Page images
PDF
EPUB

force to confront and drive back McPherson. Others believe that the quiet was owing to the dispirited condition of the army over news from the Rapidan and Richmond. That the enemy cannot spare many troops from the front is evident, inasmuch as they have but two corps in our front.

The Twenty-third corps, which had been developing the enemy on the left of Rocky Face, this morning met the enemy in very heavy force, and retired to his position of yesterday, about one mile in the rear, where he held the enemy in check.

Yesterday a brigade of McCook's cavalry division, which has been making demonstrations for some days on Schofield's left, engaged two rebel brigades of infantry. The charge was led by Colonel La Grange, of the First Wisconsin cavalry, who, everybody agrees, is one of the bravest of the brave brigade commanders of cavalry. After frequent assaults upon the wall of rebel infantry, our cavalry was repulsed, Colonel La Grange captured, after two horses were shot under him, and a large portion of the command wounded or captured, including Captain Starr, of the Second Indiana, who escaped from his captors, and came in.

Wednesday, May 11. Wednesday broke damp and chilly, but the rain cleared off before it had deluged the roads sufficiently to retard operations. The army was now in position-that is, in its first position. It coiled round the Chattanooga or Buzzard Roost Mountains like a huge snake, and was pushed so close to the enemy's intrenchments that a few yards, more or less, became a matter of infinite importance to life and limb.

No movement is visible anywhere this afternoon. The smoke drifts off lazily and the skirmishers chaff at each other at their grim, favorite occupation. The verdant, but treacherous ridges of Buzzard Roost, are dim and gloomy through the cold and clouded atmosphere, and in the shady forests confronting us are long lines of shivering blue coats resolutely, nay, indifferently waiting for orders. I cannot but name a wish that God grant that the order for assault may not be given. My heart beats faster at the bare thought of standing near and gazing on it, convinced as I am that all the armies ever marshalled could not successfully storm the position, if occupied by thirty thousand determined men.

will discover that he has permission, if he chooses, to mass on the division or two in his front, which being done and their lines broken, he may pass through to Chattanooga-all this if he pleases. But there is an ominous drift towards Resacca. The price of his looking at Chattanooga would be Atlanta and liberty. Sherman, at last, has indicated the point where he intends to thrust, and if Dalton is not in our possession by the day after to-morrow morning, there are no warnings in history for rebel generalship.

The strength of Johnston's army is estimated by the best judges with whom I have conversed to be about fifty thousand, exclusive of Georgia militia, of whom probably fifteen thousand are bearing arms, and distributed at Rome and Resacca. Their journals estimate the strength of our army at sixty thousand. They will be astonished after they annihilate that number of Sherman's Yankees to find their work signally incomplete.

General Sherman has been constantly in the saddle, and has displayed himself in front of Buzzard Roost, directing operations at points where the rebels could hardly fail to identify him. In company with General Thomas he has just moved to the right-the current that way being strong enough to carry along the heads of the army.

One of McPherson's couriers has just dropped the intelligence that Kilpatrick, under orders from McPherson, cut the enemy's rear last night, a few miles south of Resacca. We are evidently moving to cut off their supplies, and so compel them to come out and attack us or beat a precipitate retreat. The army will be closed up to-night, and to-morrow will make history. If Johnston retreats he must not be long in doing it; and with the railroad in his rear severed, he must probably lose or destroy some of his heavy munitions.

General Sherman is pointedly hostile to correspondents, and the pursuit of their avocation at this time is under severe, and, to the anxious relatives and friends of his brave army, almost cruel restrictions. The General, perhaps, has adequate reason for his course; but as the news of all engagements must drift to the rear sooner or later, it seems plausible that a trustworthy correspondent can send it with less injury to the service than when borne by demoralized stragglers, or by wounded men, whose observations can hardly go beyond their brigades. Mr. Benjamin F. Taylor, whose con

some of the most delightful pages of its history, has gone North under the ban of the commanding General, for saying in one of his letters,

[ocr errors]

No movement up to dark had been made by the troops. The camp-fires shone brightly-tributions to the press from this army will fill nothing in the enemy's range of vision had been moved. The night was dark, and by the time it had fairly overspread nature, a sudden, stealthy life was infused into the hitherto recumbent troops. Hooker moves his corps to the right, and being near at hand, reports before daylight to McPherson. Schofield comes drifting in the same direction from his fruitless position east of Rocky Face. Other corps folfow; perhaps, when daylight comes, the enemy

our lines now extend from Nashville to Huntsville." It is reported that General Sherman, upon reading this item, wrote an order to his Provost Marshal-General, directing the immediate arrest of a spy, one Benjamin F. Taylor, his trial by drum-head court-martial, and execution. This order resulted in the withdrawal of Mr.

[ocr errors]

Taylor, and the abrupt termination of his series of delicious letters.

