The Song of the Rappahannock

"Do you see those lines? Charge them!"

Colville's answer is the command, "Attention, battalion! Forward, double quick!"

Every man knew what it meant. It was a call to death, but not one hesitated. Down the gentle slope they go in perfect order, two hundred and sixty against three thousand. The Confederate line, blazing with fire is now only a short hundred yards away. The ranks of the little regiment are rapidly thinned, but they go forward faster and faster. One of them said, —

"We were only afraid there wouldn't be enough of us left by the time we reached them to make any impression on the enemy."

At the bottom of the slope is a little brook, its bed dry with summer heat, its banks lined with bushes. The enemy reach it first, and the rough crossing somewhat disorders their front line. Colville seizes his desperate chance: "Charge!" He roars the command, and down come the bayonets in level gleaming row, and at full run the men of the North dash straight at the faces of the astonished foe. One who saw it all says, —

"The men are not made who will stand before bayonets coming at them with such speed and such evident desperation."

The front line of the enemy recoils, breaks, its men flee backward and throw the second line into confusion. The brook's bed is empty now. Again Colville clutches the moment: "Halt! Fire!"

It is frightfully short range, the volley is feeble only in volume, for every shot tells and there is a hideous gap in the disordered brown ranks.

Then the heroes fling themselves into the bed of the brook. It is a good extempore rifle-pit. They have but one care now, they will obey, not only the letter but the spirit of their orders, they will hold back that threatening mass while they can, and sell their lives dearly. They fire carefully, calmly, every shot meant to hit and hurt; and for a few moments longer fear of that desperate little wasp's nest in the brook holds thousands in check. But only for a few moments. The wasp's nest must be exterminated, and from the front of them, from the right of them, from the left of them, a concentrated and increasingly fatal fire rains. Fainter and fainter come the answering ring of rifle-shots from the little brook. The bed is no longer dry, it runs with blood.

But at last Hancock's reinforcements arrive. He has not forgotten his forlorn hopes. Not a regiment but a brigade, two of them, three of them he hurries to the rescue, and "the First Minnesota is relieved."

Fifteen minutes ago they were two hundred and sixty-two. Now there are forty-seven able to stand up and be counted! But not one is "missing." No prisoners have been taken from their ranks, none have shirked or deserted. Only one man of the colour-guard remains, but he carries out their gloriously torn flag in triumph. Colville is desperately wounded, all the field officers have fallen, only one captain is left. Two hundred and fifteen, out of two hundred and sixty-two, lie along the slope or in the bloody little brook. This is the high-water mark of heroic sacrifice. General Hancock said of it: —

"There is no more gallant deed in history. I was glad to find such a body of men at hand willing to make the terrible sacrifice that the occasion demanded. I ordered those men in because I saw that I must gain five minutes' time. Reinforcements were coming on the run, but I knew that before they could reach the threatened point, the Confederates, unless checked, would seize the position. I would have ordered that regiment in if I had known that every man would be killed. It had to be done."

One might have thought the First Minnesota extinguished. Far from it. At nightfall the two outlying companies came in, and with the forty-seven survivors a miniature battalion was formed in command of the brave surviving captain. On the eventful morrow, the day of final victory, the First Minnesota was again in the thick of the storm where the topmost waves of Pickett's charge spent their fury. And as though conscious that common work was no longer fit for them, they bore themselves with exaltation. A shot cut away the staff of their precious colours and killed the last man of the colour-guard. Instantly the standard was seized by another hand and borne far forward into the thick of the fight; a flag was wrested from the enemy, and after the battle their shattered staff was spliced with the captured one. But their captain and sixteen good men were added to the roll of sacrifice.

One reason why such an exploit as that of the First Minnesota is not better known, is that sacrifices only a little less extreme were all too common in our war, and upon both sides. Colonel Fox, in his carefully compiled book on "Regimental Losses," gives a list of sixty-four Union regiments, and a similar and equally gruesome one of Confederates, who suffered losses in single battles ranging from eighty to fifty per cent of their number, and he remarks that these frightful sacrifices are not those of massacres or blunders, but such as were met with in hard stand-up, give-and-take fighting.

