"I wrote you a short and hasty letter the fore part of this week to let you know that I was all right, and giving you a brief account of our late ups and downs, but I doubt if you have received it. The cars have not been running since we came back to Jackson from our march after Forrest. The talk in camp is that the rebs have utterly destroyed the railroad north of here clean to the Mississippi river, and that they have also broken it in various places and damaged it badly south of here between Bolivar and Grand Junction. I have no idea when this letter will reach you, but will write it anyhow, and trust to luck and Uncle Sam to get it through in course of time.
"We are now in camp on a muddy hillside in the outskirts of Jackson. I think the spot where we are must have been a cavalry camp last summer. Lots of corn cobs are scattered on the ground, old sc.r.a.ps of harness leather, and such other truck as acc.u.mulates where horses are kept standing around. When we left Bolivar we were in considerable of a hurry, with no time to primp or comb our hair, and neither did we bring our tents along, so we are just living out of doors now, and "boarding at Sprawl"s." There is plenty of wood, though, to make fires, and we have jayhawked enough planks and boards to lie on to keep us out of the mud, so we just curl up at night in our blankets with all our clothes on, and manage to get along fairly well.
Our worst trouble now is the lack of grub. The destruction of the railroad has cut off our supplies, and there is no telling just exactly how long it may be before it will be fixed and in running order again, so they have been compelled, I suppose, to cut down our rations. We get half rations of coffee, and quarter rations of hardtack and bacon. What we call small rations, such as Yankee beans, rice, and split peas, are played out; at least, we don"t get any. The hardtack is so precious now that the orderly sergeant no longer knocks a box open and lets every man help himself, but he stands right over the box and counts the number of tacks he gives to every man. I never thought I"d see the day when army hardtack would be in such demand that they"d have to be counted out to the soldiers as if they were money, but that"s what"s the matter now. And that ain"t all. The boys will stand around until the box is emptied, and then they will pick up the fragments that have fallen to the ground in the divide, and sc.r.a.pe off the mud with their knives, and eat the little pieces, and glad to get them. Now and then, to help out the sow-belly, we get quarter rations of fresh beef from the carca.s.s of a Tennessee steer that the quartermaster manages to lay hands on somehow. But it"s awful poor beef, lean, slimy, skinny and stringy. The boys say that one can throw a piece up against a tree, and it will just stick there and quiver and twitch for all the world like one of those blue-bellied lizards at home will do when you knock him off a fence rail with a stick.
"I just wish that old Forrest, who is the cause of about all this trouble, had to go without anything to eat until he was so weak that he would have to be fed with a spoon. Maybe after he had been hungry real good for a while he"d know how it feels himself, and would let our railroads alone.
"But I want to tell you that I had a real bully Christmas dinner, in spite of old Forrest and the whole caboodle. It was just a piece of the greatest good luck I"ve had for many a day.
"When Christmas morning came I was feeling awful blue. In spite of all I could do, I couldn"t help but think about the good dinner you folks at home would have that day, and I pictured it all out in my imagination. Then about every one of the boys had something to say about what he would have for Christmas dinner if he was home, and they"d run over the list of good things till it was almost enough to make one go crazy. To make matters worse, just the day before in an old camp I had found some tattered fragments of a New York ill.u.s.trated newspaper with a whole lot of pictures about Thanksgiving Day in the Army of the Potomac. They were shown as sitting around piles of roast turkeys, pumpkin pies, pound cake, and goodness knows what else, and I took it for granted that they would have the same kind of fodder today. You see, the men in that army, by means of their railroads, are only a few hours from home, and old Forrest is not in their neighborhood, so it is an easy thing for them to have good times. And here we were, away down in Tennessee, in the mud and the cold, no tents, on quarter rations, and picking sc.r.a.ps of hardtack out of the mud and eating them--it was enough to make a preacher swear. But along about noon John Richey came to me and proposed that inasmuch as it was Christmas Day, we should strike out and forage for a square meal. It didn"t take much persuasion, and straightway we sallied forth. I wanted to hunt up the old colored woman who gave me the mess of boiled roasting ears when we were here last summer, but John said he thought he had a better thing than that, and as he is ten years older than I am, I knocked under and let him take the lead.
"About half a mile from our camp, in the outskirts of the town, we came to a large, handsome, two-story and a half frame house, with a whole lot of n.i.g.g.e.r cabins in the rear. John took a survey of the premises and said, "Lee, right here"s our meat."
