The County Regiment Part 3

[Ill.u.s.tration: Colonel Hubbard]

The routine of picket duty, inspection, alarms, and orders to be in readiness which came not infrequently, continued for another succession of weeks, varied now by the constant arrival of deserters from the enemy, who were coming into the Union lines singly and in large parties almost daily, and revealing the desperate condition on the other side. Preparations went on for what all felt was to be the final campaign; and this opened for the Second Connecticut on March 25th, when the famous a.s.sault on Fort Stedman was made by the enemy, Lee's last attempt at offensive operations.

This position, which was on the eastern side of the city of Petersburg, was gallantly attacked and captured in the early morning; troops were at once called from all parts of the Union line and hurried to the point of action, but the fort was retaken before the Second Connecticut reached the scene, and the regiment was then moved to the southwest of the city before Fort Fisher, a general a.s.sault of the whole extensive line having been ordered by Grant to develop the weakness that Lee must have been obliged to make somewhere to carry out his plan against Fort Stedman. The attack succeeded in gaining and holding a large share of the Confederate picket line, a matter of great importance.

The Second Connecticut advanced to the charge late in the afternoon "as steadily as though on a battalion drill," the regimental history relates. It captured a line of rifle pits and kept on "under a combined artillery and musket fire. The air was blue with the little cast iron b.a.l.l.s from spherical-case shot which shaved the ground and exploded among the stumps just in rear of the line at intervals of only a few seconds. Twenty of the Second Connecticut were wounded--seven of them mortally--in reaching, occupying, and abandoning this position, which, proving entirely untenable, was held only a few minutes. The line faced about and moved back under the same mixed fire of solid shot, spherical case, and musketry, and halted not far in front of the spot whence it had first moved forward. Other troops on the right now engaged the battery and captured the rest of the picket line, and after half an hour the brigade again moved forward to a position still further advanced than the previous one, where a permanent picket line was established."

The week following this eventful day, which began with the capture of one of the Union works, and ended with substantial gains along their front, saw intense activity on all sides. The abandonment of Petersburg by Lee was now plainly imminent, and the preventing of his army's escape was the paramount object. The whole vast field of operation about the besieged city became a seething theater of complicated movement, and the Second Connecticut, under frequent orders for immediate advance, was formed in line at all hours of the day or night, and excited by a thousand rumors and orders given and revoked, but it did not finally leave its quarters during this time.

On April 1st, Sheridan won his notable victory at Five Forks, and at midnight the regiment was ordered out for a final charge on the defences so long held against them, which was to be made early on the 2nd. All was made ready, the lines formed, and at daylight the signal gun set the army in motion.

"The advance was over precisely the same ground as on the 25th of March, and the firing came from the same battery and breastworks, although not quite so severe. Lieutenant-Colonel Skinner and seven enlisted men were wounded--none of them fatally. There was but little firing on our side, but with bayonets fixed the boys went in,--not in a very mathematical right line, but strongly and surely,--on, on, until the first line was carried. Then, invigorated and greatly encouraged by success, they pressed on--the opposing fire slackening every minute,--on, on, through the abatis and ditch, up the steep bank, over the parapet into the rebel camp that had but just been deserted. Then and there the long tried and ever faithful soldiers of the Republic saw daylight--and such a shout as tore the concave of that morning sky it were worth dying to hear." The same jubilant success was attending the whole army, though not without sharp resistance on the part of the enemy in places.

Throughout the day advances were made and the works so long besieged were occupied all over the vast field, and at night the men "lay down in muddy trenches, among the dying and the dead, under a most murderous fire of sharpshooters. There had been charges and counter charges,--but our troops held all they had gained. At length the hot day gave place to chilly night, and the extreme change brought much suffering. The men had flung away whatever was fling-away-able during the charge of the morning and the subsequent hot march--as men always will, under like circ.u.mstances--and now they found themselves blanketless, stockingless, overcoatless,--in cold and damp trenches, and compelled by the steady firing to lie still, or adopt a horizontal, crawling mode of locomotion, which did not admit of speed enough to quicken the circulation of the blood. Some took clothing from the dead and wrapped themselves in it; others, who were fortunate enough to procure spades, dug gopher holes, and burrowed. At daylight the Sixty-fifth New York clambered over the huge earthwork, took possession of Fort h.e.l.l, opened a picket fire and fired one of the guns in the fort, eliciting no reply. Just then a huge fire in the direction of the city, followed by several explosions, convinced our side that Lee's army had indeed left. The regiment was hastily got together,--ninety muskets being all that could be produced,--and sent out on picket. The picket line advanced and meeting with no resistance pushed on into the city. What regiment was first to enter the city is and probably ever will be a disputed question. The Second Connecticut claims to have been in first, but Colonel Hubbard had ordered the colors to remain behind when the regiment went out on the skirmish line, consequently the stars and stripes that first floated over captured Petersburg belonged to some other regiment. Colonel Hubbard was, however, made Provost-Marshal of the city, and for a brief while dispensed government and law in that capacity."