Now a loss of thirty per cent is considered severe, and forty per cent extreme, in modern warfare.

The gallant British Light Brigade which Tennyson's noble poem has made immortal went into their famous charge at Balaklava six hundred and seventy-three strong. Their loss was two hundred and forty-seven, or not quite thirty-seven per cent. None the less do they deserve the crown which genius has given them. They were as truly martyrs to duty as though every one had fallen.

The severest regimental loss in the war between France and Germany fell upon the Sixteenth German Infantry at Mars-le-Tour. Forty-nine per cent of their number were killed, wounded, or missing. But the German regiments are three thousand strong, comparable only to our brigades. And this sacrifice of the brave Germans brings to mind the strikingly similar one of my old comrades of the Vermont Brigade at the battle of the Wilderness.

Brigades in our army were commonly composed of half-a-dozen regiments more or less, often from widely separated States; but there were exceptions. The Sixth Army Corps would scarcely have known itself without the Jersey Brigade in its first division, and the Vermont Brigade in its second. Both became famous, and their integrity as exclusively State organisations was broken only once, when for nearly a year the regiment in which I served was brigaded with the Vermonters. It was not a kind or judicious act on the part of the military authorities to assign us thus, but I shall always think it a piece of good fortune that I once marched and fought with those Green Mountain men, and friendships made among them are cherished still.

The brigade was like a great family whose consciousness of proud and romantic traditions and whose singular cohesiveness reminded one of the Scottish Clans. But its material was most thoroughly American. The men had the qualities of mountaineers, their reserve, independence, and resourcefulness, and among the officers were men of high character and culture, some of whom, like Senator Proctor, have since become distinguished in civil life.

Stalwart fellows those Vermonters were; above the average in both intelligence and stature, tireless on the march, cool, bitter, and persistent fighters.

At well named Savage's Station, one of their regiments had been badly cut up in an affair which did highest credit to its grit and discipline, but at the time when we were with them the brigade as a whole had become noted rather for losses inflicted on the enemy than for those suffered. None who saw and shared in it, can ever forget their wonderful fight at Bank's Ford, where at surprisingly small cost to themselves they repulsed and fearfully punished Early's Confederate division and saved the Sixth Corps from black disaster.

But such reputations were perilous in our army. The demand for sacrifice was sure to reach men like these. A year and a day from the time when they threw off Early's flank attack at Bank's Ford, the Vermonters found themselves in the midst of the bloody storm-centre of the most weird, confused, and difficult of the battles of the Army of the Potomac.

"The Wilderness" is a region the like of which can be found only along the Southern Atlantic seaboard. For miles, abrupt ridges of clay or gravel cut with ragged ravines are covered with dense growth of woods and brush; now scraggy oak, now hedge-like thickets of dwarf pine, – a gloomy, intricate, intractable region.

But its very difficulties were Lee's advantage. His men knew the Wilderness; many of them had grown up within it or on its borders. His plan of battle was simple, daring, and full of peril to his foes.

The road southward from the Fords of the Rapidan by which Grant's army was compelled to move leads through this region. In the midst of the forest the north and south road is crossed by two others running nearly east and west. Down these intersecting roads Lee poured his columns, striving to strike the dangerously extended Union line in flank, break it into fragments, and while entangled in the Wilderness play havoc with it.