We went into the yard at a little side gate between the big house and the n.i.g.g.e.r quarters, and were steering for one of the cabins, when out steps from the back porch of the big house the lady of the place herself. That spoiled the whole game; John whirled in his tracks and commenced to sidle away. But the lady walked towards us and said in a very kind and friendly manner: "Do you men want anything?" "Oh, no, ma"am," replied John; "we just came here to see if we could get some of the colored women to do some washing for us, but I guess we"ll not bother about it today;" still backing away as he spoke. But the lady was not satisfied. Looking at us very sharply, she asked: "Don"t you men want something to eat?" My heart gave a great thump at that, but, to my inexpressible disgust, John, with his head thrown back and nose pointed skyward, answered, speaking very fast, "Oh, no, ma"am, not at all, ma"am, a thousand times obleeged, ma"am," and continued his sneaking retreat. By this time I had hold of the cape of his overcoat and was plucking it in utter desperation. "John," I said, speaking low, "what in thunder do you mean? This is the best chance we"ll ever have."
I was looking at the lady meanwhile in the most imploring manner, and she was regarding me with a kind of a pleasant, amused smile on her face. She saw, I guess, a mighty dirty looking boy, whose nose and face were pinched and blue with hunger, cold, loss of sleep, and hard knocks generally, and she brought the business to a head at once. "You men come right in," she said, as if she was the major-general commanding the department. "We have just finished our dinner, but in a few minutes the servants can have something prepared for you,--and I think you are hungry." John, with the most aggravating mock modesty that I ever saw in my life, began saying: "We are very much obleeged, ma"am, but we haven"t the slightest occasion in the world to eat, ma"am, and----" when I couldn"t stand it any longer for fear he would ruin everything after all. "Madam," I said, "please don"t pay any attention to what my partner says, for we are most desperately hungry." The lady laughed right out at that, and said, "I thought so; come in."
"She led the way into the bas.e.m.e.nt story of the house, where the dining room was, (all the rich people in the South have their dining rooms in the bas.e.m.e.nt,) and there was a nice warm room, a dining table in the center, with the cloth and dishes yet on it, and a big fireplace at one end of the room, where a crackling wood fire was burning. I tell you, it was different from our muddy camp on the bleak hillside, where the wind blows the smoke from our fires of green logs in every direction about every minute of the day. I sat down by the fire to warm my hands and feet, which were cold. A colored girl came in and commenced to arrange the table, pa.s.sing back and forth from the dining room to the kitchen, and in a short time the lady told us that our dinner was ready, to sit up to the table, and eat heartily. We didn"t wait for a second invitation that time.
And, oh, what a dinner we had! There was a great pile of juicy, fried beefsteak, cooked to perfection and tender as chicken; nice, warm light bread, a big cake of b.u.t.ter, stewed dried apples, cuc.u.mber pickles, two or three kinds of preserves, coffee with sugar and cream, and some of the best mola.s.ses I ever tasted,--none of this sour, scorched old sorghum stuff, but regular gilt-edge first cla.s.s New Orleans golden syrup, almost as sweet as honey. Then, to top off with, there was a nice stewed dried apple pie, and some kind of a custard in little dishes, something different from anything in that line that I had ever seen before, but mighty good. And then, in addition to all that, we were seated on chairs, at a table with a white cloth on it, and eating out of china plates and with knives and forks, a colored girl waiting on us, and the lady of the house sitting there and talking to us as pleasantly as if we were Grant and Halleck in person. Under the influence of the good grub, John thawed out considerably, and made a full confession to the lady about his queer actions at the beginning. He told her that we were going to the n.i.g.g.e.r quarters to try to get something to eat, and that when she came out and gave us such a kind invitation to come in the house, he was too much ashamed of our appearance to accept. That we had come up from Bolivar about a week before, riding on top of the box cars, where we got all covered with smoke, dust, and cinders; then ordered out to the front that night, then the fight with Forrest the next day, then the march towards the Tennessee river and back of about forty miles, and since then in camp with no shelter, tramping around in the mud, and sleeping on the ground; that on account of all these things we looked so rough and so dirty that he just felt ashamed to go into a nice house where handsome, well-dressed ladies were. Oh!
I tell you, old John is no slouch; he patched up matters remarkably well. The lady listened attentively, said she knew we were hungry the moment she saw us, that she had heard the soldiers were on short rations in consequence of the destruction of the railroad, and turning towards me she went on to say: "There was such a pitiful, hungry look on this boy"s face that it would have haunted me for a long time if I had let you go away without giving you a dinner. Many a hungry soldier," she continued, "both of the Northern and Southern army, has had something to eat at this table, and I expect many more will in the future, before this terrible and distressing war shall have come to an end." She didn"t say a word, though, by which we could tell whether her sympathies were on the Union side or against us, and of course we didn"t try to find out.
