August 6th. At nine A. M. made all sail; sent aloft the royals and set them; practiced ship’s company at general quarters, without powder; made Cape Florida light; four sails reported in sight during watch; saw a large steamer standing to the southward.
Saturday, July 6, 2013
July 6.—Portions of the Tenth Kentucky and First Ohio, under the command of Major Brown, made an expedition through Pound Gap, Ky., into South-western Virginia, and succeeded in surprising the rebels, capturing one hundred and twenty-five prisoners, killing thirty, and wounding about the same number. The National loss was one killed and fourteen wounded.—The English schooner Lady Maria, was captured off Mobile Bay, by the National gunboat De Soto.
—A fight took place near Quaker Bridge, on the Trent River, N. C., in which the rebels were defeated by a force under the command of General Heckman.—The case of the British prize ship Peterhoff, was opened before Judge Bctts, sitting in prize court at New-York.—The cavalry battles of Hagerstown and Williamsport, Md., were fought this day.—(Doc. 32.)
—Knights of the Golden Circle entered the depot at Huntington Indiana, at an early hour this morning, and seized and distributed among themselves a quantity of guns and ammunition.— A large amount of money and other necessaries, in aid of the wounded at Gettysburgh, was raised throughout the loyal States.—At New York City a conspiracy to resist the draft was discovered, and precautionary measures were taken to thwart it.
—So much of the order, issued by Brigadier General Emory, at New-Orleans, on the third instant, as prohibited peaceable citizens from being out after nine o’clock P.M., provided that they are not in parties of more than three, was rescinded.—General Lee’s army was in full retreat, the Nationals following rapidly. Hopes were entertained that the whole army of rebels would be captured.—At Frederick, Md., a rebel spy, named Wm. Richardson, about fifty years old, was hung this morning. He was captured yesterday at Oxford, Md. He had been previously captured, and made his escape. He admitted the charge, and said that he had been in the business a long time. Important communications between Lee and Ewell were found on his person.—Major-General Oglesby resigned command of the left wing, Sixteenth army corps, army of the Tennessee, in consequence of the effects of a severe wound which he received in the battle at Corinth, in October last.—The Richmond Sentinel published an elaborate article, setting forth the plan of General Lee for his movement into Pennsylvania. The “most important part of it was to quit the defensive and assume the offensive toward the enemy.”
July 6.—I have just had a visit from our old surgeon, Dr. P. Thornton. He is in Wharton’s cavalry, which is under Wheeler. They covered the retreat . He says they fought day and night for a week, and that our men have had a trying time, as every thing had to be brought off in a hurry, and we had so many mountains to cross. He also says they have left the enemy far behind.
We have just received orders to send every man away. Those who are not able to leave this place are to be sent to other hospitals, as we are so near the river, and would get, in case of an attack, the full benefit of the firing.
This place already begins to look like Corinth. Troops are passing and repassing constantly; the noise from the wagons is deafening. We used to have guards to stop wagons and horsemen galloping past; but those things are not heeded now.
It is thought, if this place should be well fortified, and we chose to hold it, it would stand a siege of years, as it has the strongest natural defenses in the Confederacy.
All are in the dark as to what is going to be done. Some feel satisfied that General Bragg could not have made any other move than the one he has, as the Federals were aiming to flank him, and he had not men enough to force them to fight. If he had enemies before, they can be numbered now by the score. He seems to have no friends except the Alabamians; they have not lost confidence in him. He has certainly had much to contend with. I do not feel competent to judge of his abilities as a commander, but I do wish, for his own sake and that of the country, he would leave this department, as the confidence of men in a commander is every thing.
I am told that many of the Tennesseans have deserted. I think we are well rid of all who are base enough to live under the Lincoln government after the outrages it has committed on us.
“When so base as be a slave,
Let him turn and flee!”
With this retreat, as with every other I have seen, the men are so worn out that they tell all kind of stories about the army’s being demoralized. I have got used to this, and do not put faith in it. After they are well rested they will forget it.
