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

General Grant came across the river to the Plains that afternoon and made a personal observation of the rebel position, and deciding that not much could be done there, returned to his headquarters, from which he telegraphed General Meade that he did not wish Hancock to assault, but for him to hold his position for another day. For, though foiled in his attempt to make a dash on Richmond, Grant had learned that the reinforcements the rebels had hurried across the James had left their Petersburgh lines guarded by three infantry divisions only, while but one cavalry division remained on that side of the river, and now hoped by threatening demonstrations to keep the rebel force on the north side, out of the way of the column he was already forming to assault the Petersburgh lines. In obedience to Grant's wishes, Hancock and Sheridan spent another day in holding the heavy rebel force far from the scene of Grant's new hopes, hurrying back to Petersburgh with their troops the night of the 29th, to take part in the assault that was to follow the mine explosion set for the morning of July 30th. The explosion took place as planned, but for various reasons the results were as disastrous to the Union as to the Confederate army. Returning to our camp at Deep Bottom, we spent a few days in comparative quietude, while a new movement in which we were to take part was in process of evolution.

General Grant had received information that General Lee was strongly reenforcing Early, now operating in the Valley, and believed the reenforcements were so largely taken from the troops on the north side of the James as to give a chance for a more successful operation on that side of the river than our late one had been. The troops to be engaged in this second attempt were largely those engaged in the first, the Second Corps, part of the Tenth, and a cavalry force under General Gregg, all to be under Hancock's command. But instead of marching directly across the river as before, Hancock's corps was to embark on transports at City Point and move down the river in the afternoon, to give the Confederate spies the idea that it was going to the Valley, but under the cover of the night the transports were to run back to Deep Bottom, the troops were to disembark at Strawberry Plains, move rapidly in the morning, turn the enemy's line on Bailey's Creek, and push for Richmond. But through lack of proper landing places the second corps was not disembarked until eight o'clock instead of at daybreak.

The part of the Tenth Corps men in the programme was that we were to assault in our front, which we did promptly at daybreak, the Second Corps' historian stating that we opened fire at five o'clock.

The Eleventh held the part of the picket lines running through the woods in front of Deep Bottom the night before the 14th of August. Though so far from the river we pickets had a suspicion that something was on foot. The ponton bridge crossing to Strawberry Plains was muffled, yet we could distinctly hear the rumble of the artillery and the tramping of the horses of Gregg's cavalry division as they crossed it, and the screeching of steamboat whistles was too continuous for secrecy too, though necessary from the darkness of the night and the crowding of so many boats in the narrow channel. If we heard it, and our suspicions were aroused by it, then our contiguous friends, the enemy, whose pickets could hear it all as well as we could, must have been forewarned of what was coming in the morning.

But we of the Eleventh had no idea that we were to take the sharp initiative that we did. In the early morning of the 14th Colonel Plaisted rode up to the reserve of D and directed Lieutenant Norris to deploy the reserve, move out to the picket line and advance with it until he met the enemy, then to press forward and capture his exterior lines. (Lieutenant Grafton Norris, of Company F, was in detailed command of D, Lieutenant Maxfield having gone North on an overdue leave of absence). The movement directed by the Colonel was immediately proceeded with, and in less time than it takes to tell it we had moved out, and our skirmish line was moving rapidly through the woods and was on the enemy's pickets. We forced them back on their reserve, stationed behind a strong line of rifle pits, with partly open ground before them immediately in front of D's skirmishers. This line ran along the top of the reverse side of a dip of the ground, covering a wood road that ran directly down this dip before crossing their line. As the men of D reached this road in hot pursuit of the enemy, its inviting smoothness led them to converge on it, and, frantic now with anticipation, to charge the enemy's works without orders. Lieutenant Norris and Sergeant Young saw the danger and tried hard to prevent this movement, rushing among the men to drive them out of the road, but before they had an appreciable time to enforce their commands in a withering rifle fire of the enemy swept the road, killing and wounding several of our men. In spite of this severe check the officers held their men close up to the enemy's works, on which we opened an eager fire. For a time our line was kept back by the enemy, but suddenly the exertions of our men were rewarded, the rebel line beyond our company's left giving way just as the enemy in our front had ceased firing; and D took so quick an advantage of the opening that before the startled and momentarily confused enemy fairly knew what was happening we had mounted their works and were in possession of them.

