Roster and Statistical Record of Company D, of the Eleventh Regiment Maine Infantry Volunteers

The night before the battle of Fair Oaks was one of a terrible storm, that we all know. D went on picket that evening, occupying the extreme right of the line, an entirely unsupported position. The men passed a miserable night, watching in darkness and storm, sheltering themselves as they best could and still remain alert, for all the signs pointed to an early attack on us; the pressure of the enemies skirmish lines, the plain movements of their troops, and the fact that they must either dislodge us or lose Richmond. Towards morning the storm ceased, and the day broke with the promise of clearness. Shortly afterwards Sergeant Brady came out of camp with Private Annis, then a detailed cook, Annis bearing a camp kettle in which he proceeded to prepare coffee, when the men partook of a rough breakfast. Soon Lieutenant Washington, of General Johnston's staff, rode unexpectedly into the line of D, having mistaken a road in carrying orders to some rebel command. Quickly halted, he ruefully yielded himself a prisoner, and under Captain Harvey's pilotage made an unwilling way to General Casey's headquarters. Captain Harvey failing to return, the command of the company devolved upon Second Lieutenant Johnson, as First Lieutenant Stanwood was away sick. The capture of Lieutenant Washington made the pickets doubly alert. Besides, General Naglee himself rode out to their line to make observations, and warned them that they were liable to be attacked at any moment. Soon great activity was displayed by the rebel pickets in the immediate front, and sharp picket fighting took place during the forenoon. A little after noon the roar of the attack on the left was heard. It was uncertain what the pickets should do. Lieutenant Johnson and Corporal Keene moved out on the right to learn, if they could, what force, if any, guarded the flank. They found it entirely unguarded, and moved along until they fell in with Sumner's advance, when they were occupied in giving information concerning the movements of the enemy, and the bearing of the roads to General Sumner's aids.

Sergeant Brady had been left in command of the company by Lieutenant Johnson, and shortly a rebel line of battle appeared moving towards the line held by D. Under Sergeant Brady's orders, some of the men began to barricade the road they centered on by falling trees across it, the others keeping up a rapid fire on the enemy to give the idea by their boldness that they covered a line of battle, while really between them and Fair Oaks there was then no force whatever. This ruse succeeded to an unexpected degree, the rebel line of battle halting, throwing out a strong skirmish line, and making an elaborately cautious advance. Of course their skirmishers easily flanked our forlorn pickets, and curling them back in spite of their stubborn resistance, finally scattered them through the woods.

Before the rebel onset, Sergeant Brady, realizing by the sound of the battle that he was cut off from his camp, had carefully cautioned the men to make their line of inevitable retreat toward the right and rear, and fortunately for most of them they followed these orders, reaching our lines in safety. Those that were captured were Sergeant Bassett, Corporal Dakin, Musician Strickland, Privates William and Moses Sherman, House, and lastly Sergeant Brady himself, who, the captor of two rebel soldiers, was triumphantly following his prisoners into our lines as he supposed, when, reaching the railroad, a line of rebel infantry confronted him, and he found it necessary to exchange place with his own prisoners, who, you may be sure, took a great pleasure in escorting him to Richmond. These, with Private Gray killed, and Private Blaine wounded, cover the loss of D at the battle of Fair Oaks.

It will be seen by this, that when night fell on the first day of the battle of Fair Oaks, Company D was somewhat scattered. Some of its members had joined the colors, but many were still wandering in search of them, while a stout detachment was already housed in Libby Prison. But before the next day noontime, the company was fully organized again under the command of Lieutenant Johnson, Captain Harvey relinquishing the command, pending the acceptance of his resignation, which circumstances forced him to send in.

The regiment took no part in the second day's fighting, constituting part of the reserve. That night they lay in the edge of a piece of woods. During it certain mules belonging to the Q.M. Department of our army were stampeded, galloping in a body along our line of battle, the rattling of the chains of their harnesses which had not been removed when they were unhitched from the wagons, so resembling the clanking of the scabbards of galloping cavalrymen, that many of the Eleventh, more than will confess it, were sure that the rebel Stuart and his cavalry were upon us. For a few minutes the utmost consternation and confusion prevailed, but the truth was quickly known and quiet restored. Of course no one was really scared, still it is said that some of the Eleventh, and they not all of the rank and file either, displayed an unexpected aptitude for tree climbing during the misconception.

