Part 7 (1/2)
On the same day that Vicksburg surrendered Grant started the greater part of his army, under the command of Gen. Sherman, in the direction of Jackson for the purpose of attacking Gen. Johnston. Our division, however, remained at Snyder's until July 12th, when we left there, marching southeast. I remember this march especially, from the fact that the greater part of it was made during the night. This was done in order to avoid the excessive heat that prevailed in the daytime. As we plodded along after sunset, at route step, and arms at will, a low hum of conversation could be heard, and occasionally a loud laugh, ”that spoke the vacant mind.” By ten o'clock we were tired (we had been on the road since noon), and moreover, getting very sleepy. Profound silence now prevailed in the ranks, broken only by the rattle of canteens against the shanks of the bayonets, and the heavy, monotonous tramp of the men. As Walter Scott has said somewhere in one of his poetical works:
”No cymbal clashed, no clarion rang, Still were the pipe and drum; Save heavy tread and armor's clang, The sullen march was dumb.”
The column halted about midnight, we bivouacked in the woods by the side of the road, and I was asleep about as soon as I struck the ground.
We resumed the march early in the morning, and during the forenoon arrived at Messinger's ford, on Black river, where we went into camp.
We remained here only until July 17, and on that day marched a few miles south to the railroad crossing on Black river, and bivouacked on the west bank of the stream. The Confederates during the campaign had thrown up breastworks of cotton bales, which evidently had extended for quite a distance above and below the railroad crossing. When our fellows came along they tore open the bales and used the cotton to sleep on, and when we arrived at the place the fleecy stuff was scattered over the ground, in some places half-knee deep, all over that portion of the river bottom. It looked like a big snowfall. Cotton, at that very time, was worth one dollar a pound in the New York market, and scarce at that. A big fortune was there in the dirt, going to waste, but we were not in the cotton business just then, so it made no difference to us. At the beginning of the war, it was confidently a.s.serted by the advocates of the secession movement that ”Cotton was king;” that the civilized world couldn't do without it, and as the South had a virtual monopoly of the stuff, the need of it would compel the European nations to recognize the independence of the Southern Confederacy, and which would thereby result in the speedy and complete triumph of the Confederate cause. But in thus reasoning they ignored a law of human nature. Men, under the pressure of necessity, can get along without many things which they have previously regarded as indispensable. At this day, in my opinion, many of the alleged wants of mankind are purely artificial, and we would be better off if they were cut out altogether. Aside from various matters of food and drink and absurdities in garb and ornaments, numbers of our rich women in eastern cities regard life as a failure unless they each possess a thousand dollar pet dog, decorated with ribbons and diamond ornaments and honored at dog-functions with a seat at the table, where, on such occasions, pictures of the dogs, with their female owners sitting by them, are taken and reproduced in quarter-page cuts in the Sunday editions of the daily papers. If these women would knock the dogs in the head and bring into the world legitimate babies, (or even illegitimate, for their husbands are probably of the capon breed,) then they might be of some use to the human race; as it is they are a worthless, unnatural burlesque on the species. But this has nothing to do with the war, or the 61st Illinois, so I will pa.s.s on.
While we were at the Black river railroad bridge thousands of paroled Confederate soldiers captured at Vicksburg pa.s.sed us, walking on the railroad track, going eastward. We had strict orders to abstain from making to them any insulting or taunting remarks, and so far as I saw, these orders were faithfully obeyed. The Confederates looked hard. They were ragged, sallow, emaciated, and seemed depressed and disconsolate.
They went by us with downcast looks and in silence. I heard only one of them make any remark whatever, and he was a little drummer boy, apparently not more than fifteen years old. He tried to say something funny,--but it was a dismal failure.