We found that their slackened fire meant that they had not had their breakfasts any more than had we, and that they had relinquished firing in fancied security until they should have strengthened the inner man. Their untouched rations of freshly cooked bread, cooked in Dutch ovens after the peculiar Southern style, with the side of fat bacon left behind them, satisfied the sharp monitions of several Yankee appetites.

The enemy had retreated to the main line, from which they opened a sharp artillery fire on us. This line across a wide field was so very formidable in appearance that an assault was not ordered.

Of D, Privates Hall, Shepard and Stanley had been killed, Corporals Keene, Weymouth and Privates Samuel A. Bragdon, Collins, Wm. Sherman, Adelbert Stratton and Alfred C. Butler had been wounded; Weymouth mortally so. It is notable that Butler, an impetuous youth, fell close to the enemy's works, wounded in three places, and that his friend Bragdon received his mortal wound in a brave attempt to rescue him from his perilous position.

During the rest of the 14th we lay on the ground we had won, General Birney, our new Corps commander, having been ordered to suspend his operations on account of the delay attending the movements of the second corps. It was a terribly hot day in open ground, General Mott reporting that of two small regiments of his Second Corps division exposed to it 105 men were prostrated by the heat.

This intense heat may have had something to do with the slowness and weakness of the Second Corps assault, for it was not delivered until four o'clock, and then with but one brigade, others intended for the attacking column having become too demoralized to make it wise to push them forward. The only effect of this movement was to draw enough of the enemy from our front to enable part of our corps to capture a battery of four eight-inch howitzers.

The record states the night of the 14th the greater part of our Corps was marched to the vicinity of Fussell's Mills at the head of Bailey's Creek, and that the order for the 15th was that our Corps should find the enemy's left and attack Gregg's Cavalry covering our flank, but that General Birney took so wide a circuit that it was night before he found the enemy's left and took position.

As for the Eleventh, we seem to have been placed on the left for the 15th, near the pivot, for we moved but little. The recollection is that we lay along a road most of the day, sheltering ourselves from falling rain in the bordering woods as best we could. At night we went into bivouac in a handsome grove of trees, and our wagons coming up to deal out company rations, D had a company supper, First Sergeant Bassett having arrived with the cooks and the men who, for one reason or another other than sickness, had been left in camp when we went on picket.

The morning of the 16th broke clear and cloudless, too cloudless, for it was soon evident that the 16th was to be a day like the 14th, when the men of the Second Corps suffered so terribly in men and morale. The regiment was on the move very early in the day. In moving for position we were soon under an aggravating fire, marching and counter-marching with men dropping out wounded or killed, until we took position in a dense wood where we were somewhat sheltered by a bend of ground. Here a column for attack was formed, the 1st Maryland Cavalry dismounted, serving as infantry and temporarily attached to our brigade, on our right.

Anticipating the coming assault, the enemy had thrown a heavy skirmish line into a line of rifle pits running along enfilading points, to sweep the woods with a galling fire. It is very unpleasant to lie in action under such a fire and see comrades to your right and left struck by unseen foes. If a man has nerves they are soon in a quiver, and if he has not known he had any before, he learns that he is not made quite of iron after all. We found it so in the half hour we lay in this position and it was really a relief when scudding aids dismounted and darting through the woods from tree to tree brought the order to charge. Quickly we arose to our feet, and rushed forward with the wild cry which seems as necessary to a charging force as the breath with which they give it. Almost immediately we were subjected to the most severe fire we were ever under. No mere skirmish line this, but an outlying line of battle. The woods fairly rang with the screeching of the bullets; still we pushed on, when suddenly the 1st Maryland fell back, not directly back, but obliquing into our own now swaying line, and in another second in spite of the shouts of their maddened officers, the men of the two regiments were falling back in confused mass.

