Part 6 (1/2)

September 22. We pa.s.sed through c.u.mberland Gap. Two days' march brought us to the Clinch River, which we forded. Fording rivers and some of them pretty deep ones, was a new experience for us, but before we left East Tennessee we had learned that lesson,--if experience will teach a lesson,--pretty thoroughly.

September 25. We crossed the Clinch range, the descent from which on the south side was dreadfully steep. Ropes were tied to the wagons and they were held back by the boys and prevented from tipping over. Thus they were eased down and reached the foot of the hill safely. Along the foot of the hill lay wagons and dead mules by the dozen, a whole line of them extending all along around the foot of the hill.

September 26. Lunched at the famous and glorious Panther Spring. What a spring! The water is as clear as crystal and enough of it to make a river ten feet wide and three feet deep. 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 hards.h.i.+ps he was obliged to endure and the sacrifices he was forced to make in that advance over the mountains into Tennessee.

His rations were always short, his load a heavy one, and he was asked to haul it over 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. Granted he had his peculiarities, so had Caesar his. His voice was peculiar, he was very handy with his heels, but he could make a supper out of a rail fence, a breakfast out of a pair of cowhide boots, and pull his load along through the day without a murmur. To me he was as near being the martyr of the Tennessee campaign as the men who fought the battles.

We had been at Knoxville but a few days when news came in that the Rebels were advancing from the northeast from the vicinity of Lynchburg down the valley, thus threatening our communications in the vicinity of Morristown, and c.u.mberland Gap. On the 4th of October we took the train for Morristown. From there we marched to Blue Springs, where we had a little brush with the Johnnies October 10th. They were soon put to rout and we started back to Knoxville. We were sixty miles from Morristown, but in three days we were back there again and took train to Knoxville, where we arrived the 15th. In this campaign we saw plenty of marching but no real fighting, and got well soaked two different times. We remained quietly in camp at Knoxville until October 22nd. Then, however, prospects suddenly became good for an active campaign. Longstreet, with an army of 20,000 men, one of the fine army corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, was approaching Knoxville from Chattanooga and in the evening we took train and went down the valley as far as Loudon to meet him and dispute his advance. We reached Loudon about midnight and bivouacked in a large meadow on the south side of the Holston River. Before morning a cold rain-storm came on, making life for a couple of days about as miserable as it could well be. Our tents arrived the 24th, when we crossed to the north side of the river and went into camp.

The 28th, the Johnnies made a spirited attack on our boys, driving in the pickets. We took up the pontoon bridge and fell back to Lenoir. What a job we had carrying those great heavy boats to the railroad station a good fourth of a mile. Government mule-teams were there by the dozen, still we were called upon to lug those boats such a distance. While we were moving the pontoon boats, an interesting thing occurred. A railroad train that had been captured was run off a wrecked railroad bridge into the Holston River. The bridge was a high one, thirty or forty feet, and it was an interesting sight to see the train make the plunge and disappear entirely from view in the river.

November 10. I commenced building winter quarters. A number of the boys had begun to cut logs for the same purpose, as it was thought we might stay at Lenoir through the winter. The 11th we marched back to Loudon and covered the laying of the pontoon bridge, returning to Lenoir in the evening. At daybreak, the morning of the 14th, we were routed out, struck tents and formed line in the quickest possible time. Our outposts were being driven in and we could hear the crack of the rifles and see the smoke from them out on the meadow as we moved out of camp. The Johnnies'

line of battle came into view directly and we realized we were in for some fighting at short notice; we had not been badly surprised, but dangerously near it.

At this time the climax was reached in an experience we had with a recruit that came to us during the Maryland campaign about the time of the Battle of South Mountain, I think. He was a deacon in the Baptist church. Two or three times during the campaign, when we were in camp, the evening being quiet and favorable, our newcomer would kneel down in his tent and make a prayer. He would pray for the nation, for the cause for which we were fighting, for the President and for all the boys. At such times the boys would keep very quiet and be very respectful. 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.