While in camp at the railroad crossing on Black river, a most agreeable incident occurred, the pleasure of which has not been lessened by the flight of time, but rather augmented. But to comprehend it fully, some preliminary explanation might be advisable. Before the war there lived a few miles from our home, near the Jersey Landing settlement, a quaint and most interesting character, of the name of Benjamin F. Slaten. He owned and lived on a farm, but had been admitted to the bar, and practiced law to some extent, as a sort of a side-line. But I think that until after the war his practice, in the main, was confined to the courts of justices of the peace. He was a shrewd, sensible old man, of a remarkably kind and genial disposition, but just about the homeliest looking individual I ever saw. And he had a most singular, squeaky sort of a voice, with a kind of a nasal tw.a.n.g to it, which if heard once could never be forgotten. He was an old friend of my father's, and had been his legal adviser (so far as his few and trifling necessities in that line required) from time immemorial. And for a year or so prior to the outbreak of the war my thoughts had been running much on the science of law, and I had a strong desire, if the thing could be accomplished, to sometime be a lawyer myself. So, during the period aforesaid, whenever I would meet ”Uncle Ben” (as we frequently called him), I would have a lot of questions to fire at him about some law points, which it always seemed to give him much pleasure to answer. I remember yet one statement he made to me that later, (and sometimes to my great chagrin,) I found out was undeniably true. ”Leander,” said he, ”if ever you get into the practice of law, you'll find that it is just plum full of little in-trick-ate pints.” (But things are not as bad now in that respect as they were then.) The war ensued, and in September, 1862, he entered the service as Captain of Co. K of the 97th Illinois Infantry. He was about forty-two years old at this time. In due course of events the regiment was sent south, and became a part of the Army of the Tennessee, but the paths of the 61st and the 97th were on different lines, and I never met Capt. Slaten in the field until the happening of the incident now to be mentioned.
When we were at Black river I was on picket one night about a mile or so from camp, at a point on an old country road. Some time shortly after midnight, while I was curled up asleep in a corner of the old worm fence by the side of the road, I was suddenly awakened by an energetic shake, accompanied by the loud calling of my name. I sprang to my feet at once, thinking maybe some trouble was afoot, and, to my surprise, saw Capt. Keeley standing in front of me, with some other gentleman. ”Stillwell,” said Keeley, ”here's an old friend of yours. He wanted to see you, and being pressed for time, his only chance for a little visit was to come to you on the picket line.” My caller stood still, and said nothing. I saw that he was an officer, for his shoulder straps were plainly visible, but I could not be sure of his rank, for there was no moon, and the night was dark. He was wearing an old ”sugar-loaf” hat, seemingly much decayed, his blouse was covered with dust, and, in general, he looked tough. His face was covered with a thick, scraggy beard, and under all these circ.u.mstances it was impossible for me to recognize him. I was very anxious to do so in view of the trouble the officer had taken to come away out on the picket line, in the middle of the night, to see me, but I just couldn't, and began to stammer a sort of apology about the darkness of the night hindering a prompt recognition, when the ”unknown” gave his head a slant to one side, and, in his never forgettable voice, spoke thus to Keeley: ”I told you he wouldn't know me.” ”I know you now,” said I; ”I'd recognize that voice if I heard it in Richmond! This is Capt. Ben Slaten, of the 97th Illinois;” and springing forward I seized his right hand with both of mine, while he threw his left arm about my neck and fairly hugged me. It soon came out in the conversation that ensued that his regiment had been with Sherman in the recent move on Jackson; that it was now returning with that army to the vicinity of Vicksburg, and had arrived at Black river that night; that he had at once hunted up the 61st Illinois to have a visit with me, and ascertaining that I was on picket, had persuaded Capt. Keeley to come with him to the picket line, as his regiment would leave early in the morning on the march, hence this would be his only opportunity for a brief meeting. And we all certainly had a most delightful visit with the old Captain. From the time of his arrival until his departure there was no sleeping, by anybody, on that picket post. We sat on the ground in a little circle around him, and listened to his comical and side-splitting stories of army life, and incidents in camp and field generally. He was an inimitable story teller, and his peculiar tone and manner added immensely to the comicality of his anecdotes. And somehow he had the happy faculty of extracting something humorous, or absurd, from what the generality of men would have regarded as a very serious affair. He did the most of the talking that night, while the rest of us sat there and fairly screamed with laughter. It was well known and understood that there were no armed Confederates in our vicinity, so we ran no risk in being a little careless. Finally, when the owls began tuning up for day, the old Captain bade us good-by, and trudged away, accompanied by Capt. Keeley.
To fully comprehend this little episode, it is, perhaps, necessary to have some understanding and appreciation of how a soldier away down south, far from home and the friends he had left behind, enjoyed meeting some dear old friend of the loved neighborhood of home. It was almost equal to having a short furlough.
I never again met Capt. Slaten during the war. He came out of it alive, with an excellent record,--and about thirty-seven years after the close died at his old home in Jersey county, Illinois, sincerely regretted and mourned by a large circle of acquaintances and friends.
CHAPTER XI.
HELENA, ARKANSAS. LIFE IN A HOSPITAL. AUGUST, 1863.
General Sherman soon drove General Johnston out of Jackson, and beyond Pearl river, and then his column returned to the vicinity of Vicksburg.