At the most important of these road-junctions, at the vital point of the Union line, the position which must be held at any cost, on the afternoon of the fifth of May Getty's Division of the Sixth Corps was posted with the Vermont Brigade in front. They await the arrival of Hancock with the Second Corps, hoping then to push the enemy, now retarded in their advance by skirmishers and by the difficult nature of the ground, away from the danger-point, back into more open country where more even battle can be had. General Grant grows impatient; he orders Getty to attack at once without waiting for Hancock. The narrow road is the only place where artillery can be used. It is occupied by a battery; the infantry brigades must feel and fight their way through the thicket on either side. Suddenly the opposing lines meet. Volleys leap like sheaves of lightning from the brush, men fall by scores, there are charges and counter-charges; but in that Wilderness maze where foes phantom-like appear and disappear the bayonet is useless. The battle settles down to a grim trial of endurance. To stand up is death; the opposing lines, only a few yards distant from each other, lie down and fight close to the ground. Neither can advance, because neither will give way. The men of the South, on their native heath, taking advantage of every foot of familiar ground, creeping up here or there where smallest advantage appears, are bent on hewing a path to the Brock Road. The Vermonters, upon whom now the weight of the battle is falling, will not yield an inch. Then was seen the close clanship of those men of the Green Mountains. Like brothers their five regiments stick together, each ready to help each without confusion, with quick comprehension of every emergency, cool, desperate, deadly in the blows they give a common enemy. But their ranks are melting mournfully in the savage heat of the weird combat; from the Vermont officers especially the Southern rifles are taking ghastly toll; for while the men fight lying down, the officers must be on their feet moving from place to place along the line. One who was there with them says, "One after another of the officers fell not to rise again, or was borne bleeding to the rear. The men's faces grew powder-grimed and their mouths black from biting cartridges; the musketry silenced all sounds, and the air of the woods was hot and heavy with sulphurous vapour; the tops of the bushes were cut away by the leaden storm that swept through them."

For two horrible hours this went on, until the arrival of the advanced division of the Second Corps brought relief. Fresh troops were sent in to hold the road, and the Vermonters were ordered to withdraw. This was easier said than done. Each side was holding the other as in a vice. Finally a daring but costly charge by one regiment, concentrating the enemy's fire upon it alone, made possible the retirement of the others in good order. The Vermont Brigade had held the road until reinforcements made it secure for that day at least, but at frightful cost. "Of five colonels of the brigade only one was left unhurt. Fifty of the best line officers were killed or wounded; a thousand Vermont soldiers fell that afternoon."

Darkness closed the battle for that day, but night brought little rest. The wounded had to be sought – too often vainly sought in the dark amid the thickets; from suspicious skirmish lines frequent gleam and rattle of nervous, fitful volleys flashed, startling the darkness, and at the dawn of day the battle opened with renewed fury. Again the bereft and decimated brigade was called to perilous and responsible duty, which they nobly fulfilled; and when the second evening came, they could count their total loss. Out of less than twenty-eight hundred who had gone into battle over twelve hundred had fallen, among whom were three-fourths of the officers on duty. The greater part of this loss fell within the two hours of the first day's fight in the woods.

It was then that the colonel of the Second Regiment was wounded, went to the rear, had his hurt dressed, returned to his post, and as he went along the line speaking words of cheer to his men was struck by a second bullet and instantly killed. His place was taken by the lieutenant-colonel, "a boy in years but of approved valour," who also was presently stricken down with a death wound, leaving the regiment without a field officer. It is worth noting that these two young officers both rose from lieutenancies to the command of their regiment, and both came out of those choice homes in which more than almost anywhere else on earth culture and conscience meet. They were sons of New England ministers. The faces of some of those fallen Vermonters rise before me to-day. There was the colonel of the Sixth, in whose regiment, along with a few comrades, I found myself at the time of the final onset of the Confederates at Bank's Ford. A thrill of admiration always goes through me whenever I think of the superbly calm courage with which he held us down in the sunken road in face of that charging whirlwind which, had it reached us, would have swept us away like chaff. I can hear his voice even now, as when the foe was almost upon us it rang out above the noise of battle in clear command, "Rise! Fire!"