Petersburg, however, now that it was abandoned by the enemy, had lost the importance it had so long possessed, and all energies were given to preventing the escape of its late defenders. Before the end of the day (April 3rd) the regiment, with the rest of the Sixth Corps, had turned westward and joined the pursuit. The chase was stern and the marches rapid, but far less wearing to these victorious veterans, filled with the consciousness of success, than those that had initiated their campaigning less than a year before. On April 6th the regiment, after an all day march, came up with the enemy in position at Sailor's Creek, and went into the last engagement of its career. It was a charge under a hot fire, sharp and decisive, which quickly changed to a pursuit of the fleeing enemy, kept up until the bivouack at ten o'clock. The Second Connecticut captured the headquarters train of General Mahone, a battle flag, and many prisoners, and ended the tale of its losses with three men killed and six wounded.

The chase was taken up next morning (April 7th), and the regiment had reached a point close to Appomattox Court House, when on April 9th Lee met Grant and surrendered what remained of his army, at that historic place.

To imagine all that this meant to the men in arms is far easier than to attempt its description. They saw at last the end arriving of all the privation and suffering they had volunteered to undergo; they saw the triumph of the Union they had risen to defend to the uttermost extremity a proven fact. The whole continent vibrated with the deepest feeling at the news of it, but they, better than any others, knew in the fullest degree its immense significance.

Immediately after the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Sixth Corps was moved to Burkesville, some distance from Appomattox in the direction of Richmond, and there it remained for about ten days awaiting events. On April 22nd it was ordered southward to Danville, with a view to joining Sherman's army then confronting Johnston in North Carolina, a movement which again necessitated some fatiguing marches, the one hundred and five miles being covered in less than five days. News was received, however, that Johnston had followed the example of Lee and surrendered, and the corps thereupon faced about once more. On its leisurely progress to the north it was joined by crowds of the newly freed negroes, who attached themselves to every regiment in droves, and the lately hostile inhabitants came also at every stopping place, "with baskets and two-wheeled carts" for supplies to relieve their dire necessities.

Near Richmond the regiment remained several days, and the men were allowed pa.s.ses to visit the late Confederate capital, so long the goal of their strenuous efforts. "The burnt district was still smoking with the remains of the great fire of April 2nd, and the city was full of officers and soldiers of the ex-Confederate army. The blue and the gray mingled on the streets and public squares, and were seen side by side in the Sabbath congregations. The war was over."

The consciousness of this last great fact was now becoming insistent in the minds of these citizen soldiers. The great purpose for which they had offered themselves was carried out, and their eagerness to have done with all the circ.u.mstances of military life was increasingly strong, and grew so intense as to render the final weeks of their term of service extremely trying.

The tremendous task of disbanding the armies of the Union was occupying the entire energies of the War Department, but to the men it seemed as if their longed for turn would never come. Back in the well-known fortifications around Washington they waited, taking part in the Grand Review on June 8th, in all the misery of full dress, and in a temper that would have carried them against the thousands of acclaiming spectators with savage joy, had it been a host of enemies in arms.

But their turn came at last, and on July 7th, one hundred and eighty-three men, all that were left of the original enlisted men of the "old Nineteenth," were mustered out; two days later they departed for New Haven and were welcomed there, like all the returning troops, with patriotic rejoicing.

The remainder of the regiment, some four hundred in number, was mustered out in its turn on August 18th, reached New Haven on the 20th, and "pa.s.sed up Chapel Street amid welcoming crowds of people, the clangor of bells, and a shower of rockets and red lights that made the field-and-staff horses prance with the belief that battle had come again. After partaking of a bounteous entertainment prepared in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the State House, the regiment proceeded to Grapevine Point, where, on the 5th of September, they received their pay and discharge, and the Second Connecticut Heavy Artillery vanished from sight and pa.s.sed into History."

In Litchfield County the return of the various contingents to their homes was made the occasion of great rejoicing. Chief among these celebrations was a grand reception at the county seat on August 1st, when the first detachment to be discharged had arrived; they were feted with dinner and speeches, illuminations and a triumphal arch.

There were also other organized demonstrations in other towns, and everywhere the strongest manifestations of pride in these warrior sons of the county, and joy at their return.

But all who went had not returned. The terrible significance of the cold and formal columns and tables of the regiment's casualties was felt in every town, and to their tale was added in succeeding years a long list of the many who had indeed come back, but broken with wounds and disease, and just as truly devoted to death through their service as those who fell upon the field of battle.

What the Second Connecticut suffered is shown, so far as official statistics go, in the tables published by the Adjutant-General of the state, as follows:

Killed 147 Missing in action, probably killed 11 Fatally wounded 95 Wounded 427 Captured 72 Died in prison 21 Died of disease or accident 154 Discharged for disability 285 Unaccounted for at muster out 35

The officers of the regiment as mustered out were: Colonel, James Hubbard, Salisbury; lieutenant-colonel, Jeffrey Skinner, Winchester; majors, Edward W. Jones, New Hartford; Augustus H. Fenn, Plymouth; Chester D. Cleveland, Barkhamsted; adjutant, Theodore F. Vaill, Litchfield; quartermaster, Edward C. Huxley, Goshen; surgeon, Henry Plumb, New Milford; a.s.sistant surgeons, Robert G. Hazzard, New Haven; Judson B. Andrews, New Haven; chaplain, Winthrop H. Phelps, Barkhamsted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Monument at Arlington]

The preceding pages have outlined the career of the Second Connecticut Heavy Artillery, and have narrated some of the more memorable events of its history. Enough has been told of what it did to furnish grounds for deducing what it was; but to deal with the regiment on the personal side is hardly possible within the limits of such a sketch as this, though it is a matter that cannot be entirely pa.s.sed by. It need not be said that there is abundant human interest attaching as a matter of course to such men as were in the aggregate the subjects of so fine a record.

