James Madison Stone

“ Troops were moving up the river. Lee’s left flank was to be attacked by Hooker and Franklin. But the troops did not get far. A heavy rain-storm had set in and the artillery was stuck in the mud. A regiment which was stuck right beside our camp, knowing we belonged to Burnside’s army corps, would every once in a while make a diversion and give three groans for General Burnside. As we were comfortable in our tents and they were without tents, out there in the rain and mud, we pitied the poor devils rather than resented their taunts. ”

“ From this house, inside and just behind it, we carried more than forty dead men. I have no idea how many men were lying behind the board fence, but there were certainly one-quarter of a line of battle—one-half of a single line.
After the Johnnies had got us picks and shovels, we set to work to dig in the frozen earth the trenches which were to contain the men and fragments of men who had given up their lives on the plains in front of Mary’s Heights. We put them in rows, one beside the other, wrapped them up in blankets or in whatever else we could get to put around them. ”

“ The Confederate and our lines were so near together that every possible thing was resorted to, to prevent being surprised or to check an advancing line of battle. A view across the field was peculiar, not a man could be seen. Lines of abatis, barbed-wire fences, piles of earth with the black noses of cannon projecting out between them, was about all [Pg 179] one could see. In the course of ten days after our lines were established we were pretty well dug in, so the ordinary rifle of the infantry, the field artillery and even the siege guns, did not disturb us much. ”

“ Soon after ten o’clock on the night of the 23d, a sutler who was established near our corps, was charged, his tent was torn down and his goods confiscated to the last cookie. The owner (an ex-cavalry officer) made a great defence, wounding some of the boys. But what could one man do with one little revolver, when faced by two or three hundred veterans of many a bloody military and whiskey campaign? He was overpowered by the gallant veterans and forced to flee for his life. Of course the guard appeared after the mischief was done, the battle won and the wolves had gone to their dens. ”

“ Late in the afternoon a battery of artillery came out and took a position about a quarter of a mile in our rear and opened fire on the Johnnies directly in our front, firing right over our heads, the balls passing so near the sound was anything but agreeable.
Just before we started on the charge, as we lay in the field just back of the city, a Company I man was killed by having his head carried bodily away by a cannon ball, the body rolled over, the blood spurted from the neck as water comes from a pump, until the heart pumped the body dry, the body then settled down a lifeless mass. ”

“ Everything went along all right until the Battle of Fredericksburg, when we did picket duty among our dead the second day after the battle. It was discovered that our friend, the deacon, came off the field that night with his pockets full of watches he had taken from our dead comrades. Now there was an unwritten law in the army that no man should rifle the pockets of our own dead; he might take all he could get from the enemy’s dead, but our own dead were sacred, and inviolate, and any man found breaking that law was despised. ”

“ Every one who had a revolver fell back on that when his gun refused fire I expect. Captain Walcott seeing his men could not keep up much of a fire drew his revolver, stepped in front of his company and opened fire. When he had emptied his revolver he glanced around for his men,—they had gone. It was the same in all the companies, with their guns out of order, they could do nothing but fall back. We left a lot of poor fellows in that wood for whom nothing could be done but to bury their lifeless bodies. A little way back we re-formed and marched back to the edge of the wood. ”

“ As the mule came prancing back, it dawned upon the Johnnies what had really happened and they began to laugh, our boys hearing them joined in and for an instant a perfect roar of laughter and shouts rang along both lines. In that way, under those conditions the siege went on; under those conditions we lived. To stay in those trenches in that terrific heat, with not a breath of fresh air, in the dirt—for every spear of grass had early disappeared—was a [Pg 181] thing only the most hardy could endure. ”

“ The negroes were hardly dressed at all, and the few clothes they had on were of the very coarsest material, and they looked about like the kind one would expect to see in Africa. Our cattle and horses in the North have the appearance of being better cared for, and as those negroes worked, there was no intimation of intelligence; they worked like horses in a treadmill. Later on, while doing picket duty out on the railroad, I saw a lot of cornfield negroes at a negro husking. There was a long pile of corn heaped up just as it was cut in the field and all around it sat the negroes husking. ”

“ Dead men everywhere, some black in the face, most of them had the characteristic pallor of death; nearly all had been stripped of every article of clothing. All were frozen; some with their heads off, some with their arms off, some with their legs off, dismembered, torn to pieces, they lay there single, in rows, and in piles. I did not count them, but there must have been three hundred dead men in the row behind which we concealed ourselves on the 15th, a part of which we dragged together the night before. Just to the left of our regiment, at the time of the fight there stood a brick house. ”

“ Doing picket duty down by the river was pretty uncomfortable work the last of December, and the 21st was honored with that kind of duty altogether too often. Sitting or crouching in those rifle pits, always on watch through those long winter nights was pretty tough. One night a lot of the boys broke into the Lacy house, a fine, large mansion that stood a short distance back from the river, and tore a pipe organ to pieces, each man taking a pipe and the next morning when we returned to camp we all played,—perhaps you would call it a tune. ”

“ We could not fire a gun. The Johnnies might fire as much as they liked. We must lie as still as the dead men about us. But finally the day did pass, night came on; we were able to get up and stretch ourselves and [Pg 114] shake some of the cold from our half frozen bodies. At twelve o’clock we quietly withdrew, passed through the city, which was now deserted crossed the pontoon bridge and went back to our old camp.
After a great battle there are no end of stories of experiences and hair-breadth escapes going the rounds of the camp. ”

“ Just before we turned into the field to camp for the night, a cannon ball fired by the Johnnies at our artillery on the hill ahead of us, struck the hill, then bounded along down and finally rolled along the road among the feet of the horses of a regiment of cavalry that was passing us—we having moved to the side of the road to let them pass. ”

