The Song of the Rappahannock

The work and exposure had been horrible. I remember, as we marched back to camp seeing one poor fellow, a member of a veteran regiment, who had apparently gone crazy under the strain; he was screaming and swearing wildly, while his comrades vainly strove to calm him.

By morning the failure of the enterprise, which was an attempt to surprise the enemy, was evident. The retreat of the army through the mud and the rain which followed was an experience the horror of which none that shared it can forget. The elements were the foes which prevailed against us then, and the demoralisation of the army was worse than any we ever saw inflicted by battle with mortals. Many men died from exposure and exhaustion. This was the famous "mud march."

Winter passed quickly after this, and with the spring came preparation for a new campaign. Our jaunty colonel had recovered his health and returned to duty; the list of field officers was completed by the appointment of a new lieutenant-colonel. All that we knew of him was that he had served with distinction upon General Hancock's staff. He was eccentric in manner, evidently unpractised in the handling of an infantry regiment, and we took to him none too kindly at first. But when we came to know him his high character, his resourcefulness and his noble courage won our admiration and our profound respect. He was destined soon to become the commander of the regiment.

The last step, the most important of all, in the making of the regiment was now before us. At the first Fredericksburg we had endured the trial of battle partially and passively. The more real and active experience was now before us. We were members of Sedgwick's Corps, whose brilliant capture of the Fredericksburg heights turned the tide of disaster at the battle of Chancellorsville and failed to pluck victory from defeat only because of the unaccountable inertness of the commander of the Union forces. Our regiment was one of those chosen to form part of one of the storming columns. It may seem strange that new troops should be selected for such perilous and difficult duty, yet this was often done. The new regiments were strong in numbers; they had not been decimated by battle and disease; and though less reliable than older battalions, when no complicated manœuvres were required, when the only thing was to go straight forward against a fire from the front their wild élan sometimes accomplished wonders. They were seldom spared in close battle; it was a way, though a costly one, to break them in and make soldiers of them. The heaviest losses often fell upon them.

Placed between two other regiments of the brigade, in a sunken road where we were sheltered from the enemy's fire, we anxiously awaited the signal for the assault. We could see something of the work before us. Nearly a mile of open field lay between us and the base of the hills whose crests were crowned with the Confederate earthworks, and every foot of that open ground was swept by their fire. It must be crossed before the storming column could reach the heaviest part of its task and begin the real assault upon those deadly hills. All along at our right, away up into the streets of Frederick a mile or more away other columns were stationed at intervals, some of them facing stronger defences than those against which our attack was to be directed.

At noon precisely, the signal guns boomed out and we sprang to the charge. From the very first our colonel blundered. He failed to obey his orders; he led us wildly in a wrong direction under the very guns of one of our own batteries. The hills in front of us flamed and roared with hostile fire and our men were beginning to fall, but this disturbed us less than the confusing orders which sent us now this way, now that. It seemed as though the regiment was doomed to disgrace, if not to destruction. Then it was that we discovered the heroic character of our lieutenant-colonel. Ignoring his incompetent and now helpless superior, he calmly assumed command and there, in the face of the enemy's fierce fire halted us, re-formed our disordered line and led us forward once more. There was no lack of courage in the men; they were willing to do all that could be asked of them. Throughout the remainder of that deadly though glorious charge the regiment proved that all it needed was what it had at last found – a true leader. We gained the crest of the hills along with the rest of the column. Our first real battle was fought. We had come through it, not indeed faultlessly – few new regiments ever do that – but so that we could look with reverence upon our torn flag, and view our sadly thinned ranks with sorrow but without shame. Not perfectly, yet not unworthily we had endured the ordeal of battle.

In seven months the regiment, which left home little better than a mob save for the character of its members and the spirit which animated it, had become a battalion of seasoned and well-officered soldiers fit to take its place in a brigade of veterans. We had learned to wear the armour so hastily put on. We had fitted ourselves to it.

If the story of the making of this regiment is worth the telling, that is not because it is in any way exceptional but because it is typical. Some regiments were more fortunate than ours in their first commanders; some met the test of battle sooner. Details vary, yet the process through which we went is a fair example of that by which hundreds of thousands of peaceful American citizens were transformed into the soldiers of one of the most formidable armies of history. The process was not ideal; it was in many ways illogical, unmilitary and wasteful; yet its results have seldom been surpassed.

The Household of the Hundred Thousand

The site of the old home camp, the first mustering ground of many regiments, is now covered with pretty suburban homes about which I sometimes think, the ghosts of war times must play at midnight.