Alas, he was one of the Wilderness victims: a Christian gentleman, reverenced and beloved by his men and fellow-officers. And the captain of that company whose line we lengthened, he too met a pathetically heroic death. Early in the afternoon's fight in the woods he received a severe wound in the head: a wound which, as one of his comrades told me, was more than enough to have sent most men out of the battle. His men all loved him, and they begged him to go to the rear and have his hurt cared for. But with the blood streaming down his face, and the anger of battle in his strong soul, he sternly refused, saying, "It is the business of no live man to go to the rear at a time like this!" A few moments later, and again he was struck by a bullet in the thigh. He retired a short distance, took off his sash, bound up his second wound, returned to his place in the line, and while cheering his men a third bullet found this hero's heart and silenced his voice forever.

The sacrifice of the Vermont Brigade was not one of numbers only. Ghastly incidents abounded in that Wilderness battle-field. One of them, told me in a letter from a Fifth Corps comrade, is unique in its horror. He was severely wounded, and, finding himself useless on the line of battle, tried to make his way to the rear. After several narrow escapes from capture, he came to a little open field. Here a number of others, like himself wounded, were gathered, and faint from loss of blood and from hunger they sat down together and tried to eat a little from shared rations of such as had any.

The little field, scarce a hundred yards across, had been the scene of conflict earlier in the day, and hundreds of dead and mortally wounded lay scattered about it.

Close by where they sat down lay a young soldier from a Connecticut regiment, frightfully shot in the breast so that his lungs protruded. His life was slowly, painfully ebbing away.

My friend and his comrades, forgetting their own hurts at the sight, tried to do what they could for him. They raised him up, put a blanket under him, and propped him against a tree so that he could breathe a little easier. By feeble motions he made them understand that he wanted something from his pocket. They searched and found a photograph of some loved one at home, which he eagerly grasped with both hands and held before his dying eyes while big tears rolled down his cheeks. But he seemed satisfied, he wanted nothing more, and my friend and his companions moved away to a little distance where they could eat their lunch undisturbed by the gruesome sight of the mangled dying man.

Presently a Georgian strayed into the field. He was wounded in the toe and was making a terrible fuss about it, limping along and using his musket for a crutch, but he stopped now and then to search the bodies of the dead for plunder. There were such ghouls, a few of them, in both armies. He came to the young Connecticut soldier; they could see him snatch the picture from the dying man's hands, they heard a smothered exclamation which sounded like, "Oh, don't!" and then they saw the brute strike the dying man with the butt of his musket.

My friend, who was an officer, sprang to his feet, wounded as he was, and emptied his revolver at the man, who at the first shot took refuge behind the tree. Then the officer called for a loaded musket, and a singular duel began, the villain behind the tree and my friend in the open exchanging shots ineffectually, when the Georgian, reloading in nervous haste, sprang his ramrod. It flew out of his hand and fell just out of reach. Unwilling to expose himself he clawed for it with his musket barrel, but in vain. At this juncture another wounded Confederate wandered into the horrible little field. He had not seen the prelude, he saw only a comrade in trouble, and going boldly to his help was about to hand him his ramrod; but from a dozen mangled men still able to handle a rifle threatening voices warned him to desist and let the two have it out alone. A few more wild attempts to hook the rammer toward him, and then in desperation he suddenly lunged his body toward it. My friend says, "He looked at me sideways with a scared look, as he reached out, but I just laughed to myself and fired. He fell dead, and I fainted and knew no more till I found myself in the hospital."

The road from the Wilderness leads straight to Spottsylvania. Mere localities; lonely, obscure, faintly marked on the maps they were and are still. Yet once, for just eight days their slumber was broken by the reverberations of continuous gigantic battle; and scarcely another week in modern history has borne such fruitage of sacrifice. Official reports, which seldom err by excess, tell us that our army lost 36,000 men during those eight days. What the South lost no one knows, for General Lee had issued a special order forbidding his officers to keep the count. But figures after all are an inane expression of such an immolation. These were men who fell, – young men, our best. After that week and after Cold Harbor, which quickly followed, the Army of the Potomac, the generous host of volunteers for home and country's sake, was never the same.

One regiment always comes to mind when Spottsylvania is named. It is indeed only one out of many distinguished for heroic losses; but I knew it well. Its members were fellow-citizens from my own State; the regiment entered service at the same time with our own. We marched together in the Sixth Army Corps; our first battles were alike; we both left our dead on the plains below Fredericksburg and at bloody Salem Heights.

