March 18. — In camp on the Bayou Montecino, between Port Hudson and Baton Rouge. You may see the place on a large map of Louisiana, — a sudden bend in the river above Baton Rouge. On Lloyds’ military map, which we happen to have, the bend and the bayou are both plain.
Bivins and I have buttoned up our house over the furrows of an old cotton-field: it is open at both ends; but the evening air is so mild to-night, we can stand all that.
Our rubber blankets are spread on the damp ground. The point of a bayonet is stuck in the ground, and in the bayonet-socket is a candle which gives us light. The State flag of the regiment, its white silk covered from the weather, lies along the ridge-pole of the tent. From the ends of this hang our equipments, in as apple-pie order as circumstances will permit in a country where there are neither apples nor pie-crust. The cartridge-boxes are well loaded down with powder and ball; for rebs of the most truculent sort come down to within a mile or two of us, and we may hear the long-roll any minute.
To resume my diary. The Fifty-second had stopped for its dinner last Saturday noon. I lay, as I have written it, on my side, pencil in hand; then I snoozed; then I looked across the furrows, through the sweet, sunny, blossom-scented air, to the long line of the Ninety-first, their colors exactly opposite ours. Half a dozen pigs ran down between the regiments; a gauntlet, I believe, not one survived: and before night they were eaten with much gusto; for, during our stay at Baton Rouge, we have very rarely tasted fresh meat.
Boom, boom! — big guns from the river. We can hear, too, the cough of high-pressure transport steamers, and know now that the fleet are, at least, as near old Port Hudson as we are; and we are only four or five miles away. At length, “Fall in, men, at once!’ An aide has come galloping up to the colonel, who is on horseback in a moment. “We shall probably have sharp work before we come back.”—”Keep cool, and do not waste your fire.” So Capt. Morton and the rest give such caution to their men as is needful on the eve of battle. “Leave knapsacks here: the footsore men will guard them,”—poor Hines, and the like of him, whose feet these real secesh roads have beaten and bruised with true rebel violence.
How do we feel? We are going out to meet the enemy, we all fully believe, and so do our officers: and even staff-officers of the general, who are friendly to us, look pityingly after, as we march on; for they know, though we do not, that we are to be pushed up in front of the whole army, into close range of the cannon upon the fortress-walls. The Fifty-second is cool, and yet eager; and not a man, that can limp at all, wants to stay. For the last thing, “Load!” Open cartridge-box; tear the tough paper from the powder end, — there it goes down the barrel; and now the ball; half-cock, then cap the cone, and all is done. If I have to fire, it will be for the cause. Scruples, now, are mere squeamishness. Now, “By the right flank, forward!” Hardiker carries the white State-flag; the tall sergeant, the stars and stripes. Old flag, you are woven of no ordinary stuff! Rank and file and shoulder-straps, it is a sacred thing! It has for a warp, liberty; and for a woof, constitutional order; and is dyed deep in tints of love and justice. Between Hardiker and the sergeant marches Wilson, — a finelooking corporal, with a military face, eye, and figure; moustached, bearded, eager, — such a face as I have seen in Horace Vernet’s battle-pieces. A good marksman, too, is Wilson; for many years the terror of squirrels in the woods of E—. Prince and Claypole cover Hardiker and Wilson; while I march behind the sergeant, right in the folds of the great flag. Alongside, in the line of file-closers, go West, and lisping, light-haired Wiebel, the German; and, last, the ever sage, serene, and satisfactory Bias Dickinson.
I almost cheered when Bias came back to the color-guard (from which he has been absent for a time, funny fellow!) from the jury-room down at the Court House of Baton Rouge, whilom his headquarters. Did I not dine there once with him, on stewed pigeons? when Bias, a prime confiscator, had got hold of a hand-organ, with which, after dinner, he soothed and gratified his guest by grinding out tune after tune; assuaging the perturbed spirits of the muddy fellow from the camp, as if he were a Saul in all his purple, —an entertainment most gracefully bestowed, with sage, silent, and serene demeanor, and hand turning untiringly at the handle.