July 6th. At nine in the morning inspected crew at quarters. Ship’s company engaged in repairing fore and main standing-rigging, which has been shot away in action. Between the hours of four and six in the afternoon, U. S. naval batteries were engaged with the enemy at Port Hudson. From eight o’clock till twelve midnight, heavy squalls of wind and rain, accompanied with thunder and lightning. All quiet at Port Hudson at this hour.
Monday, 6th.—Drew crackers, bacon, pickled beef, peas, sugar, coffee and vinegar; very unwell to-day.
Monday Morning.—The hope I expressed in my last line on Saturday night was delusive. About one o’clock I was awakened by E. leaning over me, and saying in a low, tremulous tone, “Mother, get up, the Yankees are come.” We sprang up, and there they were at the telegraph office, immediately opposite. In an instant the door was broken down with a crash, and the battery and other things thrown out. Axes were at work cutting down the telegraph-poles, while busy hands were tearing up the railroad. A sentinel sat on his horse at our gate as motionless as if both man and horse had been cut from a block of Yankee granite. We expected every moment that they would come to the house, or at least go into the hotel opposite to us; but they went off to the depot. There was a dead silence, except an occasional order, “Be quick,” “Keep a sharp look-out,” etc., etc. The night was moonlight, but we dressed ourselves and sat in the dark; we were afraid to open the window-shutters or to light a lamp, lest they might be attracted to the house. We remained in this way perhaps two hours, when the flames suddenly burst from the depot. All parts of the building seemed to be burning at once; also immense piles of wood and of plank. The conflagration was brilliant. As soon as the whole was fairly blazing the pickets were called in, and the whole party dashed off, with demoniac yells. Soon after, as the dawn began to break upon us, doors were thrown open, and the villagers began to sally forth to the fire. In a short time all of us were there, from every house—even the babies; and as it became daylight, an amusing group was revealed. Every one had dressed in the dark, and all manner of costumes were to be seen—dressing-gowns, cravatless old gentlemen, young ladies in curl-papers, collars pinned awry, etc. Some ladies presented themselves in full costume—handsome dresses, lace collars, ear-rings and breastpins, watches, etc.—giving as a reason, that, if they were burnt out, they would at least save their best clothes—forgetting, the while, that a Yankee soldier has an irresistible penchant for watches and other jewelry. Some of us were more cautious, and had put all our valuables in unapproachable pockets—the pockets to a lady’s dress not having proved on all occasions a place of safety. The loss to the railroad company will be considerable; to the public very small, for they are already replacing the broken rails, and the telegraph was put in operation yesterday.
The morning papers give the Northern account of a battle in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It gives the victory to the Federals, though it admits a very heavy loss on their side; announces the loss of Major-General Reynolds and Brigadier-General Paul by death. We pause for the truth.
Monday, 6th—Start cross the mountains. Came up, I and Paul Watkins, to Nicka Jack, staid all night with Mrs. Porter.
Francis Bacon to Georgeanna Muirson Woolsey
July 6th, 1863.
My present experiment is trying whether I am equal to that American standard of ability “to keep a hotel,”—the St. Louis Hotel, to wit. It is a fine building over in the French quarter of the city. Chocolate-colored old gentlemen with white moustaches, much given to wearing of nankeen and seersucker and twirling of bamboo sticks, (whom tortures could not compel to speak three words of English, nor a general conflagration drive across Canal street into the American region,) prowl thereabout, and scowl French detestation at the interloping Yankee as he passes in and out of their national hotel. The rattle of dominoes, upon marble tables in cafes all about, is incessant, and on Sundays rises almost to the sublime.
The St. Louis was a good hotel, but makes a bad hospital. I remonstrated as stoutly as I could against its being taken for the purpose, but, with a fixity of will which I would have preferred to see exercised in some other direction, the order came for the St. Louis to be a hospital, and for me to be Surgeon in charge. So now, making the best of it, though my rooms are mostly small and my passages narrow, I have a superb marble entrance with two big lions, one dormant, one couchant, “to comfort me on my entablature.” .