For us young fellows it was a rude beginning of real life when we found ourselves inside the great board fence and line of sentries which enclosed the rows of rough, wooden barracks. The members of our own company were indeed mostly neighbours, their faces were familiar, we had grown up together; yet never before had we been thrown into such intimate association. It is one thing to meet a man every day on the street or even at work; it is quite another to be compelled to bunk with him and take your breakfast out of the same camp-kettle. For the youth who had been kept in a glass case at home this experience was trying and often disastrous, but for the most of us it was wholesome. We learned our own hitherto-unsuspected faults, we discovered the good qualities of even our most faulty comrades, we saw human nature at close range.

Even the officers could not escape the influence of this enforced commingling. They had, indeed, separate quarters and their own mess; they stood also on a vantage ground of almost despotic authority, for from the moment when we were mustered into service we were subject to the same military law which governed the regular army. But drawn as our officers were from the same mass, knowing their men for old neighbours, often for intimate friends, frequently for those who had been at least their social equals they could not hold themselves far aloof, and few of them cared to do so. They could form no separate caste and this, perhaps, had its disadvantages; but for these there were certainly large compensations. It became necessary for an officer to prove his right to rank by qualities of leadership. The best officers were those who, without sacrifice of dignity kept a lively sense of comradeship with their men.

The work of drill began before we received either arms or uniforms, and from the very first we managed to go through with that essential of camp life, the evening dress parade. Then the grounds would be filled with spectators, mostly home friends: fathers, mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts, bringing with them dainties to supplement what seemed to them the hard fare of camp. We lived well and were not a little spoiled in those days; and when we departed for the front, the mistaken kindness of those who loved us loaded us down with all sorts of knick-knacks for comfort and convenience. Though loath to part with these, our first marching days made us more loath to carry them. When a man's back becomes his only storehouse, he soon finds that riches do not consist in the abundance of the things which he possesses. Patent writing-cases, extra socks and mittens, "ponchos" for the shoulders, "havelocks" for the head, etc, etc, began to strew the road, and in a short time we were reduced to an absolutely socialistic equality in this world's goods. Whatever differences remained were those purely personal ones which can be discovered only by experience of each other's ways and characters.

In a regiment of a thousand men any extensive acquaintance outside one's own company comes slowly; yet many things served to bring us into fellowship. There was little clannishness, every man in blue was a comrade; yet, after all, each company was a family by itself, and in the company little coteries collected like the eddies in a river pool.

On the march two men usually tented together. In camp, when logs or brush were available, four could use their tent pieces to better advantage than two or three, and the camp was thus made more compact.

Men came together as tent-mates by a process of natural or social selection. They had been schoolmates or work-fellows in the same shop, perhaps they were related as brothers or cousins, or they had been near neighbours and old friends. So it was at first; but new experiences in toil and peril were often solvents out of which new associations crystallised. Kindred spirits found each other; more and more the company became a greater family within which lesser and more intimate families grew up. Sometimes there were disagreements which broke up first arrangements; but commonly a quiet, almost unnoticed attraction of affinity drew the final groups together in bonds seldom broken save by death or disabling wounds or sickness. A few of these soldierly friendships bind old men even to-day; many more are cherished by lonely survivors as memories too sacred for common talk.

When for months you and your comrade have slept at night under one blanket and shared each other's daily bread, even though it were but hard-tack; when you have learned to depend on him and he upon you for help in trouble or comfort in sickness; when together you have entered the hell of deadly battle – after which the first question would be: "Is Joe safe?" "Where is Sam?" "Is little Gus alive?" – when together you have suffered hunger, thirst, heart-breaking weariness; above all, when, huddled together in storm or cold you have had to endure long days of dreary, monotonous, comfortless idleness then you know what it means to live a common life with a fellow-man; and if he and you meet the test, then you know what friendship means.

In the routine of camp life the music of drum and fife was conspicuously audible. We were wakened at daybreak by the shrill tune of the reveille; the last sound at night was that of the drum perambulating the camp with "taps," commanding "lights out" and sleep; while all day long frequent summons to varied duties came by "call" of drum and fife. There was "sick call," which brought all the indisposed who were able to walk into forlorn squads to be conducted by the orderly serjeants to the surgeon's tent for treatment. Its absurdly merry notes seemed to say:

"Come to the Doctor'sAnd get your castor oil."

Then "guard call," inevitable as the day, but always unwelcome. Drill call or "assembly" meant simply our daily work. At dress parade, which closed the day's active duties, the band discoursed its most martial strains, and after supper we heard it once more in the pleasant tones of "retreat," and later of "tattoo" the music of which comes most impressively into recollection. From one camp after another the measured minor strains would sound forth; from near and far, from camps away beyond our sight, it would melt into distance, and then beyond the westward woods the artillery bugles would take it up until it died away with their mellow notes. It was the voice of the comradeship of a mighty, invisible host.

One can readily understand how persistently, how intimately this music of drum and fife wove itself into our lives. Some of those queer, old-fashioned, half-melancholy, half-merry tunes sing themselves in my memory even now.