She was just the sweetest looking woman I have yet seen in the whole Southern Confederacy. If they have any angels anywhere that look kinder, or sweeter, or purer than she did, I would just like to see them trotted out. I guess she was about thirty-five years old. She was of medium height, a little on the plump order, with blue eyes, brown hair, a clear, ruddy complexion, and the whitest, softest looking little hands I ever saw in my life.
"When we had finished our dinner, John and I thanked her ever so many times for her kindness, and then bade her a most respectful good-by. He and I both agreed on our way back to camp to say nothing about the lady and the nice dinner she gave us, because if we blowed about it, the result would probably be more hungry callers than her generosity could well afford.
"But these close times I guess are not going to last much longer. The talk in camp this evening is that we are going to have full rations once more in a day or two, that the railroad will soon be in running order again, and then we can just snap our fingers at old Forrest and his whole outfit.
"Well, I will bring my letter to a close. Don"t worry if you fail to get a letter from me now as regularly as before. Things are a trifle unsettled down here yet, and we may not be able to count on the usual regularity of the mails for some time to come.
"So good-by for this time.
"LEANDER STILLWELL."
Soon after we returned to Jackson a detail of some from each company was sent to Bolivar and brought up our knapsacks and blankets, and we were then more comfortable. On December 29th, my company and two others of our regiment were sent by rail to Carroll Station, about eight miles north of Jackson. There had been a detachment of about a hundred men of the 106th Illinois Infantry previously stationed here, guarding the railroad, but Forrest captured them about December 20th, so on our arrival we found nothing but a crude sort of stockade, and the usual rubbish of an old camp. There was no town there, it consisted only of a platform and a switch. Our life here was somewhat uneventful, and I recall now only two incidents which, possibly, are worth noticing. It has heretofore been mentioned how I happened to learn when on picket at night something about the nocturnal habits of different animals and birds. I had a somewhat comical experience in this respect while on guard one night near Carroll Station. But it should be preceded by a brief explanation. It was no part of the duty of a non-commissioned officer to stand a regular tour of guard duty, with his musket in his hands. It was his province simply to exercise a general supervisory control over the men at his post, and especially to see that they relieved each other at the proper time. But it frequently happened in our regiment that our numbers present for duty were so diminished, and the guard details were so heavy, that the sergeants and corporals had to stand as sentries just the same as the privates, and this was especially so at Carroll Station.
On the occasion of the incident about to be mentioned, the picket post was on the crest of a low ridge, or slight elevation, and under some big oak trees by an old tumble-down deserted building which had at one time been a blacksmith shop. There were three of us on this post, and one of my turns came at midnight. I was standing by one of the trees, listening, looking, and meditating. The night was calm, with a full moon. The s.p.a.ce in our front, sloping down to a little hollow, was bare, but the ascending ground beyond was covered with a dense growth of young oaks which had not yet shed their leaves. We had orders to be extremely watchful and vigilant, as parties of the enemy were supposed to be in our vicinity. Suddenly I heard in front, and seemingly in the farther edge of the oak forest, a rustling sound that soon increased in volume. Whatever was making the noise was coming my way, through the trees, and down the slope of the opposite ridge. The noise grew louder, and louder, until it sounded just like the steady tramp, over the leaves and dead twigs, of a line of marching men, with a front a hundred yards in width. I just knew there must be trouble ahead, and that the Philistines were upon me. But a sentinel who made a false alarm while on duty was liable to severe punishment, and, at any rate, would be laughed at all over the regiment, and never hear the last of it. So I didn"t wake up my comrades, but got in the shadow of the trunk of a tree, c.o.c.ked my gun, and awaited developments. And soon they came.
The advancing line emerged from the forest into the moonlight, and it was nothing but a big drove of hogs out on a midnight foraging expedition for acorns and the like! Well, I let down the hammer of my gun, and felt relieved,--and was mighty glad I hadn"t waked the other boys. But I still insist that this crackling, crashing uproar, made by the advance of the "hog battalion" through the underbrush and woods, under the circ.u.mstances mentioned, would have deceived "the very elect."
A few days later I was again on picket at the old blacksmith shop. Our orders were that at least once during the day one of the guard should make a scout out in front for at least half a mile, carefully observing all existing conditions, for the purpose of ascertaining if any parties of the enemy were hovering around in our vicinity. On this day, after dinner, I started out alone, on this little reconnoitering expedition.
