Kitabı oku: «With Fire and Sword», sayfa 5

"All the region we are in is hills and ravines, brush and cane-brake, with here and there a little cotton field. Nature defends Vicksburg more than a dozen armies could. She has built scores of positions around the town strong as anything at Sevastapol."

The rumors kept coming of a purposed attack on our rear. On the 20th of June, at four o'clock in the morning, all the cannon on Grant's lines and all the cannon on the gunboats opened fire on the town and thundered at it for six mortal hours. They must have been awful hours for the people inside. No such cannonading ever took place on the continent before or since. We private soldiers did not know the exact object of this fearful bombardment. The Rebels probably lay in battle line, expecting an assault, and must have suffered greatly.

In the night of the 22d of June, at midnight, rumors again came of a great Rebel army marching on our rear. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and my regiment, together with whole divisions of the army, received orders to hurry back toward Black River, where cavalry skirmishing had taken place. No battle came on, but for two days we lay in line of battle, or else built breastworks for defense.

On the 3d of July, as we were bivouacked in a little wood, news came that the whole Rebel army in Vicksburg had prepared to surrender the next day, the Nation's jubilee day. Instantly the regiment was ordered to fall in. I had no little pride in reading to the men the dispatch from General Grant announcing the great news. It was the first order I had ever read to the regiment as its adjutant, and its great importance gratified me much. The whole command acted as if they were drunken or had suddenly lost their minds. Privates and officers shook hands and laughed and wept, while majors and colonels turned somersaults on the grass. It was indeed a great moment to us all. Twenty-seven thousand men, with twenty-four generals and one hundred and eighty cannon, was a great capture. We all knew we had made history on that day.

Now the whole Rebel army passed out along the roads where we lay. I sat on a rail fence near our bivouac and watched the host go by. The officers all looked depressed, but the soldiers seemed glad the suspense and danger were over and that now they could have enough to eat. Our regiment freely divided with them all we had.

"After a few days pursuit of Johnston's army at our rear (now suddenly our front), my regiment is ordered into Vicksburg. We pass in over the breastworks that had been so terrible to us a few days before. Looking at them, I wonder at our hardihood in assaulting them. It would be hard to climb through these ditches and into these forts even were no cannon and no deadly muskets behind them.

"My regiment is put on duty as a city guard. It now seems strange enough to be guarding the very town and the very forts we had so recently been assaulting. There are other troops here, but the Fifth Iowa is the guard proper. We find the town badly battered up, with terrible signs of war everywhere. There, too, were the graves of the dead and brave defenders. If wrong, they still had been brave men." Years afterward, a shaft was put up to their memory, and on it I read these words:

 
"We care not whence they came,
Dear in their lifeless clay,
Whether unknown, or known to fame,
Their cause and country's still the same,
They died, and they wore the gray."
 

The weather continued hot while we were there guarding the town, and the place was very sickly; many citizens and very many colored soldiers died. It was pitiable to see how little people cared, even our own soldiers, whether these poor negro soldiers died or lived. Our own regiment suffered little, yet on July 28 seventy were in the hospital. We camped at Randolph and Locust streets, and spite of the mercury's being 100 degrees in the shade, had pleasant soldier times. I mounted the guard every morning and then spent most of the day reading to the colonel, who was sick.

In September I secured a leave of absence to go North. For the only time during the four years' war I visited my home. I was there but eight days, half of my time having been lost by the steamer I was on sticking on sandbars.

I saw strange sights in the North in those few days – women and children and old men reaping the fields; home guards training at every village; cripples and hospitals everywhere. Yet in spite of war prosperity was blessing the North.

CHAPTER IX

Sherman's army floats across the Tennessee River at midnight – Washington at the Delaware nothing compared to this – We assault Missionary Ridge – An awful battle – My capture

On my return from my home to my regiment I found it had been transported to Memphis, where, as a part of General Sherman's army corps, we were now to make a forced march to relieve Rosecrans' army at Chattanooga. Chickamauga had been lost. The Union army lying under Lookout Mountain was starving and its destruction almost certain. We made now the march of four hundred miles from the Tennessee River, at Florence, in twenty days, without incident. On the 22d of November, 1863, we beheld the heights of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge.