Any body of men--a college cla.s.s, a legislature, a regiment--is in character what its component members make it; in this case there was the material, which, furnished with worthy leadership--and it unquestionably had that--made up the organization whose not uneventful existence has been described. That they were better men, or worse, braver men, or more patriotic, than their descendants and successors would prove under similar conditions, or than the hundreds of thousands of their contemporaries who devoted themselves to the same service, is not to be believed; yet to have pa.s.sed through such experiences as have been recounted, which became for them for a time the commonplaces of every-day life, is enough to place them apart from ordinary men in the eyes of our peace knowing generation. In fact, to have pa.s.sed the tests of so fierce a course of education gives them a t.i.tle to a place thus apart. The university man of to-day, as the burden of the baccalaureate sermons so frequently testifies, is consigned to a special place of responsibility in life because of his training; these men surely earned one of special honor by reason of theirs, which was, too, not like the other, preparation alone, but also fulfilment. The realization of how typical it all was of that generation and that time, brings the clearest understanding of the real scope of the Civil War.

To the members of the Litchfield County University Club it is perhaps a point of interest to take brief notice of those names on the regimental rolls which would probably have been found upon its list of members had the organization been in existence in that earlier time. A number of the officers and men were college graduates when they enlisted, and others gained degrees after the war ended; the list which follows is, however, necessarily incomplete; in fact, an absolutely correct list is no doubt hopelessly impossible.

Major James Q. Rice, who was killed at Winchester, was a member of the cla.s.s of 1850 at Wesleyan, and received from that inst.i.tution the degree of Master of Arts in 1855. At the time of the regiment's formation he was conducting an academy in Goshen, and was enlisted as captain of a company which he had been active in recruiting.

Lieutenant-Colonel Nathaniel Smith of Woodbury entered the Yale Law School in the cla.s.s of 1853, but did not graduate. Ill health forced him to relinquish his commission early in 1864, and until his death in 1877 he was a leading citizen of the county.

Judge Augustus H. Fenn, Major and Brevet-Colonel, came back from the war, having lost an arm at Cedar Creek, to take a course in the Law School at Harvard, and Yale made him a Master of Arts in 1889. His prominence for many years in public life and as judge in the highest courts in the state is well known. At the time of his death in 1897, he was a lecturer in the Yale Law School, and member of the Supreme Court of Errors.

Rev. James Deane, Captain and Brevet-Major, was a graduate of Williams in the cla.s.s of 1857. He was pastor of the Congregational church at East Canaan when the regiment was organized, and was one of its recruiting officers.

Adjutant Theodore F. Vaill, the historian of the regiment, was a student before the war at Union College, but did not graduate.

Captain George S. Williams, of New Milford, was a member of the cla.s.s of 1852 at Yale for a time, and received a degree from Trinity in 1855.

Surgeon Henry Plumb, and a.s.sistant-Surgeons Robert G. Hazzard and John W. Lawton were all graduates of the Yale Medical School, in the cla.s.ses of 1861, 1862, and 1859. a.s.sistant-Surgeon Judson B. Andrews graduated at Yale in 1855. He was captain in a New York regiment in the early part of the war, and became afterward superintendent of the Buffalo State Hospital, and a recognized authority on insanity before his death in 1894.

Chaplain Jonathan A. Wainwright graduated at the University of Vermont in 1846, and after the war was for some years rector of St. John's Church in Salisbury. He was later connected with a church college in Missouri, where he died in 1898.

Captain William H. Lewis, Jr., studied after the war at the Berkeley Divinity School, and has been for many years rector of St. John's Church in Bridgeport.

Lieutenant and Brevet-Captain Lewis W. Munger, graduating at Brown in 1869 and later from the Crozier Theological Seminary, entered the ministry of the Baptist church.

Corporal Francis J. Young entered the Yale Medical School before the war, and returned after its close to take his degree in 1866.

Hospital Steward James J. Averill also graduated at the Yale Medical School after the war.

Sergeant Theodore C. Glazier was a graduate of Trinity in the cla.s.s of 1860, and was a tutor there when he enlisted. He was later made colonel of a colored regiment, and served with credit in that capacity.

Corporal Edward C. Hopson, a graduate of Trinity in 1864, was killed at Cedar Creek.

Sergeant Garwood R. Merwin, who had been a member of the cla.s.s of 1864 at Yale, died at Alexandria in 1863.

Sergeant Romulus C. Loveridge, who had been entered in the cla.s.s of 1865 at Yale, received a commission in a colored regiment.