I had gone something more than half a mile from the post, and was walking along a dirt road with a cornfield on the left, and big woods on the right. About a hundred yards in front, the road turned square to the left, with a cornfield on each side. The corn had been gathered from the stalk, and the stalks were still standing. Glancing to the left, I happened to notice a white cloth fluttering above the cornstalks, at the end of a pole, and slowly moving my way. And peering through the tops of the stalks I saw coming down the road behind the white flag about a dozen Confederate cavalry! I broke into a run, and soon reached the turn in the road, c.o.c.ked my gun, leveled it at the party, and shouted, "Halt!" They stopped, mighty quick, and the bearer of the flag called to me that they were a flag of truce party. I then said, "Advance, One." Whereupon they all started forward. I again shouted "Halt!" and repeated the command, "Advance, One!" The leader then rode up alone, I keeping my gun c.o.c.ked, and at a ready, and he proceeded to tell me a sort of rambling, disjointed story about their being a flag of truce party, on business connected with an exchange of some wounded prisoners. I told the fellow that I would conduct him and his squad to my picket post, and then send word to our commanding officer, and he would take such action as he thought fit and proper. On reaching the post, I sent in one of the guards to the station to report to Lieut. Armstrong, in command of our detachment, that there was a flag of truce party at my post who desired an interview with the officer in command at Carroll Station. The Lieutenant soon arrived with an armed party of our men, and he and the Confederate leader drew apart and talked awhile. This bunch of Confederates were all young men, armed with double-barreled shot-guns, and a decidedly tough-looking outfit.
They finally left my post, escorted by Lieut. Armstrong and his guard, and I understood in a general way that he pa.s.sed them on to someone higher in authority at some other point in our vicinity, possibly at Jackson. They may have been acting in good faith, but from the manner of their leader, and the story he told me, I have always believed that their use of a flag of truce was princ.i.p.ally a device to obtain some military intelligence,--but, of course, I do not know. My responsibility ended when Lieut. Armstrong reached my picket post in response to the message sent him.
We remained at Carroll Station until January 27, 1863, were then relieved by a detachment of the 62nd Illinois Infantry, and were sent by rail back to Bolivar, where we rejoined the balance of the regiment.
We then resumed our former duty of guarding the railroad north to Toone"s Station, and continued at this until the last of May, 1863. But before taking up what happened then, it will be in order to speak of some of the changes that in the meantime had occurred among the commissioned officers of my company and of the regiment. Capt. Reddish resigned April 3rd, 1863, First Lieutenant Daniel S. Keeley was promoted Captain in his place, and Thomas J. Warren, the sergeant-major of the regiment, was commissioned as First Lieutenant in Keeley"s stead. Lieut. Col. Fry resigned May 14, 1863. His place was taken by Major Simon P. Ohr, and Daniel Gra.s.s, Captain of Co. H, was made Major.
The resignations of both Fry and Reddish, as I always have understood, were because of ill-health. They were good and brave men, and their hearts were in the cause, but they simply were too old to endure the fatigue and hardships of a soldier"s life. But they each lived to a good old age. Col. Fry died in Greene county, Illinois, January 27th, 1881, aged nearly 82 years; and Capt. Reddish pa.s.sed away in Dallas county, Texas, December 30th, 1881, having attained the Psalmist"s limit of three score and ten.
CHAPTER X.
THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG. JUNE AND JULY, 1863.
General Grant closed up against Vicksburg on May 19, and on that day a.s.saulted the Confederate defenses of the place, but without success.
On the 22nd a more extensive a.s.sault was made, but it also failed, and it was then evident to Grant that Vicksburg would have to be taken by a siege. To do this he would need strong reinforcements, and they were forthwith sent him from various quarters. So it came to pa.s.s that we went also. On May 31st we climbed on the cars, headed for Memphis, and steamed away from old Bolivar--and I have never seen the place since.
For my part, I was glad to leave. We had been outside of the main track of the war for several months, guarding an old railroad, while the bulk of the western army had been actively engaged in the stirring and brilliant campaign against Vicksburg, and we were all becoming more or less restless and dissatisfied. From my standpoint, one of the most mortifying things that can happen to a soldier in time of war is for his regiment to be left somewhere as a "guard," while his comrades of the main army are in the field of active operations, seeing and doing "big things," that will live in history. But, as before remarked, the common soldier can only obey orders, and while some form the moving column, others necessarily have stationary duties. But at last the old 61st Illinois was on the wing,--and the Mississippi Central Railroad could "go hang."
The regiment at this time was part of Gen. Nathan Kimball"s division of the 16th Corps, and the entire division left Tennessee to reinforce Grant at Vicksburg. We arrived at Memphis in the afternoon of the same day we left Bolivar, the distance between the two places being only about 72 miles. The regiment bivouacked that night on a sandbar on the water front of Memphis, which said bar extended from the water"s edge back to a high, steep sand-and-clay bank. And that, by the way, is the only night I have ever spent within the limits of the city of Memphis.