What of the band in the day of battle? Was not martial music the soldier's inspiration? Did we not charge to its thrilling strains? We did nothing of the kind. There was other work for the musicians. On the approach of battle they were always sent to the rear for duty as stretcher-bearers and helpers in the field hospital. One pretty sure sign that bloody work was before us was the disappearance of the band; and the grimmest, most sickening, yet most merciful work of war was theirs at such times.

In active campaigning, our camps were apt to be hasty, though never disorderly bivouacs, and even if a few days' halt were made and the camp duly formed, rest for weary and foot-sore men took precedence of drill and, in fact, of everything not absolutely necessary. But one thing was inevitable as day and night. This was roll-call. In storm or sunshine, in camp or on the march, before and after battle, the first thing in the morning and the last at night, we had to answer to our names. The first serjeant calls the roll. He knows the list by heart, and calls it off without book, in the dark if need be.

At first irritatingly suggestive of that more than schoolboy tutelage which is one penalty of a soldier's life, the morning and evening roll-call by its insistent monotony gradually grew into an accepted item of existence, like salt pork and hard-tack. But when exposure, toil, and battle began to thin the ranks, the roll-call gained a new meaning; it became a none too oft-repeated personal history of our lives, a daily bulletin of passing events and a reminder of those already past. It told of the sick and disabled, of those fallen out by the way, prisoners perhaps in the hands of the enemy, here and there of one promoted, here and there of one dead. There were days when those of us who could answer to our names did so with a feeling of solemn thankfulness and other days when the omission, or perhaps the inadvertent calling of a name sent a rush of sad remembrance through the ranks.

Imagine, if you can, the roll-call at night after a day of battle! – the mustering of the thinned company in the darkness; the suspense as the familiar names are spoken – it may be by an unfamiliar voice, for in battle death seemed to seek and find the serjeants; the frequent pauses for inquiry; perhaps the answer of a comrade for one who has fallen, perhaps a mournful silence. Oh, those silent names! For days, yes, for weeks and months every now and then you seem to hear them at evening roll-call, and somewhere, close beside you it may be, an unseen presence seems to whisper: "Here!"

I think all who passed through it remember the winter of the Fredericksburg campaign with a shudder. Preceding the battle came freezing nights with thawing days, rain-soaked or snow-bound camps; days when our little tents were first buried in the snow, then frozen so stiff that when marching orders came we could scarcely strike or fold them; then short but horrible marches through slush and mud with our doubly-heavy half-frozen loads; scanty rations withal because of delayed supply trains: a month of exposure, discomfort, and misery.

The like of this is, however, what soldiers must expect, and if victory had come at the end we could have borne far worse hardship cheerfully. But the climax was the slaughter at Fredericksburg. The sting of that defeat was felt not as a dishonour, but as undeserved disaster. We knew that courage and devotion such as any people might be proud of had been uselessly sacrificed. Yet the gloom of those winter days after the battle was not that of despair; it was the bitter prospect of indefinitely prolonged struggle, an outlook dark indeed to men who were soldiers not for glory but only for home and country.

The depression of that time was doubtless responsible for at least as large a loss of life as the battle beside the river. Hardship and exposure had bred sickness, and the mood of the hour offered feeble resistance to death. For months the little funeral processions were mournfully frequent; from our own brigade alone there were often two or three in a day.

There are no funerals on the march; there are none after battle. On the march, if a man falls out of the ranks stricken with mortal sickness or exhaustion he is left to be picked up by the ambulance, perhaps to die alone by the way. The column cannot halt. After battle, there are but ghoulish burials. But in settled camp the decencies of death are rudely observed.

The first funeral in our company was that of one of our serjeants, a young man whom we all loved. He died shortly after Christmas-time. A box of good things from home had lately arrived; out of the boards of that box we managed to make a coffin for our dear comrade and the whole company marched to his grave. But the most of our dead were buried without coffin and funerals became too common for any but scantiest ceremony. A drum and fife playing the Dead March, a firing squad of three to give a parting volley over the grave, then the chaplain, then the body of the dead soldier wrapped in his blanket and carried on a stretcher by two men followed perhaps by half-a-dozen intimate friends, and that was all.

In the brigade graveyard at the top of the hill which grew so dismally in population during the winter, there were no headstones – only little pine boards torn from empty cracker-boxes, with the name of the departed written thereon in lead pencil or cut in with a jack-knife. I remember several headboards hewn from cedar, the most lasting of woods, made with great care and pains, with deep-cut inscriptions. These, you may be sure were stronger proof of true affection than many of the costly monuments which challenge the beholder's eye in our great cemeteries.

It is a pathetic fact that all through the war many men who might have recovered from the fevers and other ailments common to a soldier's life died because homesickness had quenched their power of resistance to disease. Indeed there were not a few deaths from homesickness pure and simple. It is not a complaint recognised in official reports, but ask any army surgeon and he will probably tell you some surprisingly sad tales.

