Read Ebook: Following the Flag from August 1861 to November 1862 with the Army of the Potomac by Coffin Charles Carleton

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It was found a very difficult matter to obtain arms for the soldiers; for President Buchanan's Secretary of War, Floyd, had sent most of the arms in Northern arsenals to the South before the war commenced. But, notwithstanding this, so earnest were the people, and so energetic the government, that on the 1st of October, two months from the time that General McClellan took command, there were one hundred and sixty-eight thousand men in the Army of the Potomac, with two hundred and twenty pieces of artillery; besides this, the government had a large army in Kentucky, and another in Missouri. The Rebels had large armies in those States, and were making great efforts to secure them to the Confederacy. It was not possible to send all the troops to Washington, as General McClellan desired.

The Rebel army was commanded by General Joseph E. Johnston. He had about seventy thousand men, with his headquarters at Manassas. Some of the spies which were sent out by General McClellan reported a much larger force under Johnston, and General McClellan believed that he had one hundred and fifty thousand men. Strong fortifications were erected to defend Washington; General Johnston wished very much to take the city, and the people of the South expected that he would gain possession of it and drive out the hated Yankees. He pushed his troops almost up to General McClellan's lines, taking possession of Munson's Hill, which is only five miles from the Long Bridge at Washington.

The Rebels erected breastworks upon the hill, and threw shot and shells almost to Arlington House. From the hill they could see the spires of the city of Washington, the white dome of the capitol, and its marble pillars. No doubt they longed to have it in their possession; but there were thousands of men in arms and hundreds of cannon and a wide river between them and the city.

One bright October morning I rode to Bailey's Cross-roads, which is about a mile from Munson's Hill. Looking across a cornfield, I could see the Rebels behind their breastworks. Their battle-flags were waving gayly. Their bayonets gleamed in the sunshine. A group of officers had gathered on the summit of the hill. With my field-glass, I could see what they were doing. They examined maps, looked towards Washington, and pointed out the position of the Union fortifications. There were ladies present, who looked earnestly towards the city, and chatted merrily with the officers. A few days after, I saw in a Richmond paper that the officers were Generals Lee, Beauregard, and Johnston, and that one of the ladies was Mrs. Lee.

General Lee was within sight of his old home; but he had become a traitor to his country, and it was to be his no more. Never again would he sit in the spacious parlors, or walk the verdant lawn, or look upon the beautiful panorama of city and country, forest and field, hill and valley, land and water,--upon the ripened wheat on the hillside or the waving corn in the meadows,--upon the broad Potomac, gleaming in the sunshine, or upon the white-winged ships sailing upon its bosom,--upon the city, with its magnificent buildings, upon the marble shaft rising to the memory of Washington, or upon the outline of the hills of Bladensburg, faint and dim in the distance.

He joined the rebellion because he believed that a state was more than the nation, that Virginia was greater than the Union, that she had a right to leave it, and was justified in seceding from it. He belonged to an old family, which, when Virginia was a colony of Great Britain, had influence and power. He owned many slaves. He believed that the institution of slavery was right. He left the Union to serve Virginia, resigned his command as colonel of cavalry, which he held under the United States. He accepted a commission from Jefferson Davis, forswore his allegiance to his country, turned his back upon the old flag, proved recreant in the hour of trial, and became an enemy to the nation which had trusted and honored him.

The summer passed away and the golden months of autumn came round. The troops were organized into brigades and divisions. They were drilled daily. In the morning at six o'clock the drummers beat the reveille. The soldiers sprang to their feet at the sound, and formed in company lines to answer the roll-call. Then they had breakfast of hard-tack and coffee. After breakfast the guards were sent out. At eight o'clock there were company drills in marching, in handling their muskets, in charging bayonet, and resisting an imaginary onset from the enemy. At twelve o'clock they had dinner,--more hard-tack, pork or beef, or rice and molasses. In the afternoon there were regimental, brigade, and sometimes division drills,--the men carrying their knapsacks, canteens, haversacks, and blankets,--just as if they were on the march. At sunset each regiment had a dress parade. Then each soldier was expected to be in his best trim. In well-disciplined regiments, all wore white gloves when they appeared on dress parade. It was a fine sight,--the long line of men in blue, the ranks straight and even, each soldier doing his best. Marching proudly to the music of the band, the light of the setting sun falling aslant upon their bright bayonets, and the flag they loved waving above them, thrilling them with remembrances of the glorious deeds of their fathers, who bore it aloft at Saratoga, Trenton, and Princeton, at Queenstown and New Orleans, at Buena Vista and Chapultepec, who beneath its endearing folds laid the foundations of the nation and secured the rights of civil and religious liberty. Each soldier felt that he would be an unworthy son, if traitors and rebels were permitted to overthrow a government which had cost so much sacrifice and blood and treasure, and which was the hope of the oppressed throughout all the world.