After the battle we had occasion to look over the battle-field, for of course we did not know that our missing were captured, they might be killed or wounded.

It told the same ghastly story of war as that of Williamsburg. Our hastily abandoned camp had been rummaged by the Confederates and the shelter tents and old blankets taken from it to spread on the wet ground as they lay in line of battle. The long line of wet trampled tents and blankets told the exact position the enemy occupied the night of the first day of the battle. The kettles still hung over the charred embers of the extinguished cook fires, the headquarters' tents still stood in their places, the horns of the band still hanging on the limbs of the apple trees they were hanging on when the band took its hasty departure for Augusta. It tooted for us no more. In a day or two our division was placed under command of General Peck and ordered to guard the Railroad Bridge and Bottoms Bridge; Couch's division guarding the fords across the White Oak Swamp. For some days our position was at the bridges, we camping at the end of the Railroad Bridge, just where the Confederate artillery had stood when D and its Federal piece of artillery first opened fire on each other from opposite ends of the bridge. Then came the swift and almost unheralded march of Jackson from the Valley to the south side of the Chickahominy and the Seven Days' Battles. The story of the Battle of Gaines' Mills was brought to us by the seemingly interminable army of the disheartened troops that for hours filed across the Railroad Bridge, without officers or orders, clamoring that all was lost, and that Jackson was moving swiftly towards us, crushing all opposition.

With a well-manned battery, strongly supported, placed on the hill behind us, the Eleventh went down into the swamps of the Chickahominy, remaining there in a long skirmish line for two or three days, expecting every hour to hear the skirmishers of the enemy crashing through the woods of the opposite shore of the Chickahominy, now easily fordable by light troops. But before the momentarily uncertain enemy moved forward McClellan's rapidly laid plans had been fully acted on, our right wing was across the Chickahominy by its various bridges, the bridges were destroyed, and the retreat to the James River was in full operation. As we moved away from the Railroad Bridge, the center spans of which had been destroyed by axemen of the Eleventh the day before, the famous train of cars that our men had loaded with shells and combustibles at Savage Station came tearing down the track, and reaching the bridge took its mighty header.

General "Dick" Taylor, of the Confederates, who was in command of the troops at the other end of the bridge, says of it, while the battle of Savage Station was raging on the afternoon of June 29th, Magruder attacking Sumner, to be beaten off, the din of the distant combat was silenced to his ears by a train approaching from Savage Station, gathering speed as it rushed along, quickly emerging from the forest to show two engines drawing a long string of cars. Reaching the bridge, the engines exploded with a terrible noise, followed in succession by the explosion of the carriages laden with ammunition. Shells burst in all directions, he says, the river was lashed into foam, trees were torn for acres around, and several of his men were wounded.

To this harsh music we moved swiftly away till we had crossed White Oak Swamp Bridge in gathering darkness and reached the high ground beyond it. Here we bivouacked in line of battle, all but the guards sleeping on their arms, while the rear guard came filing across the bridge. In the morning exhausted troops could be seen lying fast asleep everywhere – in the fields, the woods, even in the dusty road itself. But all of our troops were across the swamp, and as fast as the packed condition of the roads to the James would permit, all but those of us to form the rear guard of the day, the divisions of Smith and Richardson and Naglee's Brigade, under command of Franklin, to lay here and hold Jackson himself at bay, were moving slowly towards the next selected position to make a stand – Malvern Hill. That Jackson was on the other side of the bridge we knew, the rattle of the skirmishers' rifles told us that. But just about noon he announced his presence by suddenly opening on us with thirty pieces of artillery.

One moment there was nothing above us but a cloudless summer sky, the next the air was full of shrieking shells, bursting in puffs of white smoke, and showering down a storm of broken iron. It was so startling in its suddenness that it is not strange, as the Second Corps chronicler says, that there was "a scene of dire confusion." And to add to it, the men in charge of a ponton train drawn up by the roadside, waiting for an opportunity to lumber away along it, unhitched their horses, mounted them and fled for the James River.