The deacon, however, felt himself pretty independent. He was well-to-do; he always had money and received many useful things from home--like gloves, socks, fine high boots, and he had a set of false teeth set in a gold plate. He did not make any prayers for the public benefit for quite a while after the Fredericksburg affair, but when he did make one, the company street for a minute or two was as quiet as death; then all at once the old truck began to arrive on the deacon's tent. Empty tin cans, tin cups, empty whiskey bottles, old shoes, anything in the way of rubbish that could be found, suddenly found its way to the deacon's tent. Well, that prayer was brought to a very sudden close and it was never repeated.

As we moved out at daybreak, the morning of November 14th, things looked about as dark as most of us cared to have them. But some of those boys were never disturbed at anything, and remembering the deacon one of them piped up, ”I say, Billy, if old blank should get hit now, what should you go for?” ”I should go for his teeth,” said Billy. ”What should you go for, Tom?” ”I should go for his boots.” ”What should you go for, Gus?” ”I should go for his gloves?”--this at a time when most of the boys felt funny if they ever did, the deacon right among the very fellows who were ready to pick his bones. We succeeded in stopping the Johnnies. Indeed, that attack proved to be only a feint and during the day our trains and artillery started towards Knoxville. Not until the evening of the 15th did we start back, then during one of the darkest nights and over one of the muddiest roads imaginable, we floundered along, reaching Campbells Station a little before morning. At dawn we were thrown out on to the Kingston road. We were there none too soon. Within a half hour after we were in position, Longstreet's advance came in sight. Longstreet's feint at Lenoir was evidently made in the hope of holding us there until he could reach Campbell's Station, thus placing himself between Burnside and Knoxville.

We changed position twice during the day, but did little fighting in either. The fighting was done in the beginning by the cavalry and later by the artillery, we falling back from ridge to ridge and keeping pretty well out of it. That night was cold and rainy and as dark as a pocket, and it was a difficult matter to make a thirteen-mile march. However, we reached Knoxville in the early morning of the 17th, and immediately set to work throwing up fortifications.

Knoxville is located on the north bank of the Holston River, on high ground elevated about one hundred feet above the general level of the valley. It was thus easily defended with a small force and our water supply was secure. The location of the 21st during the siege was on the north side of the city. We were a little short of rations; indeed, we were on half rations the whole time. However, I was a very good forager and managed to have enough to eat most of the time. One time I succeeded in picking up a pair of geese out in the country. At another time I got a tub of lard and a fine smoked ham. On another raid I got a barrel of flour. To cook the flour I was obliged to pay $2.00 for a package of baking powder worth ordinarily fifteen or twenty cents. The following story was brought over from the 51st New York one day during the siege.

The regimental teams had been out foraging two or three days before. Some negroes belonging to Miss Palmer had deserted their mistress and followed the teams back to camp. A few days later Miss Palmer rode into camp and inquired for the colonel. The colonel appeared, tipped his hat politely and placed himself at her service. ”Colonel,” said she, ”your men have been over to our town and stole all my n.i.g.g.e.rs and I have just ridden over to camp to see if you will be kind enough to lend me my blacksmith to shoe this horse.” The colonel a.s.sisted her in alighting, had her boy hunted up, and set him to work shoeing her horse.

While in a store a day or two ago, buying a pair of gloves, the cry of fire was heard outside on the street, and going to the door there could be seen smoke issuing from the windows on the opposite side of the street and soon the flames burst forth. The fire spread to other buildings and it looked for a short time as if nothing could save the city. A New York regiment chanced to be near by and went to the a.s.sistance of the fire department. That regiment contained a large number of firemen from New York City. They knew how to fight a city fire and in a very short time the fire was under control. In the afternoon as our relief picket, to which I belonged, was on the way to its post, we pa.s.sed through the town, I saw one of our boys who was enjoying General Pope's General Order No. 10 to the full. He was floating along down the street still able to keep his feet, but not his balance. He had on a white masonic ap.r.o.n and a bright red scarf under his belt. As we pa.s.sed him he halted, faced to the front and presented arms with so much swiftness he lost his balance and went sprawling out on the sidewalk. Poor fellow, he meant all right; he wanted to be very respectful and very military, but was a little too top-heavy to carry the thing out well. He had, I expect, been to the fire. When out foraging on the south side of the river one time, I came across in one of the huts of the negro quarters, quite a handsome young mulatto woman with her children. They were all quite well dressed. The children, however, were noticeably lighter in color than their mother. She was evidently the favorite domestic of the house and was as bitter a Yankee hater as any of the white women. She declared the colored people did not want to be n.i.g.g.e.rs for the Yankees. I wondered if I could not understand why she was content with her life there.