So we go out of the field into the road, in the centre of the long column, with banners waving, and, I hope, the true light of battle upon our faces, — soldiers in a noble cause, — farmer and mechanic, – merchant and preacher, shoulder to shoulder. “Boom!” go the faraway guns. We are moving rapidly to the front: so the other regiments and the stout battery-men and the yellow cavalry-men give way for us, cheering us on. Down a cross-road toward the river, a sweet south wind shaking white cloud-favors out of every window in heaven at us; the sun smiling God-speed, and the lady rose-bushes, from fence-corners like balconies, showing their blossom-handkerchiefs.
A sweet woodland by-road! We rush forward at double-quick. Ah, here is war indeed! — a colonel on the general’s staff, just wounded by the retreating rebel pickets, lying by the roadside. I catch a glimpse of him on an extemporized litter of rails, as he lies under the surgeon’s hands. We rush by, tramp, tramp, at the double-quick; and he pushes himself up a little with his hands, so that we can see his pale face, just wounded ahead here in the road where we are going.
Cautiously, boys! A few steps, and we stumble over the handsome horse of the wounded colonel, dead in the middle of the road, with eight bullets through him. There, too, is the bloody boot of his rider, hastily cut off after the wounding was accomplished. A company are detailed as flankers; and, as they go through the wood a few rods distant from the road, they hear the groans of other wounded men. They cannot go to them; for to stop would be to expose the whole flank of the column to danger.
Now we pass other dead horses belonging to cavalrymen, which were shot in the road by the retreating rebel pickets. At length, we reach a fork where is a regiment drawn up, and Gen. Grover sitting on horseback with his staff, — a light-haired man, with face sufficiently resolute, his beard cut in a peak, and wearing a cavalier hat. We halt only for a moment. The general’s pointing hand indicates the direction we are to take: so down we go through a wooded road, driving before us the enemy’s pickets; our flankers in the woods seeing them mount their horses and gallop off as we come within musket-range. Presently we go by their camps, where they have cut on trees some defiance or warning to us: “Beware, Yankee! this is a hard road to travel.”
By the side of the column rides an officer of engineers, who stops every now and then to note a by-path or prominent knoll, or draw a rough plan of the wood. The dust has hardly settled yet along the road from the tramp of their retreating infantry. We press on close behind, until at length the column halts close within the range of the Port-Hudson batteries.
It is now just after sunset. I hitch my cartridgebox a little off my shoulder for relief, and bathe my head and face in a roadside pool. At the head of the column, spy-glasses are being passed from hand to hand among the officers. What is it they and the skirmishers see to the northward and westward, from the bend in the road? If we camp here for the night, we rank and file will go forward to see for ourselves. They are the outer earthworks of the rebel stronghold. As the dusk deepens, the column turns, and back we go, —we fellows in the very heart of it; the crimson stripes of the standard leaping and flowing out above us like cur rents of arterial blood.
We fell back that Saturday night two or three miles, then camped in the woods. Later, a battery went forward to a position near that to which we advanced, and fired shells for a while toward the rebel intrenchments. Our blankets and baggage were four miles behind. We hung equipments and haversacks on the gun-stocks; and, wet with sweat, lay down in our clothes, without covering. Wilson and I laid rails on the ground; then made a sloping roof of rails overhead, which was some protection against the damp.
