Brave Deeds of Union Soldiers Part 5

It takes courage to charge, to rush over a s.p.a.ce swept by shot and sh.e.l.l and attack a body of men grimly waiting to beat back the onset with murderous volleys and cold steel. Sometimes, though, it takes more courage to stand than to charge, to endure than to attack. The six hundred gallant hors.e.m.e.n of that Light Brigade who charged an army at Balaclava were brave men. The six hundred Knights of St. John who at the siege of Malta by Solyman the Magnificent defended the tiny fortress of St. Elmo against thirty thousand Turks until every man lay dead back of the broken ramparts and the power and might of the Turkish Empire had been wasted and shattered against their indomitable defense were braver. The burghers of Leyden who lived through the siege of their city on shoe-leather, rats and bark, who baked their last loaves and threw them down to the besiegers in magnificent defiance, who shouted down to the Spaniards that they would eat their left arms and fight with their right, and who slept on the ramparts night and day until they drove back the greatest army in all Europe were braver.

"It's dogged that does it," said the grim Duke of Wellington when his thin red line of English fighters endured through that long summer day against attack after attack until at twilight the Old Guard were repulsed for the last time and the great battle of Waterloo won.

Many men are brave in flashes. They are good for a dash. Few are those who can go the distance.

This is the story of a Union general who could endure and whose courage flared highest when defeat and death seemed certain. It is the story of a little band of men who were brave enough to stand against an army and whose endurance won a seven-day battle and opened the way for the capture of the Confederate capital.

It was the fourth year of the War of the Rebellion, and the end was not yet in sight. The Confederate cause had fewer men, but better officers.

Robert E. Lee was undoubtedly the most able general in the world at that time. Stonewall Jackson had been his right arm, while Longstreet, Johnston, Early and a host of other fighting leaders helped him to defeat one Union army after another. The trouble with the Union leaders was that they didn't know how to attack. There had been McClellan, a wonderful organizer, but who preferred to dig entrenchments rather than fight and who never believed that he had enough men to risk a battle.

Then came Meade who won the great battle of Gettysburg and beat back the only invasion of the North, but who failed to follow up his advantage and had settled down to the old policy that the North knew so well of watchful waiting. At last came the Man. He had been fighting in the West and he had won,--not important battles, but more important, the confidence of the people and of Abraham Lincoln, the people's president. For this new man had a new system of generalship. His tactics were simple enough. He believed that armies were made to use, not to save. He believed in finding the enemy and hammering and hammering and hammering away until something broke--and that something was usually the enemy. His name was Ulysses S. Grant.

"He fights," was all that President Lincoln said about him when a party of politicians came to ask that he be removed. That was enough. What the North wanted was a fighter. Other generals would fight when they had to and were satisfied to stop if they defeated the enemy or broke even, but Grant was like old Charles Martel, Charles the Hammerer, who won his name when he saved all Europe from the Saracens on the plains of Tours by a seven-day battle. The great host of hors.e.m.e.n which had swept victorious through Asia, Africa and half the circle of the Mediterranean whirled down on the solid ma.s.s of grim Northmen. For six long days Charles Martel hammered away at that flashing horde of wild warriors. On the seventh his hammer strokes shattered the might of the Moslems and they broke and fled, never to cross the Pyrenees again. Now like Charles, the Hammerer of the Union Army was facing his great test, the terrible Seven Days in the Wilderness. Between him and the Confederate capital lay Lee's veteran army entrenched in that wild stretch of Virginia territory which was well named the Wilderness.

Every foot of the puzzling woods, ravines, thickets and trails were known to the Confederates and well they ought to know it since they had already won a great battle on nearly the same field. In this tangled waste an army that knew the ground had a tremendous advantage. Lee chose his battle-field, but did not believe that Grant would join battle. He was to learn to know his great opponent better. Grant would always fight.

On May 4, 1864, the head of Grant's army met Lee's forces on one of the few roads of the Wilderness, known as the Orange Plank Road. The battle was joined. At first the Union forces drove the Confederates back into the thick woods. There they were reinforced and the knowledge of the field began to tell. Everywhere Confederate soldiers were sent by short cuts to attack the entangled Union forces and before long the Union line was shattered and driven back only to form again and fight once more for six long days. And what a battle that was! As in the fierce forest-fight between David and Absalom the wood devoured more people that day than the sword devoured. The men fought at close quarters and in the tangled thickets of stunted Virginia pine and scrub-oak they could scarcely see ten yards ahead. Every thicket was alive with men and flashed with musketry while the roar and rattle of guns on all sides frightened the deer and rabbits and wildcats that before that day had been the only dwellers in those ma.s.ses of underbrush. The men fought blindly and desperately in both armies. Artillery could not be used to much advantage in the brush. It was largely a battle of musket and bayonet and wild hand-to-hand fights in the tangle of trees. The second day the Confederate lines were rolled back to the spot where Lee himself stood. Just as they were breaking, down the plank road at a steady trot came a double column of splendid troops paying no attention to the rabble and rout around them. Straight to the front they moved.