November 23, 1863, and the great battle of Chattanooga was about to begin. The victorious Rebel army, seventy-five thousand strong, lay intrenched along the heights of Missionary Ridge and on top of Lookout Mountain. My regiment was in Sherman's corps that had just hurried across from Memphis. We had marched twenty miles a day. Now this corps was to form the left of Grant's forces, cross a deep river in the darkness, and assault the nearly inaccessible position of Bragg's army. That night we lay in bivouac in the woods close by the Tennessee River. We very well knew that 116 rude pontoon boats had been built for us and were lying hidden in a creek near by. We had almost no rations for the army. As for the horses and mules, they had already starved to death by the thousands, and were lying around everywhere. Rosecran's army had been virtually besieged, and was about to starve or surrender when Grant came on to the ground and took command. When Sherman's corps got up it was decided to stake all on a great battle. If defeated, we should probably all be lost. All the men in Sherman's corps who were to make the first great assault realized that, and they realized also the danger we were now to encounter by attempting to cross that rapid river in the night.

Midnight came and all were still awake, though quiet in the bivouac. At two o'clock we heard some quiet splashing in the water. It was the sound of muffled oars. The boats had come for us. Every man seized his rifle, for we knew what was coming next. "Quietly, boys, fall in quietly," said the captains. Spades were handed to many of us. We did not ask for what, as we knew too well. Quietly, two by two, we slipped down to the water's edge and stepped into the rude flatboats that waited there. "Be prompt as you can, boys; there's room for thirty in a boat," said a tall man in a long waterproof coat who stood on the bank near us in the darkness. Few of us had ever before heard the voice of our beloved commander. Sherman's kind words gave us all cheer, and his personal presence, his sharing the danger we were about to undertake, gave us confidence.

In a quarter of an hour a thousand of us were out in the middle of the river afloat in the darkness. Silent we sat there, our rifles and our spades across our knees. There was no sound but the swashing of the water against the boats. We had strange feelings, the chief of which was probably the thought: Would the enemy on the opposite bank fire into us and drown us all? Every moment we expected a flash of musketry or a roar of cannon. We did not know that a ruse had been played on the pickets on the other side; that a boatload of our soldiers had crossed farther up and in the darkness caught every one of them without firing a shot. One only got away. Who knew how soon all of Braggs' army might be alarmed and upon us?

In half an hour we were out on the opposite bank and creeping along through the thicket, a spade in one hand a rifle in the other. What might happen any moment we knew not. Where was that escaped picket? And where was Braggs' army? Instantly we formed in line of battle and commenced digging holes for ourselves. We worked like beavers, turn about; no spade was idle for one moment. Daylight found us there, two thousand strong, with rifle pits a mile in length. Other brigades got over the river, pontoons soon were down; still other troops, whole divisions, were across, and forty cannon were massed close to the crossing to protect us. What a sight was that for General Bragg, when he woke up that morning at his headquarters' perch, on top of Missionary Ridge! All that day we maneuvered under heavy cannonading and drove the enemy from hill to hill at our front. Some of the troops did heavy fighting, but the Rebels only fell back to their great position on the Ridge.

That night my regiment stood picket at the front. The ground was cold and wet, none of us slept a wink, and we were almost freezing and starving. We had not slept, indeed, for a hundred hours. It had been one vast strain, and now a battle was coming on. All that night we who were on the picket line could hear the Rebel field batteries taking position on Missionary Ridge, to fight us on the morrow. The morning of the 25th dawned clear and beautiful. Instantly whole divisions of troops commenced slaughtering each other for the possession of single hills and spurs. At times the battle in front of Sherman was a hand to hand encounter. My own brigade was so close that the Rebels even threw stones down upon us. Over to the far right Hooker's men were in possession of Lookout Mountain, and were breaking in on the enemy's left flank.

