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

And, when the Eleventh went on board the Cahawba again, this time in company with the 104th Pennsylvania instead of the 98th New York, and put to sea in company with a fleet of transports carrying our new division, we thought that Wilmington was our objective point. General Naglee, now the commander of the division our expedition consisted of, was on board the Cahawba with his staff, as was Colonel Davis, now again in command of our brigade, and his staff. We soon learned that we were bound for Port Royal, S.C., and that to capture Charleston was the object of our expedition.

But though we went on board the Cahawba the 20th day of January, it was not till the afternoon of the 29th that we put to sea. We arrived at Port Royal January 31st, and entering the harbor, found ourselves one of a large and growing fleet of transports and gunboats. The 3d of February we sailed up Port Royal Sound to Beaufort, where we landed that the Cahawba might be cleaned, then reembarked on it the next day and returned to Port Royal. We were not landed again for some days, and the warm Southern sun operating on men as crowded together as we were, without opportunity for exercise and proper cleanliness, was not conducive to good health. Sickness cropped out, ship fever prevailed to an alarming extent, and a number of the Eleventh died before the troops were landed at St. Helena Island, which they were on the 10th of February. Landing, our regiments went into camp, and winter as it was, we found it necessary to cover our tents with an awning of palmetto branches spread on a frame work of crotched uprights and cross sticks.

The health of the men improved rapidly. Their life was rather monotonous – drill, dress parades, reviews by Major-General Hunter and guard mountings taking up the time. The enemy was not near us, the labyrinth of rivers and waterways surrounding the nest of Islands known as Port Royal, enabling the light draught gunboats of the fleet to keep them on the inland, well out of our way.

Captain Stanwood of D had resigned before now, its First Sergeant, Brady, had been promoted to Second Lieutenant of Company G, and Second Lieutenant Butler, of Company H, was made First Lieutenant of D, and commanded the company.

The 4th day of April, the regiment, the 104th Pennsylvania, with General Naglee, Colonel Davis, and their staffs again reembarked on the old Cahawba, and the 5th sailed in a fleet for the North Edisto Inlet. Anchoring in that now crowded roadstead, we waited the success of the fleet's attack on Charleston, when the division was to land and march on that city. But the fleet found the forts guarding Charleston Harbor beyond their weight, so clearly so that as Admiral Ammen puts it, "even the common sailors knew that Charleston could not be taken without a protracted siege." The only thing left for us all to do, was to return to Port Royal, which we did the 10th of April, the old Cahawba leaving the swiftest of the fleet out of sight on the run, even sacrilegiously running by the "Flag Ship" of our transport squadron, and entering Port Royal while that seat of authority was still hull down.

It was our last cruise on the steamer Cahawba. Afflicted as it was with the third plague of Egypt, it had been our home for so many days, had borne us safely over such a stretch of water, in storm and calm, that we had a rough affection for the stout old transport; and for Mr. Davis, her second mate, too. We had heard the command from the wheel-house so often of "Stand by your anchor, Mr. Davis," and the hoarse return of that old mariner, "Ay, ay, Sir," that he seemed part of the ship itself. As the regiment came alongside in a small steamer to go on board the Cahawba, to take a part in this very expedition, and our men saw the head of the rough old sailor peering over the side of the Cahawba at them, what a yell of "Stand by your anchor, Mr. Davis," rang out of five hundred throats. I am sorry to have to state that instead of the orthodox reply to this nautical command, Mr. Davis only growled "There's that damned Eleventh Maine again." The Cahawba steamed up the Sound to Beaufort with us the 11th of April, where the regiment landed and went into camp.

Lieutenant Butler, who had been ill for a day or so, now grew worse rapidly. His disease proved to be a malignant fever. He died April 14th. We buried him in the cemetery in Beaufort, with the military honors due his rank. His grave was near that of another young officer, one who had died in the Mexican war, and whose body had been brought home to be buried. I remember that over the young South Carolinian's grave stood a monument representing the trunk of a young palmetto tree, its top broken off. Where Butler is buried I do not know, at his old home, I hope; and if he sleeps under the marble representation of a young, prematurely splintered pine tree, it is fitting. Young, handsome, intelligent, respected and admired by his men, cut down at his post in his years of high promise, wherever his grave is, it is that of a true son of our old Pine Tree State.