The confusion lasted but for a minute, and in it the Eleventh had no share. We were lying in the edge of the woods that bordered the great cleared field in which the troops and trains were massed, and perhaps had an advantage in all being wide awake. At any rate we were not a bit demoralized. Scarcely a man started to his feet, all waiting for the word of command. It came quickly, and from the mouth of General Naglee himself, who riding up to us and seeing our immovability while the troops around us were in evident confusion, could not restrain his delight at our coolness, but cried out "Fall in, my Yankee squad," for the Eleventh was few in numbers now. We fell in, and as he proudly led us across the big field to a new position, we stiffened our necks and neither dodged or bowed to the storm of iron beating down upon us. We had made a hit, and we knew it.

Taking up a position behind the rails of a torn-down fence, the Eleventh lay listening to Jackson's cannon and watching Hazzard's battery as it swept the White Oak Swamp Bridge with a storm of grape and cannister that kept even Jackson at bay. The cannoneers fell one by one – were thinned out until the officers not yet killed or wounded dismounted and took their places at the guns. It was whispered that their ammunition was giving out – was most gone – a few rounds more and the last shell would be fired, and then Jackson and his 35,000 men would pour across the bridge and up the heights to learn what sort of stuff we were made of.

But this was not to be. Just as we were gathering ourselves together for the apparently fast coming struggle, there came a yell from the rear, a sound of desperately galloping horses, and with slashing whips Pettits' battery came tearing on at the top of their horses' speed, General Naglee leading them into position. Ours, as did all the regiments massed in the big field, rose and cheered Naglee and the artillerymen as they swept by. Inside of a minute from their first appearance, they were in position, unlimbered, and were sweeping the bridge with grape and cannister.

Away on the left, at Glendale, there was fighting, and hard fighting too. Our men were so hard pressed that Franklin felt obliged to return two brigades to Sedgwick that he had borrowed from him. And our old commander, Colonel Caldwell, who had been with us during the day (now a Brigadier-General and commanding a brigade in Richardson's division), marched away with his brigade too, and rendered effective service in beating the masses of the enemy off.

They attacked at several points in their efforts to break through the lines of our men covering the roads by which our supply, ammunition and artillery trains were retreating to Malvern Hill. Slocum, on the Charles City road, was attacked at half-past one o'clock, but held his position by a sweeping artillery fire. Then, McCall, at Glendale, a point half way to Malvern Hill, was heavily attacked. McCall and many of his men and guns were captured, but the strength of the rebel blow was exhausted in the necessary effort, so that Sumner, whose line had been in the rear of McCall's, letting the broken troops through, opened heavily with artillery and musketry, repulsing all the enemy's efforts to break his line. Later in the day an attempt was made on Porter, stationed at Malvern Hill. He, too, by the aid of the gunboats, maintained his position. As night fell, we prepared to retreat. The abandoned ponton train was set on fire, and by its flaring light we moved back, marching on and on until morning found us in position with our own division at Malvern Hill.

The line of battle stretched around Malvern Hill, which is a point on the James River of perhaps sixty feet in height with a broad cleared top. Our line of defence made a huge semicircle, the flanks on the river and under protection of the gunboats. Our own position was on the right flank, close to the river. But a third of the troops of our army were actually engaged in the battle of July 1st, 1862. It was an artillery battle; the hill was crowned with sixty pieces of artillery, planted to sweep all possible openings by which troops could advance. Magruder and D. H. Hill made determined efforts to withstand their fire but, when supplemented with a rolling infantry fire, no troops could stand it. Night fell with our position undisturbed at any point.

As for me, I slept through most of the uproar; slept the sleep of the thoroughly tired-out. And I understand that all that could of the army did so too, refreshing tired Nature against the hour of need; many of the troops actually engaged waking to do their brief part in repelling an assault, and that done, to lie down in their line of battle to fall asleep again.

