timber in our front toward Winchester when we briefly halted and laid on the ground, and then across an open field beyond the woods in all about two hundred and fifty yards where I was, midst a perfect storm of solid shot and shell, rattling musketry on my right and front, and whizzing minie balls without being able to fire a rifle at first so well was the enemy in my front protected by the lay of the ground and its rail breast-works. We persistently advanced, though, but it took a great deal of nerve and will power to do it in an open field without the slightest cover, all the time midst a perfect storm of iron and leaden hail and the cries of the wounded and dying which were disconcerting, until we drove the enemy back pell mell from its works in my front in the utmost confusion – yes, in a perfect stampede for they were old soldiers and knew when they were whipped, and when it was necessary to run with all their might to save themselves from slaughter and ignominious capture. (See Nos. 3 foreground and Nos. 5 and 6 illustrations).

The Tenth Vermont, Fourteenth New Jersey and the rest of our brigade as usual, not only proudly led the Division at first by a good deal in the advance through the woods but in this instance the whole army. It was therefore not only the most aggressive and conspicuous part of – being on high ground where I could see our line of battle each way – but the most important point in the line; was first seen when through the wood and the most dreaded by the enemy being on the pike, and in consequence its artillery fire within reach was concentrated on us, and it was a hot place. But soon, after recovering from the collapse of the Second Brigade on my right which wholly disappeared and nothing more was seen of it by me, with the valor of the old-time "Green Mountain Boys" on we went undaunted until, after we had advanced about seventy-five yards beyond the woods now extinct behind which we had formed in the open field where I was, being then on a high point where I could see the whole battlefield, I glanced to my right and left and was appalled to see that the troops on both flanks of my Brigade were obliquing rapidly away from us, the whole Nineteenth Corps in perfect lines of battle by an oblique movement to the right having pulled away from the right of our Division until there was a gap big enough including that made by the Second Brigade, to more than admit a Brigade line of battle although it is said that Corps had been directed to guide on our Division and that a similar state of affairs existed on our left flank where the Vermont brigade was.18 (See No. 3 through opening in woods showing No. 7; also see No. 5 where I was in the foreground). With a feeling of dismay I slackened my pace and nearly halted for I saw that through the gap in the very center and most vital point in our line on my right towards the Nineteenth Corps opposite which point was a strong force of the enemy's infantry awaiting us behind its works on the near edge of a little valley which protected it from our fire until right on it, it would throw its force so situated opposite the gap on our right and left flanks caused by the gap and have us completely at its mercy; but glancing almost immediately again to my right and rear, hearing loud military commands there, my spirits rose as I saw the gallant Russell leading his splendid Division en masse through the opening in the timber in his front, magnificently forward as though at drill to fill the gap. The appearance of his column greatly relieved us, as it drew the concentrated artillery fire from our column by the enemy largely to his. The whole battle scene at this moment at this point was one of appalling grandeur, one which no beholders could ever forget, provided they could keep their nerve well enough to preserve their presence of mind sufficiently to take in the situation midst the screeching shells and appalling musketry fire. The splendid appearance of General Russell's Division elicited a cry of admiration from all who saw it. It was the supreme moment or turning point in the great tide of battle, and as Russell's men rapidly deployed latterly under a galling fire on the march either way in perfect order enough to fill the gap, it was magnificent – beyond description – the grandest, best and most welcome sight I ever saw in a tight place in battle, and so inspired me – seeing the danger of a flank movement had passed – I again pushed forward to be in front and was there when the intrepid General Russell, one of the best fighters in the army, was twice shot and soon died a short distance to my right rear just about the time I was also twice hit; (see Nos. 5 and 6 illustrations) but when the enemy in my front and all along the little valley caught sight of our reserve coming at them so majestically and in such solid phalanx and splendid order, it seemed to me the rebs couldn't run fast enough apparently to get away. It was the most sudden transformation on a battlefield I ever saw, as well as the most perfect stampede and rout; and it was the enemy's last volley when it saw our reserve coming at them so determinedly that put a stop to my fighting for several months; and but for our reserve coming on the field just as it did I would have been worse riddled than I was by the enemy and killed even lying on the ground wounded, as I was wholly exposed where I lay close on their works not a rod away, the ground sloping towards them.