But the men of the Eleventh were not at all panic stricken. Getting themselves out of the line of fire they turned voluntarily, and shaking themselves clear of the dismounted cavalry, closed up their shattered line. In a minute they were ready to go in again, and as General Foster rode on the scene, galloping along the line of his brigade to make sure that his regiments were making ready for another rush, and rode up to the Eleventh calling out "Forward, Boys," we dashed ahead, and before the enemy could repeat the withering tactics of a few minutes before, had driven them headlong from their rifle pits and were pursuing them to their main intrenchments under a heavy fire poured on us from their main line, which ran along a ridge of ground covered by a wide slashing of heavy bodied trees, felled in all directions. In charging through it the men were somewhat protected by the heavy logs, and fortunately, too, the enemy must fire down hill, giving a tendency to over shooting, else not so many of us as did would have reached the crest of the hill. Before we did, many had tumbled headlong among the fallen logs, and how any of us reached it, few can tell, but we did, the rebels retiring with more rapidity than grace as we poured into their works.

Beyond the captured line we found a smooth field of perhaps a hundred and fifty yards in width, dipping into a wood bordered run. It was to this run that the enemy had withdrawn, and from it they kept up a rapid fire on us, our men returning it with the more spirit that we had found boxes of cartridges strewed along the enemy's side of the works, cartridges that fitted our guns perfectly, so furnishing us with a much needed supply of ammunition.

But the fire that annoyed us most was an enfilading one from across a run beyond the left flank of our regiment. Beyond this run, on higher ground than we occupied, the enemy had built works to sweep the front of the works we had just taken. From here, snugly ensconced behind a difficult run, and hid from us by a stout growth of trees, left standing to mask their position, they swept our flank with a terrible fire. Efforts were made to dislodge them by sending brigades down our front to charge the run, but the cross-fire the charging brigades were subjected to forced them to retreat to cover. Suddenly fierce yells from the rebel lines announced that they were receiving reenforcements. The position was becoming serious.

As Colonel Hill and Major Baldwin had been badly wounded the command of the Regiment devolved on Captain Merrill of Company I. Our men were falling rapidly and those left were exhausted by the efforts they had made under a blazing sun, yet when a thin line of the Second Corps moved out of the woods behind us and advanced as if to support us in a charge we were to make by way of our left on the aggravating work on that flank, our men raised a glad hurrah and gathered their energies for a mighty rush. But, alas, the Second Corps men could not endure the murderous sweep of the fire the alert enemy poured upon them from their flanking position, and quickly melted back into the timber.

Movements in our front indicated a gathering of Confederates for an assault. Anticipating it somewhat, and its result, of which there could be but one, the colors of the regiments were sent to the rear, and the word was passed along the line that when broken the regiments were to rally at the line of rifle pits we had taken in the morning, where the men would find their colors planted. Then came the roar and rush of the assault, a minute of fierce firing and yelling, and we were flying back to the sheltering woods, a storm of bullets whistling around us.

A citizen seeing how badly we were broken, our men fleeing into the woods without apparent formation or visible control, would have sworn that none of us would have stopped short of the James River, but I don't believe that a man of ours anyway went back a foot further than the captured rifle pits. There we gathered on our colors, every man in his place, and as the enemy came dashing through the woods after a supposed-to-be flying foe they quickly learned what it was that Paddy gave the drum. Of D, Private Hanscom was killed this day, and Privates Day, Googing, Leighton, McGraw, Bubier and White were wounded.