It was two o'clock when our division, my own regiment with it, received orders from Sherman to fix bayonets and join in the assault on Missionary Ridge. General J. E. Smith led the division, and General Matthies, our former colonel, led the brigade. We had to charge over the open, and by this time all the cannon in the Rebel army were brought to bear on the field we had to cross. We emerged from a little wood, and at that moment the storm of shot and shell became terrific. In front of us was a rail fence, and, being in direct line of fire, its splinters and fragments flew in every direction. "Jump the fence, men! tear it down!" cried the colonel. Never did men get over a fence more quickly. Our distance was nearly half a mile to the Rebel position.

We started on a charge, running across the open fields. I had heard the roaring of heavy battle before, but never such a shrieking of cannonballs and bursting of shell as met us on that charge. We could see the enemy working their guns, while in plain view other batteries galloped up, unlimbered, and let loose at us. Behind us our own batteries (forty cannon) were firing at the enemy over our heads, till the storm and roar became horrible. It sounded as if the end of the world had come. Halfway over we had to leap a ditch, perhaps six feet wide and nearly as many deep. Some of our regiment fell into this ditch and could not get out, a few tumbled in intentionally and stayed there. I saw this, and ran back and ordered them to get out, called them cowards, threatened them with my revolver; they did not move. Again I hurried on with the line. All of the officers were screaming at the top of their voices; I, too, screamed, trying to make the men hear. "Steady! steady! bear to the right! keep in line! Don't fire! don't fire!" was yelled till we all were hoarse and till the awful thunder of the cannon made all commands unheard and useless.

In ten minutes, possibly, we were across the field and at the beginning of the ascent of the Ridge. Instantly the blaze of Rebel musketry was in our faces, and we began firing in return. It helped little, the foe was so hidden behind logs and stones and little breastworks. Still we charged, and climbed a fence in front of us and fired and charged again. Then the order was given to lie down and continue firing. That moment someone cried, "Look to the tunnel! They're coming through the tunnel." Sure enough, through a railway tunnel in the mountain the gray-coats were coming by hundreds. They were flanking us completely.

"Stop them!" cried our colonel to those of us at the right. "Push them back." It was but the work of a few moments for four companies to rise to their feet and run to the tunnel's mouth, firing as they ran. Too late! an enfilading fire was soon cutting them to pieces. "Shall I run over there too?" I said to the colonel. We were both kneeling on the ground close to the regimental flag. He assented. When I rose to my feet and started it seemed as if even the blades of grass were being struck by bullets. As I ran over I passed many of my comrades stretched out in death, and some were screaming in agony. For a few minutes the whole brigade faltered and gave way.

Colonel Matthies, our brigade commander, was sitting against a tree, shot in the head. Instantly it seemed as if a whole Rebel army was concentrated on that single spot. For a few moments I lay down on the grass, hoping the storm would pass over and leave me. Lieutenant Miller, at my side, was screaming in agony. He was shot through the hips. I begged him to try to be still; he could not. Now, as a second line of the enemy was upon us, and the first one was returning, shooting men as they found them, I rose to my feet and surrendered. "Come out of that sword," shrieked a big Georgian, with a terrible oath. Another grabbed at my revolver and bellowed at me "to get up the hill quicker than hell." It was time, for our own batteries were pouring a fearful fire on the very spot where we stood. I took a blanket from a dead comrade near me, and at the point of the bayonet I was hurried up the mountain. We passed lines of infantry in rifle pits and batteries that were pouring a hail of shells into our exposed columns. Once I glanced back, and – glorious sight! – I saw lines of bluecoats at our right and center, storming up the ridge.

In a few minutes' time I was taken to where other prisoners from my regiment and brigade were already collected together in a hollow. We were quickly robbed of nearly everything we possessed and rapidly started down the railroad tracks toward Atlanta. While we were there in that little hollow General Breckenridge, the ex-Vice President of the United States, came in among us prisoners to buy a pair of Yankee gauntlets. I sold him mine for fifteen dollars (Confederate money).