Our sojourn at Beaufort was a pleasant one. The town, though now sadly neglected, retained all its beauty of semi-tropical flowers and plants, and, under a beautiful sky, in an enervating climate, we took lazy comfort in our camp on the bank of the river. Besides a plentiful supply of regular rations, the men of D were here regaled with luscious blackberries. They grew abundantly in the neighborhood, and the negroes were delighted to exchange quantities of them for our broken victuals. We had a big Quartermaster's "fly" pitched for our company and a long table built down the center of the space it covered, with benches fitted on each side of it. And when the table was set for breakfast with bright tin dishes – the men's plates and cups – with a ration of good white bread by each plate that our own Prince Dunifer had baked for us at the post bakery, with hot coffee in the cups, and mess-pans filled with baked beans strewed along it, that table was a sight for a hungry soldier. And at dinner, with boiled beef and rice in place of the beans, it looked appetizing enough, too But at supper, with tea in place of the coffee, and with each plate well filled with ripe blackberries to eat with the white bread, and with dishes of brown army sugar to pass around among the sweet-toothed, it bordered on the luxurious. But where was the soldier that was ever satisfied with his rations? Not in Company D, anyway. Under the leadership of one or two past masters in the art, the men growled at even these rations until the cooks threatened to reduce themselves to the ranks. This would not do. The Articles of War didn't seem to cover the case, providing neither shooting nor hanging for this particular offense. When, lo, some one in authority had a bright thought. It was adopted, the cooks returned to the ranks, and the leaders in the grumbling mutiny, somewhat aghast, found themselves in charge of the cook house. They were told that such excellent critics of cookery must needs be good cooks, but the argument didn't hold good, though seemingly logical, for they proved not to be good cooks; nay, they were the worst ones D ever had. The men tried to swallow their discontent from very shame, but they could not swallow the victuals. The discontent became an uproar, with the result that the old cooks returned to the cook house, and if the men of D grumbled thereafter beyond the wide latitude military custom allows, they took good care to do so, as Corporal Annis used to smoke, with their heads under their blankets.

FERNANDINA, FLORIDA

The fourth day of June the Eleventh went on board the steamer Boston and sailed for Fernandina, Fla., to relieve the 7th New Hampshire.

Fernandina, a city of two or three thousand inhabitants, is situated on the Cumberland Sound side of Amelia Island, a large island off the Florida coast particularly, though from Fernandina in sight of a southeastern bit of the State of Georgia.

For four months we garrisoned Amelia Island; those of the Eleventh that did not go from there to Morris Island with Lieutenant Sellmer of D, who took a detachment made up of men from Companies C, E, G and K, to the siege of Charleston, they manning the famous Swamp Angel battery. We that were left behind at Fernandina, excepting Companies A, stationed at the Railroad Bridge, and C, garrisoning Fort Clinch at the mouth of the harbor, were languidly occupied for these four months with our camp and picket duties, the picket one being the only duty at all arduous. This picket service was entirely confined to guarding the railroad that comes into Fernandina from across a bridgeable point of the sound. In fact, this was the only way the enemy could get at us except by boats, the road running through a series of the swamps, the south half of Amelia Island seeming to be formed of hummocks of comparatively dry ground. It was on some of these hummocks that our picket posts were stationed, on rises of ground in the middle of alligator and snake-invested swamps, where a breed of the most sanguinary mosquitoes imaginable filled the air at night to an extent that not only made it impossible for a man to sleep, but forced him to keep his already net-covered head in a thick smudge of smoke.