“ The Johnnies had fallen back about a mile to a shorter line of works nearer the city. The next night we moved up to a desirable position at an average distance of one hundred and fifty yards from their works, and commenced putting up earthworks for siege purposes. During the next ten days it was remarkable to see how the fortifications appeared. They sprung into existence as if by magic. The 9th Army Corps was the second from the Appomattox River; Hancock with his corps being on our right. And thus we came into position in front of Cemetery Hill. ”

“ Arriving in Worcester early in the afternoon, we went to the Agricultural Fair Grounds, which had been converted into a campground and named Camp Lincoln from [Pg 11] Levi Lincoln, the first mayor of Worcester and a Governor of Massachusetts, and set to work putting up tents and forming a company street. Sleeping in tents, drilling and doing guard duty seemed strange at first, and was a good deal of a change from the duties of a farmer’s boy, but it was interesting to be among a lot of live young men who were brimful of enthusiasm, patriotism and fun. ”

“ When I enlisted at Barre I received a military cap, it was one of the caps of the Barre Militia Company. It was the only garment of a military character I had until I received my United States uniform just before leaving Worcester for the front. The color was navy blue and it was trimmed with a red cord. It was a French type of cap, but it was afterwards known as the McClellan cap throughout the army.
Drilling was, of course, the principal work of the day, at first in marching, company drill, platoon drill, squad drill, all to familiarize us with the movements of soldiers in two ranks. ”

“ His rations were always short, his load a heavy one, and he was asked to haul it over [Pg 140] roads, the wretchedness of which can not be described nor can it be imagined by any one who has not been in a similar place. It is almost literally true that the whole line of march from Camp Nelson to Knoxville was strewn with his dead comrades; what one of the boys said in that connection as we reached Knoxville was not wide of the mark, namely, that he could in the darkest night smell out his way back to Camp Nelson by the odor of the dead mules lying along the way. ”

“ This living in accordance with military regulation, seemed a little strange and reminded the writer of the time when he lived in a factory village where a bell sounded the time to get up, where one is rung into the factory and rung out again, suggesting a kind of life where a man becomes simply a cog in a wheel.
We had been in camp about two weeks when we learned the Barre company was to be known as Company K, and that the regiment was to be the 21st Regiment of volunteer infantry from Massachusetts. We had wall tents with floors, and very good bunks to sleep on. ”

“ As we got into position the Confederates finding themselves out-flanked on both sides, retreated. The road in front of the fort was the only dry land on that side and it was occupied by the sailors and their howitzers. The fort, however, was built at the end of a tongue of dry land extending toward us. This tongue of land was completely enveloped in front and the two sides with shallow water, the troops on both sides thus operated in water from one to three feet deep.
Directly after losing their entrenched position, the rebels surrendered, we marched over to their barracks and went into camp. ”

“ They could have a little covering over their heads to keep off the blazing rays of the sun. They could also take off their accoutrements and unloosen their clothes at night and so get a little better rest. While in the front line no covering as a protection against the sun could be used. One must keep his accoutrements on, and his musket, if he laid it down, must be within his reach.
In addition to the regular intrenchments for the infantry and forts for the artillery, there were, just to the rear of the first line of breastworks, passages connecting the different intrenchments and batteries. ”

“ It is a mistake to think that the private soldiers are not, after a certain amount of experience, able to size up their commanders in a fairly correct way. If there is a master mind at the head, they know it very quickly, and it did not take the men of the 21st long to discover that there was no master mind at the head at that time. So much backing and filling, so much talking about bagging that old fox, Stonewall Jackson, soon became a matter of ridicule and all our dependence was placed in General Reno. ”

“ At eight o’clock every morning the surgeons’ call was sounded and any man who did not feel well could go and see the doctor, perhaps get excused from duty, get some pills or some [Pg 13] quinine to take, or, if sick, be given a bed in the hospital. Although I spent nearly the entire year in the hospital (the last year of my service, after being wounded in July, 1864) , previous to that time I only once answered the surgeons’ call and that was when every man in the regiment was ordered up to the surgeon’s tent and given a dose of quinine and whiskey. ”

“ We continued our march through Newmarket and Strawberry Plains, reaching the immediate vicinity of Knoxville the 28th.
A word must be said right here about the unpretending, never-flinching army mule. I do not believe we shall ever know how much we owe to that toughest and most patient creature. We had seen the mule at his ordinary army work in Virginia, which was well nigh play compared with the work he was called upon to do, the hardships he was obliged to endure and the sacrifices he was forced to make in that advance over the mountains into Tennessee. ”

“ On a long, hard march there is always more or less straggling and those fellows once behind may have quite a little trouble in finding their regiments again; but they go straggling along inquiring for their regiments, brigades or perhaps their army corps, etc. Well, that night as we were lying beside the road asleep, an officer came along—a very important and very arrogant fellow—he woke up Tom and asked what regiment that was. ”

“ After we arrived in harbor we learned that the captain of the ship was found dead drunk, by General Reno, the night of the 12th, at the very most critical time when we were approaching the inlet. He was put under arrest and command of the ship was turned over to the first mate. The captain intended to run into the inlet that night, which would have been a very perilous thing to attempt.
Just before running into the inlet we witnessed a new and weird ceremony,—burial at sea. The night of January 12th and 13th two men had died on board; one a Company A man, and a Company B man. ”

“ But at Annapolis and on the railroad out in the country we had a chance to see something of the negro and negro life. Those we saw on the street and about the town at Annapolis were fairly well dressed and looked a little poorer only than those one would see in a northern city. One day, however, while out rowing with a crowd of the boys we landed at the wharf of a man in the oyster business; boat loads of oysters were arriving at the wharf, brought in by negroes who raked them, and in a small building were a number of negro men and women opening oysters. ”