It was the brigade of Longstreet, Lee's great "left hand." At once the Union advance was stopped and the Confederates began to reform their lines. At this moment from the pines streamed another Federal brigade with apparently resistless force down upon the still confused line.

Then it was that a little force of Texans did a brave deed. They saw that if the Union advance was not checked, their men would not have time to form. Although only eight hundred strong, they never hesitated, but with a wild Rebel yell and without any supports or reinforcements, charged directly into the flank of the marching Union column of many times their number. There was a crash, and a tumult of shouts and yells which settled down into a steady roar of musketry. In less than ten minutes half of the devoted band lay dead or wounded. But they had broken the force of the Federal advance and had given the Confederate line time to rally.

Back and forth, day after day the human tide ebbed and flowed until the lonely Wilderness was crowded with men, echoing with the roar and rattle of guns and stained red with brave blood. At times in the confusion scattered troops fired upon their own men, and Longstreet was wounded by such an accident.

At one place the Federal forces had erected log breastworks. These caught fire during the battle and both forces fought each other over a line of fire through which neither could pa.s.s. From every thicket different flags waved. The forces were so mixed that men going back for water would find themselves in the hands of the enemy. In places the woods caught fire and men fought through the rolling smoke until driven back by the flames that spared neither the Blue nor the Gray. Both sides would then crawl out to rescue the wounded lying in the path of the fire. In some places where the men had fought through the brush, bushes, saplings and even large trees were cut off by bullets four or five feet from the ground as clean and regularly as if by machinery.

For the first few days the Confederates had the advantage. They knew the paths and the Union men were driven back and forth among the woods in a way that would have made any ordinary general retreat. But Grant was not an ordinary general. The more he was beaten the harder he fought. The more men he lost the more he called into action from the reserves.

"It's no use fighting that fellow," said one old Confederate veteran; "the fool never knows when he's beaten. And it's no use shooting at those Yanks," he went on; "half-a-dozen more come to take the place of every one we hit."

At last the Union soldiers got the lay of the land. They couldn't be surprised or ambushed any more. Then they began to throw up breastworks and to cut down trees to hold every foot that they had taken. The Confederates did the same and the two long, irregular lines of earthworks and log fortifications faced each other all the way through the Wilderness. Yet still the lines of gray lay between Richmond and the men in blue. For six days the men had fought locked together in hand-to-hand fights over miles and miles of wilderness, marsh and thicket. The Union losses had been terrific. All along the line the Confederates had won and again and again had dashed back the attempts of the Union forces to pa.s.s through or around their lines. The Union Army had lost eleven officers and twenty thousand men and had fought for six days without accomplishing anything. Yet on that day Grant sent to Washington a dispatch in which he wrote: "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."

Through all this tumult of defeats and losses he sat under a tree whittling and directing every movement as coolly as if safe at home.

Finally the great Hammerer chose a spot at which to batter and smash with those tremendous strokes of his. The Confederates had built a long irregular line of earthworks and timber breastworks running for miles through the tangled woods. At one point near the center of the lines a half-moon of defenses jutted out high above the rest of the works. At the chord of this half-circle was an angle of breastworks back of which the Confederates could retreat if driven out of the semicircle. Grant saw that this half-moon was the key of the Confederate position. If it could be captured and held, their whole battle line could be broken and crumpled back and the Union Army pa.s.s on to Richmond. If taken at all, it must be by some sudden irresistible attack. He chose General Hanc.o.c.k, a daring, dashing fighter, to make the attempt for the morning of May 12th. It rained hard on the night of May 11th and came off bitter cold. The men gathered for the attack about ten o'clock and huddled together in little groups wet and half-frozen. All that long night they waited. Just at dawn the word was pa.s.sed around. Crouching in the darkness, a division pressed forward and rushed like tigers at the half-circle and began to climb the breastworks from two sides. The sleepy sentries saw the rush too late. The first man over was a young sergeant named Brown. With a tremendous jump he caught a projecting bough, swung himself over like a cat and landed right in the midst of a crowd of startled soldiers. Finding himself entirely alone with a score of guns pointed at him, he lost his nerve for a minute.