While these operations were going on, Gregg's cavalry, supported by General Miles with a brigade from the Second Corps, had moved up the Charles City road, driving the enemy's cavalry before them, until our cavalry had reached White Tavern, only seven miles from Richmond. Reenforcements reaching the Confederate cavalry, Gregg was in turn forced back upon Miles, both finally falling back to Deep Creek, a tributary of Deep Run, fighting as they retreated, holding one position until a portion of their men had taken a second one a half mile or so back of their advance one, then the advance line would fall back behind the new line and take up a position about half a mile or so further in the rear in their turn, all this time carrying their dead and wounded with them, the dead strapped across the led cavalry horses or in front of the troopers. Finally the hard pressed men reached the creek, behind which Gregg reestablished his line, Miles returning to Fussell's Mill to take position on the right flank of our corps. And Mott had been threatening the enemy along Bailey's Creek with a strong skirmish line to learn their force, finding their works strongly held everywhere.

General Birney, "Old Mass and Charge," proposed that we assault at five o'clock that afternoon, but the force the advance of his skirmish line developed made him abandon this idea. Besides, about then Gregg's line before Deep Creek was so strongly attacked as to compel him to cross the creek to the bank nearest us to sustain himself, it seeming clear enough that an advance would only bring us disaster. General Grant gave up the idea of pressing the movement further, determining though, as in July, that we must hold a threatening position for a few days longer to keep the heavy force of the enemy in our front while he launched a force from the other flank at the Weldon Road.

The night of the 16th we took position close to the enemy's works and began to throw up intrenchments. By morning, working in relays, we had a strong line of works thrown up right under the enemy's nose. Our position, that of the Eleventh, lay along the side of a steep hill, so that the battery crowning it could fire directly over our heads. Here we lay the 17th, so near the enemy that we could see into his works from the crest of the hill. The picket lines, really heavy skirmish ones, kept up a steady fire all along the line until in the afternoon of the 17th, when General Grant allowed a flag of truce to be sent out and a truce arranged to continue from four to six o'clock. Perhaps, springing from this truce, there was an almost voluntary cessation of firing between the pickets until a little after five o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, the 18th, when it broke out with a fury that indicated a pending assault on us.

The skylarking and frolic of the men ceased as the fire of the skirmishers increased in rapidity and volume, and every man went to his post sober and alert. Suddenly the battery behind us opened with a roar, our skirmishers came flying out of the woods and over our works, while behind them sounded the wild yell of a rebel charging column. As soon as our skirmishers were over our works, the herculean form of our Sergeant Young bringing up the rear, to be struck by a bullet as he leaped the parapet. As soon as they were out of the line of fire we opened a terrible fire, every man loading and firing for his life, but steadily, swiftly the heavy columns of the enemy poured from the woods, yelling and firing wildly, those behind pushing those in front, until it seemed as if the pandemonium of shrieking, rushing demons would roll over our works, by sheer weight of numbers, in spite of the fire mowing their front lines down. And just then, as if to complete our destruction, for to lose our line and be driven back into the tangled woods just at night, chased by a superior foe, far from a supporting column, meant the loss of our batteries and Andersonville for hundreds of us. Just then the 100th New York, on our right, broke and left their part of the works in spite of shrieking officers, General Foster himself dashing among them, yelling like a madman and brandishing his sword in a vain attempt to hold them. But the old 10th Connecticut had been held on reserve and was just rushing to the support of the Eleventh, and the men of the two regiments confident of each others support, strung along the gap like lightning until they had filled it after a manner, every man redoubling his efforts to hold the enemy, now surging at the rough abatis planted in the front of our hastily built line.

They had stood our terrible fire well until now, but they could not stand the cold steel we were ready to meet them with should they persist in crossing the works; they wavered, broke and fell back into the heavy woods between us.

That this was one of the most stubborn assaults of the war is shown by its lasting for twenty minutes, during which time General Walker of the Second Corps notes in his history of that corps, that the fire of musketry was tremendous.