While we were there on this occasion, I witnessed a pathetic incident, which is yet as fresh and vivid in my memory as if it had happened only yesterday. Soon after our arrival I procured a pa.s.s for a few hours, and took a stroll through the city. While thus engaged I met two hospital attendants carrying on a stretcher a wounded Union soldier.
They halted as I approached, and rested the stretcher on the sidewalk.
An old man was with them, apparently about sixty years old, of small stature and slight frame, and wearing the garb of a civilian. I stopped, and had a brief conversation with one of the stretcher-bearers. He told me that the soldier had been wounded in one of the recent a.s.saults by the Union troops on the defenses of Vicksburg, and, with others of our wounded, had just arrived at Memphis on a hospital boat. That the old gentleman present was the father of the wounded boy, and having learned at his home in some northern State of his son being wounded, had started to Vicksburg to care for him; that the boat on which he was journeying had rounded in at the Memphis wharf next to the above mentioned hospital boat, and that he happened to see his son in the act of being carried ash.o.r.e, and thereupon at once went to him, and was going with him to a hospital in the city. But the boy was dying, and that was the cause of the halt made by the stretcher-bearers. The soldier was quite young, seemingly not more than eighteen years old. He had an orange, which his father had given him, tightly gripped in his right hand, which was lying across his breast. But, poor boy! it was manifest that that orange would never be tasted by him, as the glaze of death was then gathering on his eyes, and he was in a semi-unconscious condition. And the poor old father was fluttering around the stretcher, in an aimless, distracted manner, wanting to do something to help his boy--but the time had come when nothing could be done. While thus occupied I heard him say in a low, broken voice, "He is--the only boy--I have." This was on one of the princ.i.p.al streets of the city, and the sidewalks were thronged with people, soldiers and civilians, rushing to and fro on their various errands,--and what was happening at this stretcher excited no attention beyond careless, pa.s.sing glances. A common soldier was dying,--that was all, nothing but "a leaf in the storm." But for some reason or other the incident impressed me most sadly and painfully. I didn"t wait for the end, but hurried away,--tried to forget the scene, but couldn"t.
On the evening of June 1st we filed on board the big, side-wheel steamer "Luminary," which soon cast off from the wharf, and in company with other transports crowded with soldiers, went steaming down the Mississippi. Co. D, as usual, was a.s.signed to a place on the hurricane deck of the boat. After we had stacked arms, and hung our belts on the muzzles of the guns, I hunted up a corner on the forward part of the deck, sat down, looked at the river and the scenery along the banks,--and thought. There came vividly to my mind the recollection of the time, about fourteen months previous, when we started out from St.
Louis, down the "Father of Waters," bound for the "seat of war." The old regiment, in every respect, had greatly changed since that time.
Then we were loud, confident, and boastful. Now we had become altogether more quiet and grave in our demeanor. We had gradually realized that it was not a Sunday school picnic excursion we were engaged in, but a desperate and b.l.o.o.d.y war, and what the individual fate of each of us might be before it was over, no one could tell.
There is nothing which, in my opinion, will so soon make a man out of a boy as actual service in time of war. Our faces had insensibly taken on a stern and determined look, and soldiers who a little over a year ago were mere laughing, foolish boys, were now sober, steady, self-relying men. We had been taking lessons in what was, in many important respects, the best school in the world.
Our voyage down the river was uneventful. We arrived at the mouth of the Yazoo river on the evening of June 3rd. There our fleet turned square to the left, and proceeded up that stream. Near the mouth of the Chickasaw Bayou, the fleet landed on the left bank of the stream, the boats tied up for the night, we went on the sh.o.r.e and bivouacked there that night. It was quite a relief to get on solid ground, and where we could stretch our legs and stroll around a little. Next morning we re-embarked at an early hour, and continued up the Yazoo. During the forenoon we learned from one of the boat"s crew that we were approaching a point called "Alligator Bend," and if we would be on the lookout we would see some alligators. None of us, so far as I know, had ever seen any of those creatures, and, of course, we were all agog to have a view of them. A few of the best shots obtained permission from the officers to try their muskets on the reptiles, in case any showed up. On reaching the bend indicated, there were the alligators, sure enough, lazily swimming about, and splashing in the water. They were sluggish, ugly looking things, and apparently from six to eight feet long. Our marksmen opened fire at once. I had read in books at home that the skin of an alligator was so hard and tough that it was impervious to an ordinary rifle bullet. That may have been true as regards the round b.a.l.l.s of the old small-bore rifle, but it was not the case with the conical bullets of our hard-hitting muskets. The boys would aim at a point just behind the fore-shoulder, the ball would strike the mark with a loud "whack," a jet of blood would spurt high in the air, the alligator would give a convulsive flounce,--and disappear.