In the evening there were no military duties to be performed, and the soldiers told stories around the camp-fires, or sang songs, or had a dance; for in each company there was usually one who could play the violin. Many merry times they had. Some sat in their tents and read the newspapers or whatever they could find to interest them, with a bayonet stuck in the ground for a candle-stick. There were some who, at home, had attended the Sabbath school. Although in camp, they did not forget what they had left behind. The Bible was precious to them. They read its sacred pages and treasured its holy truths. Sometimes they had a prayer-meeting, and asked God to bless them, the friends they had left behind, and the country for which they were ready to die, if need be, to save it from destruction.

But at the tap of the drum at nine o'clock the laughter, the songs, the dances, the stories, the readings, and the prayer-meetings, all were brought to a close, the lights were put out, and silence reigned throughout the camp, broken only by the step of the watchful sentinel.

The soldiers soon grew weary of this monotony. They had been accustomed to an active life. It was an army different from any ever before organized. It was composed in a great degree of thinking men. Many of them were leading citizens in the towns where they lived. They were well educated and were refined in their manners. They knew there was to be hard fighting and a desperate contest, that many never would return to their homes, but would find their graves upon the field of battle; yet they were ready to meet the enemy, and waited impatiently for orders to march.

There were grand reviews of troops during the fall, by which the officers and soldiers became somewhat accustomed to moving in large bodies. All of the troops which could be spared from the fortifications and advanced positions were brought together at Bailey's Cross-roads, after the Rebels evacuated Munson's Hill, to be reviewed by the President and General McClellan. There were seventy thousand men. It was a grand sight. Each regiment tried to outdo all others in its appearance and its marching. They moved by companies past the President, bands playing national airs, the drums beating, and the flags waving. There were several hundred pieces of artillery, and several thousand cavalrymen. The ground shook beneath the steady marching of the great mass of men, and the tread of thousands of hoofs. It was the finest military display ever seen in America.

It was expected that the army would soon move upon the enemy. General McClellan, in a letter to the President, advised that the advance should not be postponed later than the 25th of November. The time passed rapidly. The roads were smooth and hard. The days were golden with sunshine, and the stars shone from a cloudless sky at night; but there were no movements during the month, except reconnaissances by brigades and divisions.

The Rebels erected batteries on the south side of the Potomac, below the Occoquan, and blockaded it. They had destroyed the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake Canal, so that the Union army and the city of Washington were dependent on the one line of railroad to Baltimore for all its supplies. It was very desirable that the Potomac should be opened. General Hooker, who commanded a division at Budd's Ferry, wished very much to attack the Rebels, with the aid of the navy, and capture the batteries, but General McClellan did not wish one division to move till the whole army was ready. December passed, and the year completed its round. Cold nights and blustering days came, and the army, numbering two hundred thousand men, went into winter quarters.

BALL'S BLUFF.

There were but two events of importance during the long period of inactivity in the autumn of 1861,--a disaster at Ball's Bluff and a victory at Dranesville.

In October General Stone's division of the Army of the Potomac was at Poolesville in Maryland. General Banks's division was at Darnestown, between Poolesville and Washington. General McCall's division was at a little hamlet called Lewinsville, on the turnpike leading from the chain bridge to Leesburg, on the Virginia side. The main body of the Rebels was at Centreville, but there was a brigade at Leesburg.

It is a beautiful and fertile country around that pleasant Virginia town. West of the town are high hills, called the Catoctin Mountains. If we were standing on their summits, and looking east, we should see the town of Leesburg at our feet. It is a place of three or four thousand inhabitants. There are several churches, a court-house, a market-place, where, before the war, the farmers sold their wheat, and corn, oats, and garden vegetables. Three miles east of the town we behold the Potomac sparkling in the sunlight, its current divided by Harrison's Island. The distance from the Virginia shore to the island is about one hundred and eighty feet; from the island to the Maryland shore it is six or seven hundred feet. The bank on the Virginia side is steep, and seventy-five or eighty feet high, and is called Ball's Bluff. A canal runs along the Maryland shore. Four miles below the island is Edward's Ferry, and three miles east of it is Poolesville.