When darkness set in the retreat was continued. Troops, batteries and trains moved towards Harrison's Landing all night. Morning broke, the heavens opened, and torrents of rain descended. Our division lay in a covering position to oppose any advance the enemy might make, but he had given up the chase. With our troops already on the James, under cover of our gunboats, he knew it was madness to pursue further. So, the sodden, tired men, the trains of wounded, batteries and wagons floundered unmolested through the mud into Harrison's Landing, and not till all were past us, the last straggling man and wagon, did we of the rear guard move into that haven of rest and safety for the beaten, battered, exhausted Army of the Potomac.

HARRISON'S LANDING

At Harrison's Landing our regiment was encamped on the left of the line, close to the river. There was but one alarm here, that of the morning of August 1, when the enemy ran some light guns to the opposite bank of the James and opened fire on the landing. For about thirty minutes there was a lively exchange of shot and shell between their battery and our gunboats, when the enemy fell back, and troubled us no more.

Here we remained until the middle of August, our life a monotony of picket duty in an open field, baking, sweltering under a hot sun, with only such shelter as kennels made of sticks and wheat straw afforded. In camp, a well shaded one fortunately, we lazily slept the time away, drilling occasionally, but not often, though when General Emory took command of our brigade here, General Naglee going north on leave, he established a series of brigade drills, the chief amusement in which, to the rank and file, was to see the commanders of the different regiments gallop up to the General after each awkward movement to receive the maledictory criticisms of that outraged old cavalry warrior on their evident ignorance of what to him was as familiar as winking. They passed his encomiums along to their line officers on returning to their regiments you may be sure, and the line officers took it out of their "non coms," who cursed the men for their stupidity, who damned the man who invented tactics and themselves for having been such fools as to enlist for soldiers with which officers could play shuttlecock and battledore.

Finally, the preparations for the evacuation of the Landing being completed, we of Keyes' Corps moved away from it the 16th of August. The 17th we crossed the Chickahominy near the mouth of the James, crossing on a ponton bridge of two thousand feet in length, reached Williamsburg the 18th, went into camp about where we did when there in May, marching to Yorktown the 20th.

YORKTOWN

All of the army but two divisions of our corps now took transports to go to the relief of Pope and Burnside, and to fight the battle of Antietam. Two divisions of our corps were left on the Peninsula; Couch's going with the main army. Our brigade took position at Yorktown, and proceeded to strengthen the defences of that place to enable it to resist any attack from the direction of Richmond. The work was soon completed, but we were not troubled by the enemy. Once a raid of Confederate cavalrymen on Williamsburg created a flurry of anticipation, but nothing came of it except an opportunity for General Emory to see the regiments promptly take their previously assigned positions. The General soon after this left us, General Naglee having returned, and it was known that though General Emory had taken command reluctantly, preferring his old command naturally, yet that he left us with characteristic and vigorous asseverations of regret at having to do so. Shortly before his leaving, the so-called "'62 men" joined us. Their recruits were rather looked down on at first by the "veterans" of one campaign, and for a time were kept in open-mouthed admiration by a few true, and many apocryphal, stories of the valor and endurance the story-tellers declared they themselves had so lately displayed. The men of '62 that D received were all good men and true, and added no little to the good fellowship of the company as well as to its strength. Many of them coming from seaboard towns, some of them seafaring men, they brought a new and rather desirable element, a jovial, adventurous one, into the ranks, until now almost entirely made up of plodding farmers.

Two expeditions were fitted out from Yorktown, in both of which D took a part, one to Matthews County and the other to Gloucester Court House. As Captain Maxfield, then a private of Company C, was an active participant in both these movements, and the compiler of these sketches was in neither, Captain Maxfield will tell of what befell the troops of these expeditions.