Our losses to date, foot up about eight hundred. The wounded have all been removed to Chattanooga, and are well cared for. We have lost a few prisoners and captured about twenty.

ANOTHER ACCOUNT.

RESACCA, GA., May 17, 1864.

Notwithstanding the defiant boast of the haughty Georgians, while yet their valleys resounded with the war tocsin's first appeal, that her mountains should be "slaughter pens" for presumptuous invaders, and their rugged heights should smoke with the sacrifice of Federal troops, should their footsteps ever press her sod, one of the mightiest armies that ever trod the earth now sleeps upon her fairest fields, feeds from her granaries, lays waste her harvests, strolls through and occupies her groves, or reclines in her choisest mansions. Ten days of incessant rattle and roll have passed, intermingled with privations, dangers, and death, and I sit me down to jot you the particulars and the results. I briefly alluded, in a short note a few days since, which you saw fit to publish, to the operations of the first few days, which brought our army front-a-front with that of the enemy at Buzzard Roost. There is so much of interest connected with the introductory or incipient movements of an army, when one desires to study and understand the routes and aims from the time tents are struck to the very moment that marks the termination of the bloody struggle, that without fear of eliciting censure or of adding that which might be termed superfluous, I take up the story from the day the army moved, and hurrying past a multitude of interesting incidents of the march, the dark encounters, the daring deeds, and "hair-breadth 'scapes" related partially before, plunge boldly in medias res.

Palmer's corps, of the immortal old "Army of the Cumberland," lay in and about Ringgold or Hooker's Gap. General Howard, having moved from Cleveland simultaneously with the marching of Palmer's corps, halted his column and encamped on the hills and in the rapturously elegant groves about Catoosa Springs. The picturesqueness of the landscape, assisted by the comforts that art lavished with bounteous hand to contribute to man's enjoyments, made, no doubt, a lovely resort for the élite and chivalry of the sunny South during the oppressive

summer months.

Scarcely had the object of the General to encamp here been known, and the troops relieved from the restraint of a mathematical alignment after a tiresome march, than, forgetting fatigue in their unbridled curiosity, they emptied the bath-houses of their tubs and pans, and floated them out upon the placid little lakes, where we left them sailing about like the painted hulls of miniature ships. In humbling the dignitas the soldier is not careful to span that which evi

denced the otium. At and near Red Clay, prepared to co-operate and guard Howard's left, lay the Twenty-third army corps, under MajorGeneral Schofield, whose flank in turn was closely guarded by the vigilant Edward McCook, commanding a division of cavalry. Hooker lay far to the right of Palmer, ready at the signal to move through Nickojack Gap; and holding towards Rocky Face, protect Palmer's right. McPherson with Logan's Fifteenth army corps, and Dodge's division of the Sixteenth, passing to the rear of Hooker, headed towards Snake Creek Gap, supported on the flank by Garrard's magnificent division of cavalry and mounted infantry. His communication with Hooker was maintained by General Kilpatrick's dashing little division of cavalry.

The grand battle line proper extended, therefore, from the Red Clay to some point a short distance this side of Snake Creek, the corps in the following order: Schofield, Howard, Palmer, Hooker, and McPherson, the latter holding the extreme right.

At daybreak great columns of dust began to float upward in long gray lines. A tropical sun poured over all its suffocating heat, and the troops, overburdened with heavy knapsacks, threw aside blankets, drawers, pants, shirts, and even knapsacks-any thing calculated to weary or impede them.

Johnson's column filed through Hooker's Gap just after daybreak, and ere long was driving the enemy's skirmishers before him. Nearing Tunnell Hill he veered from the main road, and screened by the forest threw his troops into the open fields around the ridge running parallel with the Tunnel range, and separated from it by a valley about a mile in width. Some artillery practice was indulged in by both sides, with, I apprehend, no loss to either.

Simultaneously, Howard broke camp, and moving more directly towards Rocky Face, with Stanley in front, Wood and Newton rather in reserve, soon joined Davis' left, and the whole line pushed not only up Tunnel Hill proper, but occupied and passed through the valley between Rocky Face and it. At night of the seventh our troops lay in exactly the position designated above.

It is exceedingly dangerous to-day to move out in open view on the road leading to Buzzard Roost. All the morning, from the earliest dawn to noon, the valley has reverberated with the clang of the vicious rifles, the exultant shout, and the roll of wheels. It is determined finally to storm the hills in front, and Colonel John G. Mitchell, commanding brigade in General Davis' division, is to have the honor.