It had doubtless got its medicine. But this "alligator practice" didn"t last long. Gen. Kimball, on learning the cause, sent word mighty quick from the headquarters boat to "Stop that firing!"--and we stopped.
About noon on the 4th we arrived at the little town of Satartia on the left bank of the Yazoo, and about 40 miles above its mouth; there the fleet halted, tied up, and the troops debarked, and marched out to the highlands back of the town. We were now in a region that was new to us, and we soon saw several novel and strange things. There was a remarkable natural growth, called "Spanish moss," that was very plentiful, and a most fantastic looking thing. It grew on nearly all the trees, was of a grayish-white color, with long, pendulous stems.
The lightest puff of air would set it in motion, and on a starlight night, or when the moon was on the wane and there was a slight breeze, it presented a most ghostly and uncanny appearance. And the woods were full of an unusual sort of squirrels, being just as black as crows.
They were in size, as I now remember, of a grade intermediate the fox-and gray-squirrels we had at home. But all their actions and habits appeared to be just the same as those of their northern cousins. And there was a most singular bird of the night that was quite numerous here, called the "chuck-will"s widow," on account of the resemblance its note bore to those words. It belonged to the whippoorwill family, but was some larger. It would sound its monotonous call in the night for hours at a stretch, and I think its mournful cry, heard when alone, on picket at night out in dense, gloomy woods, is just the most lonesome, depressing strain I ever heard.
On the afternoon of the 4th all our force advanced in the direction of the little town of Mechanicsburg, which lay a few miles back of the river. Those in the front encountered Confederate cavalry, and a lively little skirmish ensued, in which our regiment was not engaged. Our troops burnt Mechanicsburg, and captured about forty of the Confederates. I was standing by the side of the road when these prisoners were being taken to the rear. They were all young chaps, fine, hearty looking fellows, and were the best looking little bunch of Confederates I saw during the war. Early in the morning of June 6th we fell into line and marched southwest, in the direction of Vicksburg.
Our route, in the main, was down the valley of the Yazoo river. And it will be said here that this was the hottest, most exhausting march I was on during my entire service. In the first place, the weather was intensely hot. Then the road down the valley on which we marched mostly ran through immense fields of corn higher than our heads. The fields next the road were not fenced, and the corn grew close to the beaten track. Not the faintest breeze was stirring, and the hot, stifling dust enveloped us like a blanket. Every now and then we would pa.s.s a soldier lying by the side of the road, overcome by the heat and unconscious, while one or two of his comrades would be standing by him, bathing his face and chest with water, and trying to revive him. I put green hickory leaves in my cap, and kept them well saturated with water from my canteen. The leaves would retain the moisture and keep my head cool, and when they became stale and withered, would be thrown away, and fresh ones procured. Several men died on this march from sun-stroke; none, however, from our regiment, but we all suffered fearfully. And pure drinking water was very scarce too. It was pitiful to see the men struggling for water at the farm house wells we occasionally pa.s.sed. In their frenzied desperation they would spill much more than they saved, and ere long would have the well drawn dry. But one redeeming feature about this march was--we were not hurried. There were frequent halts, to give the men time to breathe, and on such occasions, if we were fortunate enough to find a pool of stagnant swamp-water, we would wash the dirt and dust from our faces and out of our eyes.
As we trudged down the Yazoo valley, we continued to see things that were new and strange. We pa.s.sed by fields of growing rice, and I saw many fig trees, loaded with fruit, but which was yet green. And in the yards of the most of the farm houses was a profusion of domestic flowers, such as did not bloom in the north, of wonderful color and beauty. But, on the other hand, on the afternoon of the second day"s march, I happened to notice by the side of the road an enormous rattlesnake, which evidently had been killed by some soldier only a short time before we pa.s.sed. It seemingly was between five and six feet long, and the middle of its body appeared to be as thick as a man"s thigh. Its rattles had been removed, presumably as a trophy. It was certainly a giant among rattlesnakes, and doubtless was an "old-timer."
On the evening of June 7th, about sundown, we arrived at Haines" Bluff on the Yazoo river, and there went into camp. This point was about twelve miles north of Vicksburg, and had been strongly fortified by the Confederates, but Grant"s movements had compelled them to abandon their works without a battle. There had been a large number of the Confederates camped there, and the ground was littered with the trash and rubbish that acc.u.mulates in quarters. And our friends in gray had left some things in these old camps which ere long we all fervently wished they had taken with them, namely, a most plentiful quant.i.ty of the insect known as "Pediculus vestimenti," which forthwith a.s.sailed us as voraciously as if they had been on quarter rations, or less, ever since the beginning of the war.