Fatal cases were, however, exceptional, though the ordinary malady was common enough. Sometimes its manifestations were serio-comic, as for instance in my own case.

In the midst of our worst other discomforts, we were for a time compelled to subsist upon ancient hard-tack, which was often in such condition that, "if you called, it would come to you;" and one day I strolled off alone into the woods beyond the camp and sitting on a log, gave myself to meditation. I thought of my privations, not bitterly, but with a deliberate and curiously analytical wonder. I said to myself: "How much more a man can stand than he would have believed possible!" Then my thoughts wandered to my far-away home with its simple luxuries and comforts, and that which came most vividly to mind was the fact that once – it seemed ages ago – I had really had good, wholesome soft bread to eat every day, and three times a day at that! I then began to ask myself: "Would I ever again have soft bread every day?" "Was it possible that such happiness could be mine?" And I said to myself dolefully: "No! It is not likely. You are a soldier; you can henceforth have only soldier's fare; you will probably fill a soldier's grave. You will never taste soft bread again!"

Now this may seem absurd in the telling, yet God knows it was horribly real at the time.

But this was only a passing mood with the mass of us. We were a host of young men; life was too strong and elastic for even the depression which followed Fredericksburg to hold us down. We found ways to amuse ourselves.

One of the frequent but evanescent snow-storms of that semi-southern land had fallen, and snowballing became a common sport. Finally an organised contest was proposed between our regiment and two others of the brigade. We were so much stronger in numbers than the older regiments that this apparently one-sided arrangement only equalised forces, and as an offset we were given the doubtful advantage of the defensive. Both sides were drawn up in rigid military array with officers in their places of command. As for ourselves, we made piles of snowballs and awaited the onset. It came like a whirlwind; those veterans had not been through a dozen real battles for nothing, and as their line approached and the missiles began to fly, it was like a hailstorm. The snowballs were wet and hard, often icy; both sides were in hot earnest and like the ancient Romans we aimed at the faces of our foes. I hardly know how it all looked for I was in the thick of it and almost blinded, but I know how it felt. If the snowballs had been bullets, I should have been riddled from head to foot.

We stood our ground manfully for a little while; but the too subtle strategy of our commander had divided our force; we were outnumbered at the critical point and the superior discipline of our opponents prevailed. We had to confess ourselves beaten; and from the way our veteran friends crowed over us I almost think they were tempted to inscribe that snowball victory on their battle-flags.

An even better antidote for the blues was the work which became necessary as the army went into winter quarters. There is no pleasanter occupation than home building, be it ever so rude, and we took much pains and found great enjoyment in the making and furnishing of our little houses. Some regiments whose location was near suitable timber built good-sized log huts; we were compelled to be more modest. The dwelling which my own group of four tent-mates erected and occupied may serve as a fair example. Four pieces of shelter tent buttoned together made the roof which covered a log structure twelve feet long and five or six feet wide. The log walls were about three feet high; but as the ground sloped away from the company street we dug out the rear half of our hut, and there we had a little room in which we could stand erect. This served for our kitchen. The more elevated part was occupied by a broad bed of poles covered with dried grass and our blankets. This made a springy couch on which the four of us could sleep comfortably side by side; and the edge of the bed was just high enough to make a convenient seat with our feet resting on the kitchen floor. About the sides of the house were shelves and pegs for our belongings.

In the kitchen end, beside the door, we built a fireplace and chimney. Now a wooden fireplace and chimney may seem ludicrously impractical, yet that is what we and thousands of others actually built from green pine sticks. But we fireproofed it with a coating of clay on the inside, and it answered its purpose perfectly. It "drew" finely and gave us no end of solid comfort. Some of the chimneys did not work so well and then the draught was increased by the precarious expedient of an empty, headless barrel placed on top. This generally served for a short time; but the barrel was pretty sure to take fire and then there would be a grand excitement and much merriment over the frantic effort to extinguish the blaze.

Not the chimneys alone played tricks on the householders. Mischievous comrades have been known to drop a handful of cartridges down a chimney from the outside, with the result of a smothered explosion and a great scattering of ashes and embers over everything and everybody within.

The spirit of fun also found outlet in the adornment of the gables of our dwellings with various legends suggestive of the personal peculiarities of the inmates. For instance, of two queerly assorted tent-mates, one had been a church sexton and a conspicuous functionary at village funerals; the other had worked in a silverware factory. Over their door some wag tacked a sign with the inscription:

Dowd and Griffith,Jewellers and Undertakers

As few of us were content with the wholesale and not too dainty work of the company cooks, we did most of our cooking ourselves by our kitchen fires, and those of us who survived the war learned enough to make us useful to the women who were wise enough to choose us as husbands, though I fear the details of our housekeeping would have shocked them.