There was picket firing most of the time and two hot engagements during the eighteen days of the siege. On November 17th, General Sanders was heavily engaged on the extreme left over next to the river. November 29th, Longstreet attacked Fort Sanders furiously. That fort was only a little way round to our left but we were not engaged. The Johnnies got something of a surprise in that attack. When the siege begun it was all wood in front of the fort; but by the time of the attack the trees had all been cut down, leaving the stumps three to four feet high, then telegraph wire was strung from stump to stump all along the front. When the Johnnies reached that part of the field they were very badly broken up and lost much of their force. That was the first place where telegraph wire was used as an obstruction to an advancing column, so far as I know. Eight or ten months later at Petersburg barbed wire was used extensively, and in the present war in Europe we hear a great deal about its being used.

The night of the 23d, our boys were driven from their rifle pits down in front of the main line of fortifications. The next night about three o'clock we were routed out and went down to the left of the rifle pits, and at daylight made a charge and took them back again. There was another regiment went with us on that charge. The rifle pits had been taken possession of by a regiment of South Carolina sharpshooters, and if they had been able to hold them they could have raked the edge of the city and two or three streets.

December 3. The scouts brought in word that Longstreet had given up the siege and was preparing to withdraw from our front; and the next day it was reported that the Johnnies were really moving off to the right up the valley. On the 5th, a party of us boys went over and took a look at the Johnnies' camp and works. There was a good deal of camp refuse lying around. The weather was getting very cold.

The 7th. We started after Longstreet, going toward Morristown. We marched up to the vicinity of Blaine's cross-roads and stayed there until we re-enlisted. It was a cold, hard time we had those days. My feet were cold all the time. I was not comfortably warm for a number of days, and rations were dreadfully short. Some of the time we had nothing to eat but corn on the cob. We roasted that and eat it and it kept us from starvation. The 9th, I helped to catch a pig, but it was very small. There was not much meat on it.

December 24. The order concerning re-enlistment was read to a part of the regiment, the other part of the regiment was off on picket duty. When the question of re-enlistment was put to the boys there was a good deal of hesitation. A few only put up their hands. The idea of going home on a furlough for thirty days was a strong inducement, but the conditions under which we were living at the time were unfavorable. December 26. Our supply train was captured out in the vicinity of the gap with all our hardtack, sugar and coffee, etc. Re-enlistment was growing popular. I re-enlisted to-day. The temperature hovered around the freezing point. One hour it rained, another hour it snowed or the moisture fell in a sort of sleet. We were camping in a little hollow in the wood sloping towards the south.

December 28. It was reported that two-thirds of the men of the regiment had re-enlisted. That proportion was sufficient to enable the regiment to go home, as a regiment, on veteran furlough. It was reported about camp that the 21st was the first regiment in the 9th Army Corps to report thus re-enlisted.

January 6, 1864. Orders came directing that we be in readiness to start for Camp Nelson and the north at once, and in the afternoon of the 7th we set out. About two hundred Confederate prisoners were to be taken along.

My shoes were in pretty good shape, but those of some of the boys were very poor. The 8th we made an early start. The air was clear and cold and we made a good day's march. The 10th, we reached c.u.mberland Gap--were disappointed not to get any rations, but after pa.s.sing the gap and marching a few miles beyond, we came on to a supply train and drew two full days' rations. What a treat to have a meal of good fresh hardtack and a cup of good coffee again. The 11th, we did not get far, we were delayed by the train. The roads in the mountains were something terrific. In many places we were obliged to cut ruts in the ice for the wheels of the wagons to go in. Forded the c.u.mberland River at c.u.mberland Ford. Pretty cold business fording large rivers in midwinter with the temperature down to 15 degrees above zero.

January 12. Waited until noon for the train to come up. The train has delayed us all along the way. The roads are so very bad. Came upon a supply train and drew two days' rations.

We reached Loudon, Kentucky, January 14. Here, some of the boys were able to get new shoes, to their great relief. It snowed all day the 15th and at night we camped in deep snow. The next day the roads not having been broken out, we lost our way and floundered around all the forenoon.