"I surrender, don't shoot," he bellowed like a bull. At that moment from all sides other soldiers dropped over the rampart.

"I take it all back," shouted Brown, now brave again, and to make up for the break in his courage he rushed into the very midst of the defenders and, single-handed, captured the colors. The Confederates were taken entirely by surprise. In the dim light they fought desperately, but they were attacked from two sides with bullets, bayonets and smashing blows from the b.u.t.t-ends of muskets used like clubs. Almost in a moment the entrenchments were in the hands of the Union soldiers and over three thousand prisoners, two generals and twenty cannon were captured. Those who were left took refuge back of the angle-breastworks which guarded the approach to the half-moon.

There they fought back the charging troops until Lee, who had heard of the disaster, could pour in reinforcements. He knew full well that this center must be retaken at any cost. Every man and gun that could be spared was hurried to the spot. Lee started then to take command in person. Only when the soldiers refused to fight unless he took a safe place did he consent to stay back.

With all his available forces Grant lapped the half-circle on every side and began to hammer away at this break in the Confederate line.

The Confederate reinforcements came up first and Hanc.o.c.k's men were driven back from the angle until they met the reinforcements pouring in from the troops outside. For a moment they could not face the concentrated fire that came from the rear breastworks. Flat on their faces officers and men lay in a little marsh while the canister swished against the tall marsh-gra.s.s and the minie b.a.l.l.s moaned horribly as they picked out exposed men here and there. Soon another regiment came up and with a yell the men sprang to their feet and dashed at the breastworks which loomed up through the little patch of woods through which they had retreated. In a minute they had rushed through the trees with men dropping on every side under the murderous fire. Before them was the grim angle of works to be known forever as the b.l.o.o.d.y Angle.

As they came nearer they found themselves in front of a deep ditch.

Scrambling through this they became entangled in an abattis, a kind of latticework of limbs and branches. As they plunged into this many a man was caught in the footlocks formed by the interwoven branches and held until he was shot down by the fire back of the breastworks. These were made of heavy timber banked with earth to a height of about four feet.

Above this was what was called a "head-log" raised just high enough to allow a musket to be inserted between it and the lower work. Inside were shelves covered with piles of buck and ball and minie cartridges.

Through the ditch and the snares, up and over the breastworks charged a Pennsylvania regiment, losing nearly one hundred men as they went.

Once again there was the same confused hand-to-hand fighting as had taken place at the outer fortifications. This time the result was different. The crafty Lee had hurried a dense ma.s.s of troops through the mist. These men crawled forward in the smoke, reserving their fire until they got to the very inside edge of the Angle. Then with the terrible long-drawn Rebel yell, they sprang to their feet and dashed into the breastworks with a volley that killed every Union soldier who had crossed over. Down too went the men in front, still tangled in the abattis. Every artillery horse was shot and Colonel Upton of the 95th Pennsylvania Volunteers was the only mounted officer in sight.

"Stick to it, boys," he shouted, riding back and forth and waving his hat. "We've got to hold this point!"

In a dense ma.s.s the Confederates poured into the breastworks and for a moment it seemed as if they would sweep the Union forces back and retake the half-moon salient. At this moment the Pennsylvanians were reinforced by the 5th Maine and the 121st New York, but the Confederates had the advantage of the breastworks and the Union men began to waver. Then a little two-gun battery of the Second Corps did a very brave thing. They were located at the foot of a hill back of a pine-grove. As the news came that the Union men were giving way, they limbered the guns, the drivers and cannoneers mounted the horses and up the hill at full gallop they charged through the Union infantry and right up to the breastworks, the only case of a charge by a battery in history. Then in a second they unlimbered their guns and poured in a fire of the tin cans filled with bullets called canister which was deadly on the close-packed ranks of the Confederates hurrying up to the Angle. The Union gunners were exposed to the full fire of the men back of the breastworks, but they never flinched. The left gun fired nine rounds and the right fourteen double charges. These cannonades simply mowed the men down in groups. Captain Fish of General Upton's staff left his men and rushed to help this little battery. Back and forth he rode before the guns and the caissons carrying stands of canister under his rubber coat.

"Give it to 'em, boys," he shouted. "I'll bring you canister if you'll only use it."