The labor of starting the Hospital has been immense, . . . for nothing about the house that could be disordered, from the steam-engine in the cellar to the water-tanks upon the roof, was in working order. . . . On the 16th I had to receive a steamboat load of patients, all of the poor fellows wounded, from Banks’ second assault of Port Hudson; hourly, for the past week, we have been painfully expecting another such arrival from his third. . . .
Thank Heaven, the patients have done well! I am going to send as many North on furloughs as possible, convalescence is so slow and uncertain in this climate.
How wonderfully cheerful these wounded men always are! You should see one of our pets, a young fellow about twenty-one years old, from a New York regiment, Kretzler by name. Right thigh amputated, right fore-arm the same, shell wound as big as my two hands in the left thigh, ugly wound under the jaw, scratches about left hand and arm. He never complains of anything, takes all the beefsteak and porter we can give him, insisting on helping himself to the latter and drinking it from the bottle. He sits up in his bed a large part of the time, smoking his pipe with an expression of perfect serenity. When I ask him how he does, it is always “bully,” with a triumphant air. Passing near his room the other day, I heard him singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in a robust style, with the remark in conclusion, “There, guess them Rebs won’t like that much,” alluding thereby to a lot of hulking scoundrels of Texans, prisoners, wounded at Donaldsonville, and lying in a room within ear-shot of him, as well as to some female visitors of theirs, who, having no longer the salutary fear of Ben. Butler before their eyes, were making their sympathies a little too apparent. This kind of cats I pretty uniformly exclude now, and as a consequence, when they find themselves baffled, I have some highly dramatic interviews with them, almost at the risk of my eyes, I sometimes feel.
I reluctantly confess that I am subjugated and crushed by a woman who sings The Star-Spangled Banner copiously through all the wards of my hospital. . . . She weighs three hundred pounds. She comes every morning, early. She wears the Flag of our Country pinned across her heart. She comes into my room, my own office, unabashed by the fact that I am the Surgeon in charge, and that an orderly in white gloves stands at the door. She looks me in the eye with perfect calmness and intrepidity. She takes off her sunbonnet and mantilla and lays them upon my table, over my papers, as if they were rare and lovely flowers of the tropics. She knocks off three of my pens with her brown parasol, worn out in the joint, and begins to exude small parcels from every pocket. . . She nurses tenderly, and feeds and cries over the bad cases. Poor Martin Rosebush, a handsome, smooth-faced, good boy from New Hampshire, desperately wounded and delirious, would start up with a cry of joy when she came, and died with his arms around her neck, calling her his mammy.
Jerry Cammett, a peaceful giant, grown as they grow them in Maine, with pink cheeks, bright-yellow beard, and handsome blue eyes as free from guile as a baby’s, lies with his right thigh amputated. After each visit she makes him, I hear the effect it has upon Jerry in about three hours of steady quiet whistling to himself of funny, twiddling Methodist hymns.
Of course I do not encourage the visits of this creature with the Flag of our Country and the National Anthem. On the contrary, they encourage me.
So do those of “Olympe, sare, natif to ze citie.” She is a stately, sybilline old black, or rather brown woman, everything in her appearance indicating great age, except her intensely black and glittering eyes, which still show the fire of youth. She wears a most elaborate turban of Madras handkerchiefs, a dress of fine and exquisitely white muslin, handsome pearl drops in her ears, and around her wrinkled neck a string of large beads of that deep yellow, almost tawny gold, which comes with ivory and palm-oil from the African coast. She brings little parcels of extremely nice lint, small pots of jelly, and bottles of orange-flower syrup, all made, she would have me know, with her own hands in her own house; this she says with great dignity, and shows me how carefully she wraps them up so that the Confederate ladies, her neighbors, shall not know that she brings them to Union soldiers. I fancy that if one should sit down with this old lady, and, in French, talk oneself into her confidence, she would prove immensely entertaining and instructive.
Captain Charles Rockwell’s appearance was a very pleasant surprise to me. I hoped that he would be assigned to duty in the city here, but, the day after his arrival, he was ordered up to Port Hudson. . . .
July 10th.
P. S. Let us have a season of felicitation over Vicksburg and Port Hudson, from both of which we have got the good news since I stopped writing.