The eyelids shut together like a pair of scissor-blades, and cut the thread of consciousness; but, in the midst of my dreaming, crash after crash broke upon my ear like the chorus of doomsday. We all jumped to our posts; for we thought the hour of battle had come. I looked at my watch by the light of a few embers. It was half-past eleven. At the time, we were in complete ignorance of the events that were transpiring. We know now that it was the fleet just passing the batteries, and all this was the uproar of the bombardment. Through the trees to the westward arose the flashes, incessant, like the winking heat-lightning of a hot summer evening. Through the air rolled reports,—now isolated, now twenty combining in a grand crash, now a continuous roll of them, — a thundering rub-a-dub, as if the giants were going to storm heaven again, and were beating a reveille to summon every gnome and all the genii and each slumbering Titan to fall in for a charge. The centre of the regiment, the color-guard, rested in the road. The pickets, four or five rods off, could see the falling of bombs, the streams of comet-like rockets, and the outlines of the shore-batteries lit up by the cannon-flames. It went on, and we sat listening with our hands close at our guns. Then, at last, the heavens reddened high and far, with a fiercer and steadier glare, that moved slowly southward, crimsoning in turn the moss and old scars on the north, on the west, on the south-west, of the tree-trunks. Meantime came up the boom of cannon, slowly receding in the same direction. So we heard the swan-song of the stern old “Mississippi,” — abandoned, beaten with shot, ragged through her whole frame where shells had torn and burst. On that night, a freight of dead men were on her deck, and the bodies of drowned men floated about her hoary hull for retinue! Then came a crash, — a light making all bright, flung back from the burnished gun-stocks, from the pool by the roadside, revealing the watching soldiers and the slain steeds fallen headlong in the road in the midst of the camp. So passed the veteran ship through fire and earthquake-shock to an immortality in history.
Sunday morning came. We had expected confidently all through the night to be ordered into battle: when light broke, with the dawn, we expected to hear the shots of the advancing rebels. All was still, however. We made fires, and cooked our coffee and beef. I took out my portfolio from the pocket of my blouse, and wrote a sheet or two; then, finding a clean pool in the woods, I took off every thing, and had a bath. The whole forenoon wore away with no sign of activity. The general was giving us a rest before a very tough march. Toward noon, one of Grover’s aides came up with word to fall back. To fall back! — were we going to retreat, then? Back we go, over the same road as yesterday. As we pass the bridges, we see parties of men, and fuel prepared. “The enemy’s cavalry will soon be after us!” I hear a field-officer say. The bridges are to be burned as soon as we have crossed them. In an hour or two, we are back at the encampment of Saturday noon, passing, as we march, signs of a hasty retreat; among them, a baggage-wagon on fire. We sling our knapsacks where we left them, swallow a few mouthfuls, and are once more on the road.
We have found out now the loss of the Mississippi and the impression spreads that we have met with great disaster, and are retreating in disgrace. There is no elasticity now, or mirthfulness. It is hard work to carry the knapsacks, and the men are sullen. Retreating without firing a shot!
Yesterday we felt sure of a battle; but the enemy fell back before us. Now, why were we falling back before them? We halt, every half-hour or so; when every one is on his back in a moment. As I noticed the day before, the road becomes strewn with knapsacks and blankets; but fewer men fall out, for they fear capture by the enemy. In the middle of the afternoon, it begins to rain. I never knew it rain so hard: there was a general uncorking among the clouds. The road becomes a deep pudding, and the gutters are rivers. We are wet to the skin. I throw my left arm against my breast-pocket to shield (as much as I can) my portfolio, which has my precious paper and pencils. By great care, I partly succeed; but every thing else is soaked. Boots become filled with water that runs from the clothes into them. The army splashes on through the rain, dreary and disheartened. Some of the officers give up their horses to tired soldiers, and shoulder muskets.
At five o’clock we reach a field, where we are to encamp. Gen. Banks assigned it when he passed in the morning. Since then, creation has put on a new face; but we must obey orders. In we turn, therefore, into a swamp, to pass the most tedious night of our lives. A dreary Louisiana swamp! The space had been cleared, and was full of charred stumps and logs, half floating, half lying in the mud. There was a terrible exhibition of democratic licentiousness. The rain had been so violent, that the pools — the “lower ten million” — had become multiplied; had outvoted the little green patches of terra firma that held themselves higher; and, with small respect to the minority, were proceeding fast to reduce the whole thing to a lake. We waded and stumbled forward to the middle of this dreary quagmire. Could we stop here for the night? We had marched very rapidly ten or twelve miles, most of the way in heavy order; and were exhausted. The roads were almost impassable: moreover, the general had left orders for us to stay here. We had no choice.
Wet to the skin, I threw off my knapsack and equipments into the mud, too tired to hold them. We managed, as night fell, to get a fire started in a charred stump; then, through the evening (which was dark as pitch), we went stumbling about in the bog to find sticks for fuel, — fishing out of mud-holes such half-burnt branches and trunks as we could lift. Frequently the rain would pour in sheets; when the fire, in spite of all we could do, would dwindle down to a mere spark.