Again and again he rode until, just as he turned to cheer the gunners once more, he fell mortally wounded. The guns were fired until all of the horses were killed, the guns, carriages and buckets cut to pieces by the bullets and only two of the twenty-three men of the battery were left on their feet. Leaving their two bra.s.s pieces which had done such terrible execution still on the breastworks cut and hacked by the bullets from both sides, the lone two marched back through the cheering infantry.

"That's the way to do it," shouted Colonel Upton. "Hold 'em, men! Hold 'em!" And his men held.

The soft mud came up half-way to their knees. Under the continued tramping back and forth, the dead and wounded were almost buried at their feet. The shattered ranks backed off a few yards, then closed up and started to hold their place out in the open against the constantly increasing ma.s.ses of the enemy back of the breastworks of the Angle.

The s.p.a.ce was so narrow that only a certain number of men on each side could get into action at once. A New Jersey and Vermont brigade hurried in to help while on the other side General Lee sent all the men that could find a place to fight back of the breastworks. Into the melee came an orderly who shouted in Colonel Upton's ear so as to be heard over the rattle of musketry and the roar of yells and cheers:

"General Grant says, 'Hold on!'"

"Tell General Grant we are holding on," shouted back Colonel Upton.

The men in the mud now directed all their fire at the top of the breastworks and picked off every head and hand that showed above. The Confederates then fired through the loopholes, or placed their rifles on the top log and holding by the trigger and the small of the stock lifted the breach high enough to fire at the attacking forces. The losses on both sides were frightful. A gun and a mortar battery took position half a mile back of the Union forces and began to gracefully curve sh.e.l.ls and bombs just over the heads of their comrades so as to drop within the ramparts. Sometimes the enemy's fire would slacken.

Then some reckless Union soldier would seize a fence-rail or a piece of the abattis and creep close to the breastworks and thrust it over as if he was stirring up a hornet's nest, dropping on the ground to avoid the volley that was sure to follow. One daring lieutenant leaped upon the breastworks and took a rifle that was handed up to him and fired it into the ma.s.ses of the Confederate soldiers behind. Another one was handed up and he fired that and was about aiming with a third when he was riddled with a volley and pitched headlong among the enemy.

A little later a party of discouraged Confederates raised a piece of a white shelter tent above the works as a flag of truce and offered to surrender. The Union soldiers called on them to jump over. They sprang on the breastworks and hesitated a moment at the sight of so many leveled guns. That moment was fatal to them for their comrades in the rear poured a volley into them, killing nearly every one.

All day long the battle raged. Different breastworks in the same fortifications flaunted different flags. Gradually, however, all along the line the firing and the fighting concentrated at the Angle. The head logs there were so cut and torn that they looked like brooms. So heavy was the fire that several large oak trees twenty-two inches in diameter back of the works were gnawed down by the bullets and fell, injuring some of the South Carolina troops. Toward dusk the Union troops were nearly exhausted. Each man had fired between three and four hundred rounds. Their lips were black and bleeding from biting cartridge. Their shoulders and hands were coated and black with grime and powder-dust. As soon as it became dark they dropped in the knee-deep mud from utter exhaustion. But they held. Grimly, sternly they held. All the long night through they fired away at the breastworks. The trenches on the right of the Angle ran red with Union blood and had to be cleared many a time of the piles of dead bodies which choked them. At last, a little after midnight, sullenly and slowly the Confederate forces drew back and the half-moon and the b.l.o.o.d.y Angle were left in possession of the Union forces. The seven days' hammering and the twenty hours of holding had won the fierce and b.l.o.o.d.y Battle of the Wilderness.

CHAPTER IX

HEROES OF GETTYSBURG

Heroes are not made of different stuff from ordinary men. G.o.d made us all heroes at heart. Satan lied when he said "all that a man hath will he give for his life." The call comes and commonplace men and workaday women give their lives as a very little thing for a cause, for an ideal, or for others. When the great moment comes, the love and courage and unselfishness that lie deep in the souls of all of us can flash forth into beacon-lights of brave deeds which will stand throughout the years pointing the path of high endeavor for those who come after.

Women the world over will never forget how Mrs. Strauss came back from the life-boat and went down on the _t.i.tanic_ with her husband rather than have him die alone.

Boys have been braver and tenderer their lives long because of the unknown hero at Niagara. With his mother he was trapped on a floe when the ice-jam broke. Slowly and sternly it moved toward the roaring edge of the cataract. From the Suspension Bridge a rope was let down to them. Twice he tried to fix it around his mother, but she was too old and weak to hold on. The floe was pa.s.sing beyond the bridge and there was just time for him to knot the rope around himself. Young, active and strong, he would be safe in a moment, but his mother would go to death deserted and alone. He tossed the rope away, put his arm around his old mother and they went over the Falls together.