On July 22nd our division marched back to Snyder's Bluff, and resumed our old camp. But we had not been here long before it was rumored that we were under marching orders, and would soon leave for some point in Arkansas. Sure enough, on July 29th we marched to the Yazoo river and filed on board the side-wheel steamer ”Sultana,” steamed down the river to its mouth, and there turned up the Mississippi, headed north. I will remark here that one of the most tragical and distressing incidents of the war was directly connected with a frightful disaster that later befell the above named steamboat. It left Vicksburg for the north on or about April 25, 1865, having on board nearly 1900 Union soldiers, all of whom (with few exceptions) were paroled prisoners. On the morning of April 27th, while near Memphis, the boilers of the boat exploded, and it was burnt to the water's edge. Over 1100 of these unfortunate men perished in the wreck, in different ways; some scalded to death by escaping steam, some by fire, others (and the greatest number) by drowning. Besides the soldiers, cabin pa.s.sengers and members of the boat's crew, to the number of about 140, also perished. It was the greatest disaster, of that kind, that ever occurred on the Mississippi.
It may, perhaps, be noticed that the regiment is leaving the vicinity of Vicksburg without my saying a word about the appearance, at that time, of that celebrated stronghold. There is good reason for it; namely, it so happened that we never were in the place. We were close to it, on the north and on the east, but that was all. And I never yet have seen Vicksburg, and it is not probable now that I ever shall.
We arrived at Helena, Arkansas, on July 31st, debarked and went into camp near the bank of the river, about two miles below the town. There were no trees in our camp except a few cottonwoods; the ground on which we walked, sat, and slept was, in the main, just a ma.s.s of hot sand, and we got water for drinking and cooking purposes from the Mississippi river. The country back of the town, and in that immediate vicinity generally, was wild and thinly settled, and had already been well-foraged, so we were restricted to the ordinary army diet, of which one of the princ.i.p.al items, as usual, was fat sow-belly. I never understood why we were not allowed to camp in the woods west of the town. There was plenty of high, well-shaded s.p.a.ce there, and we soon could have sunk wells that would have furnished cool, palatable water.
But this was not done, and the regiment remained for about two weeks camped on the river bank, in the conditions above described. A natural result was that numbers of the men were prostrated by malarial fever, and this time I happened to be one of them. I now approach a painful period of my army career. I just lay there, in a hot tent, on the sand,--oh, so sick! But I fought off going to the hospital as long as possible. I had a superst.i.tious dread of an army hospital. I had seen so many of the boys loaded into ambulances, and hauled off to such a place, who never returned, that I was determined never to go to one if it could be avoided in any honorable way. But the time came when it was a military necessity that I should go, and there was no alternative.
The campaign that was in contemplation was a movement westward against the Confederates under Gen. Sterling Price at Little Rock, with the intention of capturing that place and driving the Confederates from the State. The officer in command of the Union forces was Gen. Frederick Steele. Marching orders were issued, fixing the 13th of August as the day our regiment would start. All the sick who were unable to march (and I was among that number) were to be sent to the Division Hospital.
So, on the morning before the regiment moved, an ambulance drove up to my tent, and some of the boys carried me out and put me in the vehicle.
Capt. Keeley was standing by; he pressed my hand and said, ”Good-by, Stillwell; brace up! You'll be all right soon.” I was feeling too wretched to talk much; I only said, ”Good-by, Captain,” and let it go at that. Later, when I rejoined the regiment, Keeley told me that when he bade me good-by that morning he never expected to see me again.
Our Division Hospital, to which I was taken, consisted of a little village of wall tents in the outskirts of Helena. The tents were arranged in rows, with perhaps from fifteen to twenty in a row, with their ends pinned back against the sides, thus making an open s.p.a.ce down an entire row. The sick men lay on cots, of which there was a line on each side of the interior of the tents, with a narrow aisle between.