Scarcely had we breathed ourselves, when word was passed that we were to retire at dark, and that we must do so very quietly, without noise or gun rattling, even the tin cups and plates of the men must be so placed in their haversacks as not to give out the monotonous clinking that usually tells that a line of troops is on the march. Then a little latter we stole through the dark woods, leaving Colonel Plaisted with a thousand men of various commands to cover our retreat to a new position. This change of position, or "contraction of the line" as the military historians call it, was rendered necessary to let Mott's division march away to Petersburgh to take the place of the Ninth Corps in the intrenchments there, so that Corps could support Warren's movement on the Weldon road. Nothing of interest took place in the remainder of the movement, and finally, after a few days spent in skirmishing and reconnoitering in the unrealized hope that a weak spot might be discovered in the enemy's line, we fell back to the river; the Second Corps and Gregg's cavalry went to Petersburgh, and we returned to our camp at Deep Bottom.

We had been away from it a week, a week of disaster to the regiment, and especially to D, for nineteen of the best men of the company had been killed or wounded during it – one half of its available duty members – and as its thin line filed into the familiar company street those that remained behind gave it a sober greeting, looking sadly for the many familiar faces they would never see again, it is no wonder the eyes of all were dimmed, or that emotional tenderhearted Sergeant Francis should break into tears of manly mourning. We slept the deep sleep of exhaustion in our rude canvas homes that night, but the next night, in the early darkness, the regiment was suddenly ordered to fall in and the men soon found themselves across the ponton bridge and on the road to Bermuda Hundred. Then it was whispered that we were on our way to take part in an assault to be made on the Howlett House Battery at daybreak. It is not strange that we were more surprised than gratified at this proof of confidence in our assaulting abilities, nor is it to be wondered at that the men murmured wrathfully at the idea of assaulting so strong an intrenched position as they knew the Howlett House one to be, armed with heavy guns, and always strongly supported. But for all their hopelessness they would have dashed forward none the less gallantly at the word of command, for they had seen too many dead men lately to fear death greatly, or to hope that if Richmond was to be taken they could long escape him; in short, had about adopted the philosophy of the old Confederate Colonel, who, in Magruder's desperate charge at Malvern Hill, was heard to shout to his shrinking men, "Forward men, Forward! Do you expect to live forever?" But we were not put to the test, for while we were yet en route a galloping aid brought us word that the idea of the assault had been abandoned, and we returned to our camp.

BEFORE PETERSBURGH

The brigade broke camp at Deep Bottom the 26th of August and marched to a position in the lines before Petersburgh, pitching the camp near the Jerusalem Plank Road. The routine of our duty as closely investing troops ran thus: one day of twenty-four hours we would be on the picket line in our front, placed along a run that intersected an exposed field, the enemy's picket line lying on the other side of the run. Here in the head-high holes some of our predecessors had dug, we shivered through the night, and broiled through the day, not daring to lift our heads above our rude earth-works until dark; firing and observing through the rude embrasures the banks of earth before our picket-holes were pierced with. When relieved, always at night, and just after dark, we would only fall back into the front line of works, (batteries connected by infantry parapets,) to remain there forty-eight hours. Then relieved by in-coming pickets we would fall back to our camp and remain until morning, the next day being spent on fatigue duty, strengthening the lines of works. Then after another twenty-four hours spent in camp we went on picket again. All this time in camp and out of it, we were under fire, the bullets of the enemy ever singing around our ears, whether we were on the picket line, the main one, the reserve one or in camp, an invested one lying behind a parapet and flanked with batteries of field pieces and gatling guns. And often in camp, in the night, a sudden commotion would take place, to tell that some poor fellow had been severely wounded or perhaps killed, while curling up to his tent-mate under their blankets. But we dreaded the picket line the most, especially the day hours of it, not on account of its danger, for it was a comparatively safe one, all knowing the danger of exposure and conforming to the necessity of keeping closely covered, but to lay for so many hours under a hot sun in a hole in the ground, with only "hard tack" and greasy boiled pork to eat, and the warm water of our – the night before filled – canteens to drink was very disagreeable. Then the certainty that a rush of the enemy meant death or imprisonment for all pickets on the line of attack was not a quieting one.