General Grant's victorious army was already over the Ridge and in rapid pursuit. Taking the Ridge and Lookout Mountain cost the Union army well on to six thousand dead and wounded. The Rebels lost as many, or more, so that twelve thousand human beings were lying dead, or in agony, that night among the hills of Chattanooga. Not long before, thirty thousand had been killed and wounded, on both sides, close to this same Ridge. Forty-two thousand men shot for the possession of a single position. That was war.

That night as the guards marched us down the railroad we saw train after train whiz by loaded with the wounded of the Rebel army. The next day when they halted us, to bivouac in the woods, we were amazed to see quite a line of Union men from East Tennessee marching along in handcuffs. Many of them were old men, farmers, whose only crime was that they were true to the Union. They were hated ten times worse than the soldiers from the North. These poor men now were allowed no fire in the bivouac, and had almost nothing to eat. "They will everyone be shot or hanged," declared the officer of our guard to me. I do not know what happened to these poor Tennesseeans. Shortly after, we Northern prisoners were put aboard cattle cars and started off for Libby Prison at Richmond, most of us never to see the North or our homes again.

CHAPTER X

In Libby Prison – Life there – "Belle Isle" – All prisons bad – The great escape – "Maryland, My Maryland."

The story of Libby Prison at Richmond has been told so often I shall not dwell on details about it here. Besides, the experiences of one man there were not materially different from the experiences of another. I was to stay there some seven months, always in the same room, and oftenest denied the poor privilege of looking out of the window. Our lives were to be very wretched there. That is now a thread-worn tale. At their very best, war prisons in every country are wretched places. One's friends do not stand guard there; it is our enemies. They are not penal establishments; they are simply places for keeping captives who, until in our so-called civilized days, would have been put to death on the battlefield.

Our little company of captives from Chattanooga reached Libby Prison just after daylight of December 8, 1863. As we crossed the big bridge over the James River we looked down into the stream and saw "Belle Isle." It was a cold wet sandbar, and there, shivering in the wind, we saw five thousand ragged and emaciated human beings. They were prisoners of war. Some of them were from my own regiment. Most of them were never to see their homes again. The tales of their experiences would stagger human belief. These were all private soldiers; the commissioned officers were to be locked up in Libby Prison.

The old tobacco warehouse of Libby & Son had been transformed into a monster guardhouse for officers captured from the Federal army. Little the two old tobacco merchants must have dreamed with what infamy their names would go down to history, through no fault of their own.

The big brick building stood close to the James River. It had no glass in its windows, and the cold wind from the bay swept through its vast rooms day and night. Six hundred other prisoners were already there on our arrival, picked up from many battlefields.

Libby Prison was three stories high and its floors were divided into several rooms each. The prisoners slept on the floor, with only old army blankets around them. When thus lying down, the floor was entirely covered with shivering human beings. Each group of half a dozen men had extemporized tables, made from old boxes. A few seats were made by cutting barrels in two. At night the seats, and whatever else might be there, were piled on top of the tables, while the prisoners stretched themselves on the floor to try to sleep. In my diary of the time I read: "The food doled out to us is miserable and scanty in the extreme. A species of corn bread, ground up cobs and all, and a little rice form the principal part of the ration. The fact that this bread is burned black outside and is raw inside renders it more detestable. Occasionally letters from the North reach us by a flag of truce, and at very rare intervals a prisoner is allowed to receive a little box of coffee, sugar, and salt, sent to him by his friends in the North."

As the time went on this privilege was denied us. The high price of everything South in the war times was the flimsy excuse for giving the captured ones so little.

Prices of provisions were indeed terrible in Richmond. This list I copied from a Richmond paper, December 20, 1863: Bacon, $3 per pound; potatoes, $18 per bushel; turkeys, $25 each; sugar, $3 per pound; beef, $1 per pound; butter, $5 per pound; shad, $34 per pair; whisky, $75 a gallon. This was in the discounted money of the Confederates.