About ten o’clock, I managed to make a little coffee. Then putting my knapsack into the mud, in the highest and dryest spot I could find, drawing my two blankets about my shoulders, and my rubber havelock over my ears, I sat down for the night. As I sat on my knapsack, it settled down into the mud until it just kept me out of the pool. My boots sank into the mud half-way to the tops. I rested my elbows on my knees, and chewed the cud of misery. Once in a while, some one waded forth after wood. On every stump and log were figures wrapped up in rubber blankets, trying to sleep. I mistook Silloway, thus enveloped, for a charred stump, and began to haul him to the fire; when a feeble and dismal voice proceeded forth.
Nothing was ever more wretched; and, when morning came at last, — swimming up through the pouring heavens to us, —such a half-drowned, haggard, bedraggled set as the regiment was, horses and men! We had the consolation of thinking we had touched the bottom of misery, at any rate. Any lower deep there surely cannot be. Snakes and crabs, no proper food or drink, wet to the skin, the deadly vine weeping its “venomous dew” upon us, — there could be nothing farther down. Mildewed, frowzy, horrible!
Still there was a very fair amount of good-nature. One rather portly officer had tumbled off his log during the night into the mud, which made a great laugh. Poor Corporal Wright came to our fire in the morning.
“How are you now, old fellow?”
“Oh! gay and festive, — more than ‘How are you?’ It don’t express it” (delivered with a feeble and dismal smile).
There is spunk in the regiment yet. We have scarcely any thing to eat. Nobody wants to eat much of any thing; but the foragers go out.
This matter of foraging is a hard one. I have seen now what a scourge to a country an invading army is. We were turned loose. As I shall presently record, the Government, under our guns, collected a large amount of cotton; and we were suffered to kill cattle, pigs, and poultry. All this marauding went on ruthlessly and wastefully. We left the road behind us foul with the odor of decaying carcasses. Cattle were killed, a quarter or so taken out of them, and the remainder left to the buzzards. So with sheep and poultry. Pigs were bayoneted, sugar-houses plundered of sugar and molasses, private dwellings entered; and, if any resistance was offered by the owner, his arms were wrested from him, and he overmastered. To be sure, there can be no manner of doubt of the sympathy of all these people with the rebel cause. We saw nothing of any young white men, — only old men, negroes, and women left behind, by the young men when they entered the Confederate army. I have not heard that any were actually slain in these marauding expeditions, or that insult was offered to any white woman; but property was handled, destroyed, or taken, without scruple.
I took no part in any active foraging, though I own I was more than once a partaker in the booty. It was, in fact, our only way to live. Government-bread and poor bacon were really insufficient to support strength under our work and exposure. When Bias offered me some fine cutlets, Sunday morning, from a calf he had just killed, I took them without much reluctance; and so, when Sile Dibble brought in steaks almost by the armful, and canteens of molasses, and haversacks of sugar, I was glad, hungry and tired as I was, to take the share he offered me. If I did no active foraging, it was, perhaps, more due to want of enterprise, and because there were enough others to do it, than because my conscience stood in the way. Am I demoralized? But it was the only way to live. Our rations were insufficient, and the commissary-department seemed to expect we should find a good part of our food for ourselves. It is, indeed, sad; and there was enough that was pathetic. War is horrible, and this feature of plunder is one of its horrors.
All this had humorous features too. To see Bias knowingly and amiably dissect a stolen calf, was a cheerful sight; so, too, Sile Dibble, mounted on a lean horse which Gottlieb had stolen, careering across the lines with geese and chickens held by the legs, fluttering and screaming, in one fist, and a bag of meal in the other; so Pat O’Toole, our wild Irishman, tearing through the camp, after having shot eight cows, without his hat, screaming to the “bys to coom afther his coos afore thim spalpeens of batthery-men had tuck thim intirely.” These were humorous features; but there was more to grieve over than to laugh about, and I fear it will be thought to speak ill for our New-England men that they take so easily to this habit of “loot.”