In October, General McClellan desired to make a movement which would compel General Evans, commanding the Rebels at Leesburg, to leave the place. He therefore directed General McCall to move up to Dranesville, on the Leesburg turnpike. Such a movement would threaten to cut General Evans off from Centreville. At the same time he sent word to General Stone, that if he were to make a demonstration towards Leesburg it might drive them away.

On Sunday night, at sundown, October 20th, General Stone ordered Colonel Devens of the Massachusetts Fifteenth to send a squad of men across the river, to see if there were any Rebels in and around Leesburg.

Captain Philbrick, with twenty men of that regiment, crossed in three small boats, hauled them upon the bank, went up the bluff by a winding path, moved cautiously through the woods, also through a cornfield, and went within a mile and a half of Leesburg, seeing no pickets, hearing no alarm. But the men saw what they thought was an encampment. They returned at midnight and reported to General Stone, who ordered Colonel Devens to go over with about half of his regiment and hold the bluff.

The only means which General Stone had for crossing troops was one flat-boat, an old ferry-boat, and three small boats.

The town was soon in commotion. The drums beat, the Rebel troops then rushed out of their tents and formed in line, and the people of the town jumped from their breakfast-tables at the startling cry, "The Yankees are coming!"

General Evans, the Rebel commander, the day before had moved to Goose Creek to meet General McCall, if he should push beyond Dranesville. He had the Eighth Virginia, the Thirteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Mississippi Regiments, and a squadron of cavalry and four pieces of artillery.

Captain Duff, commanding a detachment of the Seventeenth Mississippi, was left at Leesburg. As soon as Colonel Devens's advance was discovered, he formed his men in the woods and sent word to General Evans, who hastened with his whole brigade to the spot.

General Stone placed Colonel Baker, commanding the First California Regiment, in command of the forces upon the Virginia side of the river. Colonel Baker was a Senator from Oregon,--a noble man, an eloquent orator, a patriot, and as brave as he was patriotic. During the forenoon a portion of the Twentieth Massachusetts Regiment, commanded by Colonel Lee, was sent over.

Captain Duff, of the Seventeenth Mississippi, was reinforced first by four companies of the Thirteenth and Eighteenth Mississippi, commanded by Colonel Jennifer. About two o'clock the Eighth Virginia arrived from Goose Creek, commanded by Colonel Huntoon. Other reinforcements were near at hand.

"Drive the Yankees into the river!" was General Evans's order.

He had the advantage of position, being on higher ground than that occupied by Colonel Baker. But he advanced very cautiously.

Colonel Baker formed his men on the eastern border of the field in the edge of the woods. The Fifteenth Massachusetts was on the right,--next there was a portion of the Twentieth Massachusetts, which had been sent over, and then the California and Tammany regiments. The Rebels began to fire at long range. Some of them climbed into the trees,--some secreted themselves in the shocks of corn which were standing in the field,--some crouched behind the fences and trees. Colonel Baker, to save his men, ordered them to lie down.

Colonel Jennifer, commanding a Rebel regiment, with a party of skirmishers, went round the north side of the field and came upon the Fifteenth Massachusetts, but the men of that regiment fired so steadily that the Rebels were forced to retire.

At the southwest corner of the field was a farm road, down which the Rebels advanced. The howitzers and the cannon were placed in position to rake that road, and the Rebels were compelled to leave it and form in the woods.

It was apparent to Colonel Baker and all of his command at three o'clock that the Rebels outnumbered them, but they prepared to make a brave fight. The fire from both sides began to be more fierce and rapid.

At this time General Gorman had crossed the river at Edward's Ferry, three miles below, with fifteen hundred men. General Evans, to prevent a junction of the Union forces, moved his troops into a ravine, and came upon the left flank of Colonel Baker's command.

"I want to find out what the Rebels are doing out there," said Colonel Baker to Colonel Wistar, "and I want you to send out two companies."