The Fifteenth New Jersey was a choice regiment recruited from the flower of the manhood of the northern counties, and peculiarly full of that high sentiment which consecrated patriotism in 1862. It was officered largely by promotions from the veteran Jersey Brigade to which it was assigned, and after it took the field was commanded by a very able regular army officer. A light loss at Fredericksburg, a very severe one at Salem Church, where the regiment though as yet unseasoned bore itself with a steadiness and gallantry that excited general admiration, then a year of hard campaigning with but little serious fighting, and the Wilderness was reached.

The Fifteenth entered the week of battles with four hundred and twenty-nine men and fourteen line officers, beside field and staff. Of those eight days in the Wilderness and at Spottsylvania only one passed in which they met with no loss. During the fierce fighting on the fifth and sixth of May, though holding a responsible and exposed position, they suffered surprisingly little. On the seventh, another small loss met them on the skirmish line. They marched out of the Wilderness poorer by one sadly missed captain and perhaps twenty men. The eighth brought the Jersey Brigade as the advance guard of the Sixth Corps to Spottsylvania. At once, with no time to rest, they were plunged into the first of that remorselessly persistent series of terrific assaults which have made the name of "The Bloody Angle" forever famous. This first was but a reconnaissance ordered by General Warren to "develop that hill." For the Fifteenth it meant a charge across a treacherous morass, through timber slashings protecting and hiding the enemy's works, up to and over the very parapet, then back again; and it cost them over a hundred good men. The ninth brought duty on a perilous skirmish line, with a loss which included their colour-serjeant, killed by the same sharpshooter who slew General Sedgwick, the beloved commander of the Sixth Corps. The tenth, another battle again before the Bloody Angle, and another severe loss. The modest narrative of the regiment's historian says of May 11th: —

"There was musketry firing through the early morning, and several times the roll of discharges rose high, but we were left in quiet for several hours and made up our regimental reports. Then three brigades, including our own, were ordered to hold themselves in readiness for a charge, and were drawn up in order. During the night the enemy had made their fortification in our front most formidable. We looked up at the frowning works and flaunting battle-flags and felt that the attempt to capture them would be a march to death." But the assault was postponed and "the day was one of comparative quiet," and, for a wonder, a day of no losses for the Fifteenth regiment.

Seven days of ceaseless battle have now reduced the regiment by nearly one-third. Less than three hundred men remain in the ranks. It has been moreover a week of pitiless, unbroken strain, of wearing anxiety, of sleepless nights passed in worrying marches or in nervously exhausting picket duty close to the lines of an alert enemy. Imagine if you can seven days and nights with scarce a moment's respite from the crack of cannon or the threatening rattle of musketry, seven days when you are seldom out of sight of the swollen corpses of the dead or out of hearing of the wails of the wounded; seven horrible days, only one of which has gone by without seeing from half-a-dozen to a hundred of your comrades shot down, and ask yourself how fit you would be to take part in a desperate assault, a veritable march to death on the morrow?

Yet with this preparation and this anticipation thousands of men lay down in the chilling rain that night to get what rest they could. An officer whom I know well – he came home in command of the regiment – told me that on this night he and three others, two captains and two lieutenants, were huddled together under a shelter tent, trying to get a little rest and escape from the pitiless storm. One of the captains, seeing troops filing by, spoke up:

"Well, there goes the Second Corps; we are in for another light to-morrow, and it will be a nasty one. But I feel as though I would come out all right. I don't believe the bullet is yet moulded that will kill me!"

The other captain replied sadly, "I don't feel that way. I do not believe I shall be alive to-morrow night."

The two lieutenants said nothing; they only listened and thought.

Before the next night both the captains lay dead on the field, their bodies riddled with bullets, one of the lieutenants had a leg shot off and a shoulder shattered. The fourth of the group, who told me the story, escaped with a bullet-hole through his coat.