On June 16th we left Haines" Bluff, and marched about two miles down the Yazoo river to Snyder"s Bluff, where we went into camp. Our duties here, as they had been at Haines", were standing picket, and constructing fortifications. We had the usual dress parade at sunset, but the drills were abandoned; we had more important work to do.
General Joe Johnston, the Confederate commander outside of Vicksburg, was at Jackson, Mississippi, or in that immediate vicinity, and was collecting a force to move on Grant"s rear, in order to compel him to raise the siege. Grant thought that if Johnston attacked, it would be from the northeast, so he established a line of defense extending southeast, from Haines" Bluff on the north to Black river on the south, and placed Gen. Sherman in command of this line. As Grant has said somewhere in his Memoirs, the country in this part of Mississippi "stands on edge." That is to say, it consists largely of a succession of high ridges with sharp, narrow summits. Along this line of defense, the general course of these ridges was such that they were admirably adapted for defensive purposes. We went to work on the ridges with spades and mattocks, and constructed the strongest field fortifications that I ever saw during the war. We dug away the crests, throwing the dirt to the front, and made long lines of breastworks along our entire front, facing, of course, the northeast. Then, at various places, on commanding points, were erected strong redoubts for artillery, floored, and revetted on the inner walls with thick and strong green lumber and timbers. On the exterior slopes of the ridges were dug three lines of trenches, or rifle pits, extending in a parallel form from near the base of the ridges almost to the summit, with intervals between the lines. All the trees and bushes in our front on the slopes of the ridges were cut down, with their tops outwards, thus forming a tangled abattis which looked as if a rabbit could hardly get through. And finally, on the inner slope of the ridges, a little below their summits, was constructed a "covered way;" that is, a road dug along the sides of the ridges, and over which an army, with batteries of artillery, could have marched with perfect safety. The purpose of these covered ways was to have a safe and sheltered road right along our rear by which any position on the line could be promptly reinforced, if necessary.
Sometimes I would walk along the parapet of our works, looking off to the northeast where the Confederates were supposed to be, and I ardently wished that they would attack us. Our defenses were so strong that in my opinion it would have been a physical impossibility for flesh and blood to have carried them. Had Johnston tried, he simply would have sacrificed thousands of his men without accomplishing anything to his own advantage.
It will be said here that I have no recollection of having personally taken part in the construction of the fortifications above mentioned.
In fact, I never did an hour"s work in the trenches, with spade and mattock, during all my time. I never "took" willingly to that kind of soldiering. But there were plenty of the boys who preferred it to standing picket, because when on fatigue duty, as it was called, they would quit about sundown, and then get an unbroken night"s sleep. So, when it fell to my lot to be detailed for fatigue, I would swap with someone who had been a.s.signed to picket,--he would do my duty, and I would perform his; we were both satisfied, and the fair inference is that no harm was thereby done to the cause. And it was intensely interesting to me, when on picket at night on the crest of some high ridge, to stand and listen to the roar of our cannon pounding at Vicksburg, and watch the flight of the sh.e.l.ls from Grant"s siege guns and from the heavy guns of our gunboats on the Mississippi. The sh.e.l.ls they threw seemed princ.i.p.ally to be of the "fuse" variety, and the burning fuse, as the sh.e.l.l flew through the air, left a stream of bright red light behind it like a rocket. I would lean on my gun and contemplate the spectacle with far more complacency and satisfaction than was felt when anxiously watching the practice on us by the other fellows at Salem Cemetery about six months before.
There was another thing I was wont to observe with peculiar attention, when on picket at night during the siege; namely, the operations of the Signal Corps. In the night time they used lighted lanterns in the transmission of intelligence, and they had a code by which the signals could be read with practically the same accuracy as if they had been printed words. The movements of the lights looked curious and strange, something elf-like, with a suspicion of witchcraft, or deviltry of some kind, about them. They would make all sorts of gyrations, up, down, a circle, a half circle to the right, then one to the left, and so on.
Sometimes they would be unusually active. Haines" Bluff would talk to Snyder"s; Snyder"s to Sherman"s headquarters; Sherman"s to Grant"s, and back and forth, all along the line. Occasionally at some station the lights would act almost like some nervous man talking at his highest speed in a perfect splutter of excitement,--and then they would seem as if drunk, or crazy. Of course, I knew nothing of the code of interpretation, and so understood nothing,--could only look and speculate. In modern warfare the telephone has probably superseded the Signal Service, but the latter certainly played an important part in our Civil War.