The rage and incredulity of the Secesh are really comical, and fill my soul with an infinite peace.
Now send us good news of what cometh to Lee of the wicked raid, and all may be well.
Washington, D. C.
Newport, R. I., July 6, 1863.
My Dear Sir,—Allow me to congratulate you on the success of our brave army and navy under its new leader. I hope and pray this may be the forerunner of a series of decisive Union victories, and that we may at last see the end of this unholy rebellion.
If the President were now, at this moment, when the whole North is electrified by our victory, to make a call upon the loyal States for three hundred thousand volunteers for the duration of the war, to be partially sent to the army, and partially to camps of instruction, his call would be promptly and eagerly responded to. Besides that, he ought to call upon the militia of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey to man the forts around Washington with forty to fifty thousand men, which would enable the thirty thousand men, veteran troops, under Heintzelman, to swell the Potomac army, and assist in finishing up Lee’s army.
Our army under Dix and Keyes ought at once to be re-enforced by fifty thousand men at least, and then the capture, not only of Richmond, but of the rebel army in Virginia, could be made secure.
The same number,of men ought to be sent to New Orleans, and, if possible, three or four of our iron-clads, who are wasting their time before Charleston, a point only important for prestige, or to gratify a just resentment, while the Mississippi is the keystone of the whole rebel fabric.
Bank’s position is not at all what it ought to be, and if Vicksburg does not fall very soon, we stand a fair chance of losing New Orleans, or having to destroy the city, which would be as bad.
I have no doubt but what the administration is keenly alive to the vital importance of quick and energetic action, but I thought I might venture to make you the above suggestions.
If we miss this time for a final death-blow to the hideous monster, we may never again have another chance.
July 6.—The interest of campaigning I find to be of a spasmodic sort, — a few days of excitement and intense labor, then long periods of tedious inactivity. The interval since the skirmish near Jackson has been an uninteresting period, because its experiences are of a sort to which we have become accustomed, and of which we have grown tired. Our life is a monotony of perilous exposure. The regiment remains in its advanced position, constantly under fire, and occasionally losing a member, killed or wounded. Meantime, the engineers have been pushing forward their work. What would have become of us, if the work of siege had fallen to us to do, I do not know: or, rather, it is easy to see what would have become of us,—hundreds and hundreds in hospitals, or silent under brown mounds; mounds which, as it is, have become numerous on hillsides, and wherever the ground is open and at all easy to the shovel.
Sambo, however, has saved us many lives. These big black fellows, with arms like our legs almost, and with muscle piled in great layers about rib and back, have done the main work. The soil through which the sap runs is very hard, —a tough, unyielding clay, upon which a shovel makes but little impression.
Almost every crumble of it, it has been necessary to hew out with a pickaxe. Sambo, however, is equal to it. He has the courage to stand close to the rebel rifle pits all the time, and the strength to handle this unyielding earth.
Every morning and every night, the long fatigue-parties from the black engineer troops relieve each other; and day by day, as we look out from our hiding-places, we can see that the line of our sap runs farther and farther. Two “cavaliers” have also been constructed. These are elevations, built up of hogsheads, tier above tier, designed to give sharpshooters a position from which they can fire well within the parapet. The brunt of the work the negroes do. There are white overseers; and fatigue-parties, too, are detailed from white regiments: but, for the most part, we have had it for our work to keep sharp watch from our cover, and never allow a rebel head to appear above the opposite parapet, without a pointed leaden hint to withdraw, insinuated without ceremony through a loophole.
We keep hearing of the new assault. The army began to prepare for it at once, after the 14th of June. It was then supposed it would take place almost immediately; but it has been deferred. Tuesday evening, June 30, I had been for an hour or two at the camp, in the woods back from the front, where the convalescents of the regiments are quartered. Returning to my post about sunset, I found the road full of troops. A division had assembled to hear a speech from the commanding general. The gloss of military show had all worn off. The men were brown, — attired as they chose to be, — shaggy and stained with their bear-like life in ravines and behind logs. There were no flags or music, no shining brass or glossy broadcloth and lace. If glory lies in these things, “Ichabod” was written in deep, emphatic lines on the whole company.