Admiral Ammen says that Amelia Island contributed so little to the purpose of the Confederates, that, though they fought for Port Royal, they made us a present of Amelia Island, evacuating it so thoroughly, Fort Clinch and all, that but a few rifle shots were fired from thickets on the fleet that captured it. Still, whether from pride or wholesome military caution I know not, still our commander would have it that we occupied a post of extreme danger, and that we were liable to be surprised and overwhelmed by a superior force at any time. And one night for some reason yet unknown to me, there came a general alarm, routing out all of our little army, even the peaceful camp guard being aroused from its slumbers and its sergeant ordered to fall his men in and follow the commander of the post. The commander led us to the road that runs from Fernandina to Old Town (once the Fernandina itself), near Fort Clinch, and we followed him into the swamp that lies between the old and the new towns, a swamp that is an impassable jungle of trees and tangled grape vines, the haunt of alligators and snakes and the breeding place of the most blood-thirsty breed of mosquitoes I ever had fasten upon me, led us down into the head of the narrow corduroy road running across this swamp, and bade us stand there and hold the pass at all hazards, for all I now remember throwing out a few encouraging words about the fame of Thermopyle and the Immortal Three Hundred, then turned and rode away towards Fernandina, with his orderly dangling at his heels, leaving us in the midst of a dense and ever-thickening cloud of bayonet-billed mosquitoes.

The enemy? Suppose he was to land at Old Town, take Fort Clinch, and put Captain Nickels and its garrison to the sword, must we stand there and be eaten alive for a little thing like that? Not if we knew it. We forthwith resolved ourselves into a council of war, with the result that we marched ourselves to the high land overlooking the swamp, where the night breeze swept the pursuing mosquitoes back into their haunts. Then, after stationing a guard between us and Fernandina to prevent our alert commander from surprising us, we went into bivouac, confident that our danger did not lie towards Fort Clinch, for neither loyal nor rebel was yet so desperate as to tread that stretch of mosquito, alligator, snake-infested swamp road in the darkness of a moonless night. After some weeks spent on this, then isolated island, where a mail steamer from Port Royal put in only about once in three weeks, and no other vessel, except the gunboat cruising on the Cumberland Sound station, ever put in except when forced to by an extraordinary Atlantic gale, the Eleventh was relieved by the 97th Pennsylvania, and October 6th went on board the Boston again to proceed to Morris Island, that it might take part in the siege of Charleston.

MORRIS ISLAND

Morris Island is but a strip of white sand on the Atlantic Ocean, at the mouth of Charleston Harbor. It runs north and south nearly, and is about four miles long. Its broad southerly end lying well out of the range of the enemy's fire, served as a camp-ground for troops not actively engaged in the siege and for headquarter and depot purposes. Narrowing as it approaches Sumter, till Fort Wagner completely barred all further progress at fairly high water, the island ends in a hooked projection known as Cummings' Point. It was on this point that Beauregard built Battery Gregg as long ago as when Sumter was forlornly garrisoned by Major Anderson.

From Cummings' Point it is but 1300 yards to Sumter, due northwest, and but four miles to Charleston City, looking about directly west across the bay, and is but about a mile and a half across to the batteries on Sullivan's Island, where Moultrie and its batteries lay beyond Sumter and to its east Sullivan's Island running about east for a short distance and then bearing rapidly towards the northeast, the north end of Morris pointing to about the western end of Sullivan's. To the west of the upper part of Morris Island, across a marshy tideway, through which flows Vincent Creek, James Island points a blunt end to Morris, the length of James forming the southern boundary line of Charleston Harbor. Outside of James, on the Atlantic, and separated from James by the Stono River, lies Folly Island, with Black Island wedged in between Folly, James and Morris.

When we reached Morris Island the tragedy of the siege was over, the whole of the island was in Union possession, and Wagner and Gregg were being rebuilt from the wreck occasioned by the terrible bombardment they had undergone, were being turned and armed to operate on the enemy's batteries on James and Sullivan's Islands, Sumter standing no longer as the chief, though still as an important factor in the problem of getting into Charleston, it having been battered from its aggressive symmetry into a silent, crumbling ruin. But from something like sentimental reasons it was still considered the central point of offense and defense, the rebel flag still flying defiantly over its ruined bastions, the garrison burrowing in bomb proofs that every shrieking shell of ours but added to the strength of, crumbling and tumbling the broken stone work in yet deeper depths above them. From these burrows they watched for night sallies from shore and fleet, and by the aid of the enfilading fire of the guns of James and Sullivan's Islands, succeeded in beating all off that were made upon them.