During the siege we lived high on some comestibles not included in the regular army rations. Corn was in the roasting ear state, and there were plenty of big fields of it beyond and near the picket lines, and we helped ourselves liberally. Our favorite method of cooking the corn was to roast it in the "shuck." We would "snap" the ears from the stalk, leaving the shuck intact, daub over the outside a thin plaster of mud (or sometimes just saturate the ears in water), then cover them with hot ashes and live coals. By the time the fire had consumed the shuck down to the last or inner layer, the corn was done, and it made most delicious eating. We had no b.u.t.ter to spread on it, but it was good enough without. And then the blackberries! I have never seen them so numerous and so large as they were there on those ridges in the rear of Vicksburg. I liked them best raw, taken right from the vine, but sometimes, for a change, would stew them in my coffee can, adding a little sugar, and prepared in this manner they were fine. But, like the darkey"s rabbit,--they were good any way. The only serious drawback that we had on our part of the line was the unusual amount of fatal sickness that prevailed among the men. The princ.i.p.al types of disease were camp diarrhea and malarial fevers, resulting, in all probability, largely from the impure water we drank. At first we procured water from shallow and improvised wells that we dug in the hollows and ravines.
Wild cane grew luxuriantly in this locality, attaining a height of fifteen or twenty feet, and all other wild vegetation was rank in proportion. The annual growth of all this plant life had been dying and rotting on the ground for ages, and the water would filter through this decomposing ma.s.s, and become well-nigh poisonous. An order was soon issued that we should get all water for drinking and cooking purposes from the Yazoo river, and boil it before using, but it was impossible to compel complete obedience to such an order. When men got thirsty, they would drink whatever was handy,--orders to the contrary notwithstanding. And the water of the river was about as bad as the swamp water. I have read somewhere that "Yazoo" is an Indian word, signifying "The River of Death," and if so, it surely was correctly named. It is just my opinion, as a common soldier, that the epidemic of camp diarrhea could have been substantially prevented if all the men had eaten freely of blackberries. I didn"t have a touch of that disorder during all the time we were in that locality, and I attribute my immunity to the fact that I ate liberally of blackberries about every day. But camp diarrhea is something that gets in its work quick, and after the men got down with it, they possibly had no chance to get the berries. And all the time we were at Snyder, nearly every hour of the day, could be heard the doleful, mournful notes of the "Dead March," played by the military bands, as some poor fellow was being taken to his long home. It seemed to me at the time, and seems so yet, that they should have left out that piece of music. It did no good, and its effect was very depressing, especially on the sick. Under such circ.u.mstances, it would seem that common sense, if exercised, would have dictated the keeping dumb of such saddening funeral strains.
Sometime during the latter part of June the regiment was paid two months" pay by Major C. L. Bernay, a Paymaster of the U.S. Army. He was a fine old German, of remarkably kind and benevolent appearance, and looked more like a venerable Catholic priest than a military man.
After he had paid off the regiment, his escort loaded his money chest and his personal stuff into an ambulance, and he was soon ready to go to some other regiment. Several of our officers had a.s.sembled to bid him good-by, and I happened to be pa.s.sing along, and witnessed what transpired. The few farewell remarks of the old man were punctuated by the roar of the big guns of our army and navy pounding away at Vicksburg, and the incident impressed me as somewhat pathetic.
"Goot-by, Colonel," said Major Bernay, extending his hand; (Boom!) "Goot-by Major;" (Boom!) "Goot-by, Captain;" (Boom!) and so on, to the others. Then, with a wave of his hand to all the little group, "Goot-by, shentlemens, all." (Boom!) "Maybe so (Boom!) we meet not again." (Boom, boom, boom!) It was quite apparent that he was thinking of the so-called "fortunes of war." Then he sprang into his ambulance, and drove away. His prediction proved true--we never met again.
The morning of the Fourth of July opened serene and peaceful, more so, in fact, than in old times at home, for with us not even the popping of a fire-cracker was heard. And the stillness south of us continued as the day wore on,--the big guns of the army and navy remained absolutely quiet. Our first thought was that because the day was a national holiday, Grant had ordered a cessation of the firing in order to give his soldiers a day of needed rest. It was not until some time in the afternoon that a rumor began to circulate among the common soldiers that Vicksburg had surrendered, and about sundown we learned that such was the fact. So far as I saw or heard, we indulged in no whooping or yelling over the event. We had been confident, all the time, that the thing would finally happen, so we were not taken by surprise. There was a feeling of satisfaction and relief that the end had come, but we took it coolly and as a matter of course.