But these were the stout Fourth Wisconsin, and Thirty-first Massachusetts, and other decimated regiments, that had faced rifle-muzzles in the two previous deadly assaults, and had all the heart in the world for another. If glory lies in that, every tanned and uncombed platoon abounded in it. Presently there was a stir, and the general rode up, iron as ever, in rough, serviceable dress; the gray moustache on his upper lip cropping out like a ledge of the metal, almost pure. He made a speech: —
“We were close on another assault. It was sure to be successful, if the army would do as well as it had done. Then would come rest, and the campaign would close in light.”
Still we wait. A day or two after that, I walked down one branch of the sap to Duryea’s battery of regulars, — seven twelve-pounders, — which had been dragged in through the narrow trench to an advanced point, where they threatened the rebels close at hand. As I went along, a rebel shell exploded in the air overhead, the pieces falling here and there into the bushes and into the dust. In the air where the shell burst, a halo of white, compact smoke floated for a minute or two, — a round, perfect ring, from which depended a fringe of less compact vapor, that floated longer and longer, and swayed to and fro, beautiful as a bridal veil hanging from a crown. The battery lay behind its embrasures, silent. Before each piece, the embrasure was hidden by a plate of iron, in which was a hole of the size of the muzzle of a gun, temporarily covered with a sand-bag. A rain of rifle-balls was being showered on the spot. I did not stay long; for that morning the battery-men told us they had lost three. They were waiting and waiting, with their cartridges at hand, and their fierce shells in piles, ready for their deadly flight.
Another day, I went through another branch of the sap to the mine. The passage was guarded against all but workmen; but, fortunately, I met the colonel near the sentry, and he passed me in. I went through the zigzag passages, passed piles of fascines, and a pontoon bridge which lay ready to be put together across any ditch, when the day shall come for the charge.
At last I came to a turn, and found the parapet straight ahead. The sap ended in the mine, — a hole about four feet square, where a party of men were burrowing under the enemy’s earthwork. I stooped, and looked in at the mouth. Negroes, on their knees, were working there by candle-light, excavating a place in which are to be put kegs of powder. With these it is designed to blow the parapet into the air, leaving a passage for our troops. It was a perilous place. The workmen all spoke in whispers, as they do in powder-mills. Sometimes the rebs toss over hand-grenades. Capt. Morton, with a squad, was at work there, placing sandbags. A short time after, in this very place, his lieutenant and some of his men were marked for life by the explosion of a hand-grenade.
Still the days pass, and no order is given. We imagined 4th of July would be the day; but it was not. Nor was it Sunday, the day following; nor Monday, to-day. The regiment is growing blue. This week, our time is out; and the idea is spreading, that there is no going home for us till the place falls. There are some insubordinate threats; but many of us feel as if our personal honor is concerned, and are determined not to go till the place falls, no matter when it happens. To-day, Port Hudson seems more impregnable than ever. The space within those stubborn banks, gullied by the rains and baked by the suns, so terribly edged with fire, as yet is unapproached and unapproachable.
To-night, Company D have all been in tears. Cyrus Stowell, the “pleasant corporal,” so called for his unfailing amiability, on duty on our middle picket-post, thrown out upon the very mouths of the rebel rifles, suddenly, just at sundown, was shot through the head; his pure, sweet young life swept off in an instant. We dug his grave late this evening, by the light of tapers dimly burning, on the brow of a hill crowned by the old rifle-pits of the enemy, out of which we had forced them. Overhead was the clear light of stars.
On the horizon a tempest was gathering, — swelling accumulations of thunder-charged cloud lit up each moment from within with sudden luminousness, and rumbling with coming storm. Close at hand, through the agitated air, hurtled the constant roar of the siege. The body could not be brought out till after dark, as it was necessary to pass several exposed places.
It came at last, late at night, upon a stretcher borne by his comrades. We wrapped his young, tall figure in his tent, and laid him to rest. As we stood uncovered, during the service, close overhead swept the rifleballs, until we thought there would be some new victim to be buried beside him.