MATTHEWS COUNTY

Nov. 22, '62. Nine companies of the regiment left camp between 8 and 9 p.m., and embarking on the gunboats Mahaska and Putnam and the tugboat May Queen, proceeded down the York River and up the Chesapeake Bay. They entered the Mob Jack Bay about 8.30 a.m. on the 23d, and proceeded up the East River, where they landed in Matthews County, Va., at 11.30 a.m. The force was divided and sent to different plantations, where they destroyed large quantities of salt and salt works, or salt kettles. The male portion of the community were taken and held as prisoners while we remained. The writer was in the detachment commanded by Captain Libby of Company A, and went to the plantation of Sands Smith. We shall never forget the warlike picture of little Pete Neddo of Company A breaking the big kettles with a sledge hammer, or the poor old negro woman, whose son had run away a few months previous and had accompanied us as one of the guides of the expedition, at sight of the boy. She threw herself on her knees and with hands upraised, exclaimed "Is this Jesus Christ! Is it God Almighty!" Nor could we refrain from expressing the wish that this "cruel war" was over when we made prisoners of the old gentleman and the young men who had come to his house to spend the pleasant Sunday afternoon in the society of his lovely daughters. We returned to the gunboats soon after dark.

At 9 a.m. on the 24th, as we were about getting under way for our return, a farmer came in with a flag of truce, who said a supply train was passing at a short distance and could be easily captured. The force on the Putnam, consisting of Companies A, C and D, was landed, and under command of Captain S. H. Merrill of Company I, ordered to reconnoitre for one hour. We advanced about three miles, which brought us in sight of Matthews Court House, where there appeared to be a small force. After commencing our retreat we found we were pursued by a body of cavalry. Lieutenant F. M. Johnson and Corporal J. F. Keene of Company D, who allowed themselves to be separated from the command, were taken prisoners. We immediately returned to Yorktown, where we arrived about sundown.

No field officer of the Eleventh accompanied this expedition, it being under the command of Major Cunningham of the Fifty-second Pennsylvania Volunteers.

GLOUCESTER COURT HOUSE

Dec. 11, '62. The regiment left camp before sunrise, crossed the York River to Gloucester Point, and in company with the Fifty-second Pennsylvania, Fifty-sixth and One Hundredth New York, and Battery H, First New York Artillery, took up the line of march for Gloucester Court House, where we arrived at 4 p.m. We remained in the vicinity of the Court House, sending out foraging parties in different directions, who captured herds of cattle, sheep, mules and some fine horses. The cavalry, which led the advance from Gloucester Point, advanced to within a few miles of the Rappahannock. The expedition was commanded by General Henry M. Naglee, and was intended as a diversion in rear of the rebel army during the battle of Fredericksburg.

We commenced our retreat just after sunset on the 14th, and arrived in camp at 3.30 a.m. on the 15th, without the loss of a man, bringing our captured herds and the prisoners captured by the cavalry.

One of the incidents of this expedition occurred when a member of the Eleventh attempted to pay for certain articles of food at a house near the Court House. The occupant absolutely refused to accept greenbacks, but one of his comrades perceiving the dilemma, produced a bill on the Bank of Lyon's Kathairon, a patent medicine advertisement, which the lady readily received, supposing it to be genuine Confederate money.

THE DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH

In December we began to hear rumors that our brigade was to take part in an expedition to the further South, and soon active preparations for a movement were going on around us. The sick were sent North, ammunition and other supplies were plentifully provided, transports began to swing at anchor in the bay, and the 26th of the month we of the Eleventh found ourselves sailing away on the old steamer Cahawba in company with the 98th New York, General Naglee and staff, and the brigade band, bound for Morehead City, where we arrived the first day of January, 1863.

We had a stormy passage, especially off Cape Hatteras. Here we saw the original Monitor in tow of the transport steamer Rhode-Island, passing closely enough to them towards night to see the heavy seas washing over the Monitor's low decks, to the evident discomfort of the bare-legged seamen. Before morning the Monitor had gone down, but her crew was saved by the Rhode-Island.

We landed at Morehead City and marched to Carolina City, a few miles away, where we went into camp. The term city as applied to these and other Southern places is usually mighty misleading. For example, Carolina City consists even now of little more than a railroad depot, and Morehead City is but a little larger.

Our brigade remained comfortably encamped at Carolina City for a few weeks, our idea being that we were intended to form part of a force to descend upon Wilmington.