I remained at the hospital eight days, and was very sick the most of the time, and retain a distinct recollection of only a few things. But, aside from men dying all around me, both day and night, nothing important happened. All the accounts that I have read of this movement of Gen. Steele's on Little Rock agree in stating that the number of men he left sick at Helena and other places between there and Little Rock was extraordinary and beyond all usual proportions. And from what I saw myself, I think these statements must be true. And a necessary consequence of this heavy sick list was the fact that it must have been impossible to give the invalids the care and attention they should have received. We had but few attendants, and they were soldiers detailed for that purpose who were too feeble to march, but were supposed to be capable of rendering hospital service. And the medical force left with us was so scanty that it was totally inadequate for the duties they were called on to perform. Oh, those nights were so long! At intervals in the aisle a bayonet would be stuck in the ground with a lighted candle in its socket, and when a light went out, say after midnight, it stayed out, and we would toss around on those hard cots in a state of semi-darkness until daylight. If any attendants moved around among us in the later hours of the night I never saw them. We had well-water to drink, which, of course, was better than that from the river, but it would soon become insipid and warm, and sometimes, especially during the night, we didn't have enough of that. On one occasion, about midnight, soon after I was taken to the hospital, I was burning with fever, and became intolerably thirsty for a drink of water. No attendants were in sight, and the candles had all gone out but one or two, which emitted only a sort of flickering light that barely served to ”render darkness visible.” My suffering became well-nigh unendurable, and I could stand it no longer. I got up and staggered to the door of the tent and looking about me saw not far away a light gleaming through a tent that stood apart from the others. I made my way to it as best I could, and went in. A young fellow, maybe an a.s.sistant surgeon, was seated at the further end cf a little desk, writing. My entrance was so quiet that he did not hear me, and walking up to him, I said, in a sort of a hollow voice: ”I want--a drink--of water.” The fellow dropped his pen, and nearly fell off his stool. The only garment I had on was a white, sleazy sort of cotton bed-gown, which they garbed us all in when we were taken to the hospital; and this chap's eyes, as he stared at me, looked as if they would pop out of his head. Perhaps he thought I was a ”gliding ghost.” But he got me some water, and I drank copiously. I don't clearly remember what followed. It seems to me that this man helped me back to my tent, but I am not sure. However, I was in the same old cot next morning.
The fare at the hospital was not of a nature liable to generate an attack of the gout, but I reckon those in charge did the best they could. The main thing seemed to be a kind of thin soup, with some grains of rice, or barley, in it. What the basis of it was I don't know. I munched a hardtack occasionally, which was far better than the soup. But my appet.i.te was quite scanty, anyhow. One day we each had at dinner, served in our tin plates, about two or three tablespoonfuls of preserved currants, for which it was said we were indebted to the U.S.
Sanitary Commission. It seemed that a boat load of such goods came down the river, in charge of a committee of ladies, destined for our hospitals at Vicksburg. The boat happened to make a temporary stop at Helena, and the ladies ascertained that there was at the hospitals there great need of sanitary supplies, so they donated us the bulk of their cargo. I will remark here that that little dab of currants was all the U.S. Sanitary stuff I consumed during my army service. I am not kicking; merely stating the fact. Those goods very properly went to the hospitals, and as my stay therein was brief, my share of the delicacies was consequently correspondingly slight.
As regards the medicine given us in the hospital at Helena, my recollection is that it was almost entirely quinine, and the doses were frequent and copious, which I suppose was all right.
There was a boy in my company of about my age; a tall, lanky chap, named John Barton. He had lived in our neighborhood at home, and we were well acquainted prior to our enlistment. He was a kind hearted, good sort of a fellow, but he had, while in the army, one unfortunate weakness,--the same being a voracious appet.i.te for intoxicating liquor.
And he had a remarkable faculty for getting the stuff, under any and all circ.u.mstances. He could nose it out, in some way, as surely and readily as a bear could find a bee-tree. But to keep the record straight, I will further say that after his discharge he turned over a new leaf, quit the use of whisky, and lived a strictly temperate life.
He was ”under the weather” when the regiment left Helena, and so was detailed to serve as a nurse at the hospital, and was thus engaged in my tent. Since making that bad break at Owl Creek I had avoided whisky as if it were a rattlesnake, but somehow, while here in the hospital, I began to feel an intense craving for some ”spiritus frumenti,” as the surgeons called it. So one day I asked John Barton if he couldn't get me a canteenful of whisky. He said he didn't know, was afraid it would be a difficult job,--but to give him my canteen, and he would try. That night, as late maybe as one or two o'clock, and when the lights were nearly all out, as usual, I heard some one stealthily walking up the aisle, and stopping occasionally at different cots, and presently I heard a hoa.r.s.e whisper, ”Stillwell! Stillwell!” ”Here!” I answered, in the same tone. The speaker then came to me,--it was old John, and stooping down, he whispered, ”By G.o.d, I've got it!” ”Bully for you, John!” said I. He raised me to a sitting posture, removed the cork, and put the mouth of the canteen to my lips,--and I drank about as long as I could hold my breath. John took a moderate swig himself, then carefully put the canteen in my knapsack, which was serving as my pillow, cautioned me to keep it concealed to avoid its being stolen, and went away. I was asleep in about five minutes after my head struck my knapsack, and slept all the balance of the night just like a baby.