As the fatigue parties worked with shovel and spade in the sand of Fort Wagner and of Battery Gregg, the lookouts on the parapets would see a round cloud of white smoke fly into the air, from James Island perhaps. Then, with a cry of "James Island," they would leap from the parapets to cover, while the busy shovelers would scatter for shelter, instinctively taking cover under the sand walls next James Island till the projectile, shot or shell, from gun or mortar, had exploded and the fragments had buried themselves deep in the sand. Or, the cry might be "Sullivan," then the cover was sought for under the sand walls next that island. As soon as the danger was over, all rushed back to their work again. But sometimes this enfilading fire would become so vigorous a one as to force the men to quit work for a time and take shelter in the great bomb proofs and magazines, built of squared logs, banked and heaped with such depths of sand that even the fifteen-inch shells of the ironclads has failed to make any impression on them during their bombardment. All this time our own batteries on Morris Island were keeping up a steady fire upon Sumter and the other rebel fortifications, the fleet taking advantage of good weather to leave their stations outside the rebel line of fire to steam in and join in the roaring chorus.

Our regiment was encamped in the shelter of some sand hills about halfway down the island. From this camp details of men for fatigue duty were sent to the upper part of the island to take part in the fortification building going on there, D men with the rest. But in a short time a number of D were detailed to serve as artillerymen in Battery Chatfield, a work on Cummings' Point, and so many of D were in this detail that it may be said that the Company was on artillery service in the mortar battery of Chatfield, where, under Lieutenant Sellmer's practical tuition, they soon became able heavy artillerymen. The men of C, E, G and K, who had served with Lieutenant Sellmer in the Swamp Angel Battery, were in this detail also.

Our battery work was mainly directed against ruined Sumter. Day after day we trained the mortars on that crumbling fortress, sending their ten-inch shells high in the air to drop into Sumter and burst there. After a shot was fired it was watched by Lieutenant Sellmer through glasses, and its effect noted, whether it fell into the fort or outside of it, whether it burst in the air or after striking its objective point, the men at work in the magazine filling the flannel bags each charge of powder weighed out was enclosed in, receiving orders to put in more or less powder as the Lieutenant noted the effects of the shots, and those cutting the fuses receiving their orders to cut them shorter or longer from the same observations. As Lieutenant Sellmer observed the effects of the shots, Lieutenant Charles H. Foster of Company K, detailed to assist Lieutenant Sellmer, as he had in the Swamp Angel Battery, would note on a prepared form the results given him by Lieutenant Sellmer, so keeping a tabulated statement of each day's work during its progress, the number of shots fired and their individual results.

Sometimes these results were plain to all of us. A shot would fall into the fort and a whirl of flying fragments of stone or a leaping barbette caisson would tell us just where it had struck, and just what its effect was, and a few times we succeeded in our unceasing endeavor to bowl the rebel flag down. But to the credit of the garrison of Sumter, it must be said, that no sooner was it down than some brave fellow would mount to the parapet and set it flying again.

There is rarely any great loss of life through artillery firing. While the singing of minie balls has an ominous sound in the ears of the most hardened veteran, the roar of a battery, except at close quarters, when throwing grape and canister, is not very alarming to him. Why, at the great artillery duel of White Oak Swamp, in June, 1862, our loss, except in artillerymen, was slight, and the artillerymen killed and wounded were mostly picked off by the rebel sharpshooters, while General "Dick" Taylor, who commanded the Confederate troops immediately across the bridge, says that severe as was our fire, their loss from shells was but a small one. So, in all the wild uproar at the siege of Charleston, our loss from flying shells was ridiculously small, viewed from the standpoint of infantry engagements, the careful watch the outlooks kept from the parapets, the facility for shelter, and the promptness of the men in getting into safe places, saving many lives and limbs. But there were several narrow escapes, and some curious ones too. How shall we account for that of Lieutenant Foster, who after remaining comfortably seated for hours upon an empty ammunition box on the parapet of Chatfield, entirely ignoring the fast coming shots of the enemy, suddenly rose and stepped off the parapet, and just as he stepped off it, the box he had been seated on went into the air, struck by a piece of shell! And that of Private Darling, who, working at a mortar, suddenly stepped backwards just in time to save himself from being cut in two by the whistling copper bottom of a Brooks' rifle shell that went flying right across the spot he had just stood on. But it was not all so bloodless. One day, the 8th of December, a mortar shell struck the magazine of Chatfield in its weakest spot, and went crashing into it. For a moment we outside the magazine were panic stricken, expecting the immediate bursting of the shell and the blowing up of the magazine, in which we had many barrels of powder stored. But fortunately the shell was so surrounded with the tons of sand that poured into the magazine with it, that its bursting flame was completely smothered and did not touch a grain of our powder. We hastened to dig our buried men out, and found Corporal Albee, of C, killed by a piece of the shell, Private Kimball, of E, mortally wounded, and Sergeant Howard, of K, Corporal Bearce and Privates Maddox and Bragdon, of D, more or less severely injured.