The beginning of the new year 1864 came in cold and gloomy. We could keep warm only by running and jumping and pushing each other about the prison. I was in the upper east room, and had for messmates Captains Page and Bascom and Lieutenants Austin and Hoffman, all of my own regiment. In the little box of provisions sent me by my mother in the North was a copy of a Latin grammar, put there by good old Professor Drake, my former school-teacher. Evidently he thought the mind needed feeding as well as the body. I took the hint and studied the book faithfully. I recited to Major Marshall, and eight times I went through this Latin grammar. I had nothing else to do, but Latin is no go on an empty stomach. When, later, I got out of prison Latin was as strange to me as if I had never seen a grammar in my life. My memory had been well-nigh ruined by my confinement. One day, fearing our escape, the authorities put iron bars on all our windows. They did not think to put glass in them to keep the cold air out.

On the night of February 10 occurred the famous escape of one hundred and nine prisoners. For many weeks certain officers had been missing. They were in the earth under the prison, digging a tunnel to liberty. The length of this secret tunnel, dug under the prison, under stone walls, under the street and under the very feet of the guards, was eighty-six feet.

Forty-six nights were consumed in digging it. Only certain of the prisoners knew anything about it. On the night of the escape I was told of it. I stood in the dark at an upper window and watched the prisoners as they came out at the farther end of the tunnel and slipped away. I did not try to enter the tunnel when I heard of it; there was already five times as many men in the cellar as could possible get away by daylight. As it was, a third of those escaping were captured and brought back again to the prison.

On the 20th of March some exchanged Confederates were sent into Richmond under flag of truce. The President, Jefferson Davis, and all the dignitaries welcomed them. The President also came into Libby Prison one day, possibly to see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears if all the terrible tales of hardship and cruelties occurring there were true. Whatever conclusion he may have reached, the hard lines of our life in the prison were not visibly altered. They have been told of a hundred of times.

All the nights now it was very cold. I had but one blanket. I, like all the others, slept on the floor, and in my clothes, with my boots under my head for a pillow. One night, – it was at the close of February, 1864, – we in the prison were greatly excited over a report that Union cavalry under Generals Kilpatrick and Dahlgren were making a raid on the city for the purpose of releasing us. It was raining outside, and very dark, but we were sure we heard the Union cannon close at hand. We thought the hour of our deliverance had come. Instantly, but secretly, we organized ourselves into bands to break out and help.

Soon Major Turner, the prison commander, came into the prison, making mysterious threats of something awful that would happen should we lift a single hand. Some negro help about the prison whispered to us all that, under Turner's direction, they had been compelled to carry thirty kegs of gunpowder into the cellar of the prison. Rumor said that it was Turner's intention, if our troops should get into Richmond, to blow up the prison and destroy us. A horrible plan, if true. Sadly for us, the great raid proved a failure. Dahlgren was killed, and his body was mutilated and exposed to an enraged public at one of the railroad depots in the city. These things were not done by honorable Confederate soldiers, but by irresponsible home guards and undisciplined rowdies.

Now we saw no hopes of ever getting away. We would at last all die here, we thought. The nights seemed colder than ever; perhaps our blood was getting thinner. Some of us played chess; numbers sat with cards in their hands from early morning till bedtime. A few, experts with the knife, made bone rings and the like to sell, and so increased their rations a little. Generally now the rations were getting poorer, if such a thing were possible. Many prisoners were breaking down and were carried out to die. My own health – and I was young and strong – was beginning to give way. Once I fell on the floor in an utter swoon from weakness and hunger. From Andersonville, where the private soldiers were, came the horrible reports that "all were dying."

One day a lot of Marylanders, most of whom had run through the Union lines from Baltimore, were organized into a battalion called "The Maryland Line." They were led by Marshall Wilder. They were marched past the prison, singing "Maryland, My Maryland." It was the first time I ever heard the song sung by Southerners. The music seemed to stir the whole city.¹

Great battles were being fought in Virginia, and sometimes Grant's soldiers approached close to Richmond. Before daylight of May 7 our captors, fearing mutiny and escape, placed all the prisoners in cattle cars and hurried us across the Confederacy to Macon, Ga. For seven long, dreary, awful months I had been in one room in Libby Prison, with little to eat or wear. It all seems a horrible dream as I write of it now.

Now there were rumors that we were to be taken to a prison farther South.