Colonel Wistar sent out Captain Marco with one company, and went himself with the other. About fifty yards in front of Colonel Wistar was a hill, and behind this Evans was preparing to make a charge. Suddenly the Eighth Virginia, who had been lying upon the ground, sprang to their feet, and, without firing a shot, advanced upon Captain Marco. His men, without waiting for orders, fired, and for fifteen minutes there was a very hot time of it,--the two companies holding their ground against the superior force. Captain Marco had deployed his men as skirmishers, while the Virginians were in close rank, and so destructive was the fire from Captain Marco's command, that the Rebel lines gave way.

But it was at a fearful cost that the brave men held their ground so long. During this time all their officers, and all their corporals and sergeants but three, and two-thirds of the men, were killed or wounded! They fell back at last under command of a sergeant, carrying with them a lieutenant and fourteen men of the Eighth Virginia prisoners.

The Rebels having reformed their line, came down upon the left flank of the California regiment. Colonel Wistar saw them in the ravine, faced four of his companies to meet them, and gave them a volley which threw them into confusion, and, after firing a few scattering shots, they ran up the ravine, and disappeared behind the hill.

For an hour or more the firing was at long range, each party availing themselves of the shelter of the woods. The men were ordered by Colonel Baker to shield themselves as much as possible, but himself and the other officers stood boldly out in the hottest fire.

"That is pretty close!" said Colonel Baker to Colonel Wistar, as a bullet came between them. Soon another ball cut off a twig over Colonel Baker's head.

"Lie close, don't expose yourself," he said to a brave soldier who was deliberately loading and firing.

"Colonel, you expose yourself, and why shouldn't I?"

"Ah! my son, when you get to be a United States senator and a colonel, you will feel that you must not lie down in face of the 'enemy.'"

He knew that it would be asked if he was brave in the hour of battle. It was his duty to expose himself, to show his men and all the world that he was not afraid to meet the enemy, and was worthy of the position he held.

One of the Mississippi regiments tried again to outflank Colonel Baker's left. The Rebels came within fifty feet of the California regiment; but the constant and steady fire given by that regiment again forced them back. It was an unbroken roll of musketry through the afternoon. The Union soldiers held their ground manfully, but their ammunition was giving out. The men, as fast as their cartridge-boxes became empty, helped themselves from the boxes of their fallen comrades. They could not obtain reinforcements for want of boats, although there were troops enough upon the Maryland shore to overwhelm the enemy. The boats were old and leaky, and were used to carry the wounded to the island. General Stone had taken no measures to obtain other boats. He was at Edward's Ferry, within sight and sound of the battle. He had fifteen hundred troops across the river at that point, and he might have ordered their advance towards Leesburg. They could have gained General Evans's rear, for there was no force to oppose them. The troops stood idly upon the bank, wondering that they were not ordered to march. So the brave men on the bluff, confronted by nearly twice their number, were left to their fate.

"We can cut our way through to Edward's Ferry," said Colonel Devens.

"If I had two more such regiments as the Massachusetts Fifteenth, I would cut my way to Leesburg," said Colonel Baker.

He went along the line encouraging the men to hold out to the last. His cool bearing, and the glance of his eagle eye, inspired the men and they compelled the Rebels again and again to fall back. Lieutenant-Colonel Wistar was wounded, but refused to leave the field. He remained with his men and kept a close watch upon the ravine and the hillock at his left hand. He saw that General Evans was making preparations for a desperate onset. He was gathering his troops in a mass behind the hill.

"Drive the Yankees into the Potomac," said General Evans, again. He had more than two thousand men.

"There is not a moment to lose. A heavy column is behind the hill and they are getting ready to advance," said Colonel Wistar, hastening to Colonel Baker.

Lieutenant Bramhall was ordered to open upon them with his rifled gun. He brought it into position and fired a round or two, but two of his cannoneers were instantly killed and five others wounded. Colonel Baker, Colonel Wistar, and Colonel Cogswell used the rammer and sponges, and aided in firing it till other cannoneers arrived. Colonel Wistar was wounded again while serving the gun. They could not reach the main body of Rebels behind the hill, but kept the others in check with canister as often as they attempted to advance.

The force behind the hill suddenly came over it, yelling and whooping like savages. Colonel Baker was in front of his men, urging them to resist the impending shock. He was calm and collected, standing with his face to the foe, his left hand in his bosom. A man sprang from the Rebel ranks, ran up behind him, and with a self-cocking revolver fired six bullets into him. Two soldiers in front of him fired at the same time. One bullet tore open his side, another passed through his skull. Without a murmur, a groan, or a sigh, he fell dead.

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