Every American sailor has been braver and gentler from the memory of Captain Craven who commanded the monitor _Tec.u.mseh_ when Fighting Farragut destroyed the forts and captured the Rebel fleet at Mobile Bay. The _Tennessee_ was about to grapple with the _Tennessee_, the great Rebel ram, when she struck a torpedo, turned over and went down bow foremost. Captain Craven was in the pilot-house with the pilot. As the vessel sank they both rushed for the narrow door. Craven reached it first, but stood aside saying, "After you, pilot." The latter leaped through as the water rushed in and was saved. Craven went down with his ship.

The great moments which are given to men in which to decide whether they are to be heroes or cowards may come at any time, but they always flash through every battle. Danger, suffering and death are the stern tests by which men's real selves are discovered. A man can't do much pretending when he is under fire, and he can't make believe he is brave or unselfish, or chivalric when he is sick, or wounded, or dying. We can be proud that the man who went before us made good and that we can remember all the great battles of the greatest of our wars by the brave deeds of brave men.

The battle of Gettysburg was the most important of the Civil War. Lee with seventy thousand men was pouring into the North. If he defeated Meade and the Union Army, Washington, the capital, would fall. Even Philadelphia and New York would be threatened. In three days of terrible fighting, thirty thousand men were killed. In one of the charges one regiment, the 1st Minnesota, lost eighty-two per cent. of its men--more than twice as many as the famous Light Brigade lost at Balaclava. Pickett's charge of fifteen thousand men over nearly a mile and a half against the hill which marked the center of the Union lines was one of the greatest charges in history. When the Confederates were driven back, two-thirds of the charging party had been killed or wounded. It was the crisis of the war. If that charge went home Gettysburg was lost, the Union Army would become a rabble and the whole strength of the Confederate forces would pa.s.s on into the North. On the Union batteries depended the whole fate of the army. If they could keep up a fire to the last moment, the charge must fail. Otherwise the picked thousands of the Confederate Army would break the center of the Union forces and the battle would be lost. Lee gathered together one hundred and fifteen guns and directed a storm of shot and sh.e.l.l against the Union batteries as his regiments charged up the hill. On the very crest was a battery commanded by young Cushing, a brother of Lieutenant W. B. Cushing, who drove a tiny torpedo launch over a boom of logs under the fire of forts, troops and iron-clads and destroyed the great Confederate iron-clad _Albemarle_. This Cushing was of the same fighting breed. During the battle he was shot through both thighs but would not leave his post though suffering agonies from the wounds. When the charge began he fought his battery as fast as the guns could be loaded and fired and his grape-shot and canister mowed down the charging Confederates by the hundred. In spite of tremendous losses the Rebels rushed up the hill firing as they came and so fierce was their fire and that of the Confederate batteries that of the Union officers in command of the batteries just in front of the charge, all but two were struck. But the men kept up the fire to the very last. As what was left of the Confederates topped the hill, a sh.e.l.l struck the wounded Cushing tearing him almost in two. He held together his mangled body with one hand and with the other fired his last gun and fell dead just as the Confederates reached the stone wall on the crest. They were so shattered by his fire that they were unable to hold the hill and were driven back and the battle won for the Union.

Old John Burns was another one of the many heroes of Gettysburg. John was over seventy years old when the battle was fought and lived in a little house in the town of Gettysburg with his wife who was nearly as old as he. Burns had fought in the war of 1812 and began to get more and more uneasy every day as the battle was joined at different points near where he was living. The night before the last day of the battle the old man went out to get his cow and found that a foraging band of Confederates had driven her off. This was the last straw. The next day regiment after regiment of the Confederate forces marched past his house and the old man took down his flintlock musket which had done good service against the British in 1812 and began to melt lead and run bullets through his little old bullet mould. Mrs. Burns had been watching him uneasily for some time.

"John, what in the world are you doing there?" she finally asked.

"Oh," he said, "I thought I would fix up the old gun and get some bullets ready in case any of the boys might want to use it. There's goin' to be some fightin' and it's just as well to get ready. There ain't a piece in the army that will shoot straighter than Betsy here,"

and the old man patted the long stock of the musket affectionately.

"Well," said his wife, "you see that you keep out of it. You know if the Rebs catch you fightin' in citizens' clothes, they'll hang you sure."