We worked at our batteries during the day only, as a rule, returning to the regimental camp each night, leaving the batteries to be defended from any attempt of the enemy to occupy them by the heavy and light guns of direct fire, and by the infantry force that was marched up the island each night and ensconced in the bomb proofs of Wagner and Gregg. But such an attack never came, the Confederates contenting themselves with long range demonstrations, though frequently indulging in a heavy night shelling of our works, as if to cover a landing.

At these times the air would be full of artillery pyrotechnics, the flaring of bursting shells, and the sparkling arcs of mortar shells with their flaming fuses, described by an old writer as appearing in the night to be "fiery meteors with flaming tails, most beautifully brilliant." A fine exhibition for those out of range.

In December, reenlistments began from among the original men of the regiment, though they had a year yet to serve, proving to us that the government had settled down into the conviction that the war was far from being near its end. Many of D put their names on the reenlistment roll.

Later on, the 23d of January, 1864, D, with B, entered Fort Wagner as part of its garrison. It was really a sort of going into winter quarters – without the winter – for you could lie out of doors, under one blanket, in the nights of December and January, and sleep as comfortably as a soldier need to.

The siege of Charleston was really abandoned by now, and the troops that had been engaged in it were only held in hand until the time should come for them to go to Virginia to engage in graver operations.

Though regularly trained to use the thirty-two and the one-hundred pound Parrot guns Wagner was mainly armed with, we did not fire them often now except for range practice, or to send a shell now and then shrieking into Charleston. We usually aimed at the tall white steeple of St. Michael's Church, the most prominent object in the foreground of the city, and a most useful one to the Confederates, for a bright light kept burning at night from this steeple served as a guide to blockade runners. Getting the light within a certain range of one on Sumter and they could keep the channel and glide safely into the harbor. Not always, though. Early one foggy morning, that of February 2d, just after daybreak, a sentry called the attention of the sergeant of the guard to a patch of harder color in the soft atmospheric gray of the fog bank that lay between us and Sullivan's Island. A hasty inspection and a sudden lift of the fog showed us that there was a blockade runner fast ashore under Moultrie.

The alarm was quickly given, and in a few minutes a hundred-pound shell was whirling through the fog at the grounded blockade runner, the powerful impact of the shell serving to lift the fog enough to show us the lead colored vessel, with hundreds of men swarming in and out of it, engaged in a desperate attempt to unload freight before the Yankees should discover her presence. There was a wild scattering at the sound of the coming shell, the runner was left to serve us as a target, and we sent shell after shell into her until she was but a wreck.

Our Confederate friends would still favor us with a serenade of shot and shell in spite of our peaceful demeanor. And once or twice they did this so vigorously as to cause the commanding general to think they were really on the point of attacking us with infantry. Beauregard says that he made one of these night bombardments to give our commander just that idea to cover his own withdrawal of troops to Florida to General Finegan, about the time the battle of Olustee was fought in that state. Regiments of our troops would then come to Wagner to stand at the parapets all night, while we artillerymen worked the guns to keep down the enemy's fire. It was in one of these bombardments, that of Christmas night, that Private Laffin, of D, was so badly wounded, a piece of shell striking the bayonets of some stacked rifles, one of the pieces of shattered steel penetrating a leg.