His line for the assault is drawn up in the following order: two companies of the Seventyeighth Illinois, as skirmishers on the right, are thrown forward for action, immediately preceding the Ninety-eighth Ohio; to the left of the Ninety-eighth lay the Thirty-fourth and One Hundred and Thirty-eighth Ohio, just in rear of and supporting the One Hundred and Thirteenth

Ohio and Seventy-eighth Illinois, who have in turn their skirmishers in front. At fifteen minutes after four o'clock the artillery rouses the hoarsest echoes of the glens and valleys, and heralds the coming of the assaulting column. Hazen, of Wood's division, then joins Davis' left, and he too throws forward by way of diversion a heavy line of skirmishers. The first few shells dislodged the rebels from their barricades of boulders, and the rapidity with which they measured ground en retraite elicits a shout of merriment that accelerates, if such were possible, their speed.

There is at least one thing in which the rebels cannot be easily excelled, and that is the accuracy of aim displayed by their sharpshooters. It was actually unsafe to show one's self within three-quarters of a mile of Rocky Face or of the little spurs that guard the entrance to the gap.

lieved by General Newton under proper orders. Whether an opportunity was lost or not I do not presume to say publicly, for such criticism would seem to impugne the judgment of our leaders and lead to no good results. We shall see the result.

General Wood's division was taken from the left of Davis and placed in the centre, communicating with Newton, who still holds the summit of the mountain unable to advance against such superior numbers. Now it seems that the possession of the summit by sweeping its whole length if possible seems feasible, and Wood is ordered to demonstrate in front to attract the enemy, while Newton sallies out to press forward his lines. At half-past eight o'clock in the morning the firing opened with great severity, and Wood pushes his skirmishers to the very base of that lofty façade of solid rock, which, in the language of the General,

The fire of the rebel sharpshooters slackens."not even a cat could ascend." The skirmishers are quiet, and all along the line the stillness is so intense that one intuitively feels a storm is coming.

Looking to the woods below, which is but one dense mass of foliage, I catch glimpses of troops in motion and change my point of observation. The line moves on as I supposed, and now, as I see it quit the works, the regular sway of that long, calm line assures me all will be well.

The rebels, secure comparatively on their rocky eyry, hurled down upon our troops huge rocks and clubs and logs. The Thirty-fifth Illinois, of Willich's brigade, lost in this sham effort to scale an impassable barrier, over thirty men killed and wounded. The loss of the division in this demonstration numbered not less than eighty men. Arriving at the base of the towering cliffs from which the enemy's sharpshooters were picking off our men at a murderous rate and with a malicious pleasure, General Ward so reported, and the main force retired from easy range, leaving a line of skirmishers to answer the enemy's shots.

of Whitaker's brigade, enter the forest on the slope of Rocky Face, just on the left of Davis, and at once engage the rebel skirmishers. Ten minutes later the firing becomes brisk. The enemy, holding a gorge, seems to have made a sally, and is determined to push our forces to the base again. The bugle sounds the "forward," and a portion of Cruft's brigade, that had up to this time been in reserve, moves across the open field and enters the fight.

A quarter before five and my eyes had the long watched-for confirmation. Like the tiger from his lair, flushed with the ardor of confidence that knows no failure when the will commands, cheering lustily as throats e'er cheered, At ten minutes before nine o'clock the Ninetythe men seem borne forward by some super-sixth Illinois and Fifty-first Indiana regiments, natural impetus. The hill is very steep, and the enemy has circled the point with a heavy line of rifle-pits. Firing almost ceases. Naught is heard to break the taxing stillness save an occasional exchange of shots between our daring skirmishers and the sharpshooters on the slope. Officers may be brave, brilliant, even in recklessness; and yet genuine fearlessness, the lion hearts, the dispassionate characters that love scenes where men pit their lives against the lives of other men merely for the novelty, for the satisfaction that follows a safe return, are oftener found in the ranks than elsewhere. There were no cowards here. If the national cause could have been personated and could have witnessed the ascent as I did, the "well done" would have hailed the flag that Mitchell's gallant fellows planted on the rebel parapet that day.

While the rebel forces on the centre are employed in vigilantly preparing to oppose successful resistance to Davis and to such forces as we might hurl against the Gap, Willich, taking advantage of the diversion, ascends to the summit of Rocky Face, and asks that he be permitted to march steadily forward toward the Gap. The Fifteenth Wisconsin regiment the original old Norwegians-ascended to the summit of the ridge and held it firmly until re

Major Simonson trots out a section of the Fifth Indiana battery, which takes position just in front of General Stanley's headquarters in the open field, and, with the usual precision that marks the practice of this famous battery, a plentiful supply of shells is pitched among the jubilant Johnnies on the mountain, which is found wonderfully efficient in assisting them to the adoption of a lower pitch of voice and a loftier and securer perch among their rugged fastnesses.

Two guns of the Second Pennsylvania battery, planted to the left and rear of the former battery to command the enemy's position in the gorge, industriously hurl their iron missiles against the mountain, and so vigorously ply the work that no further effort on the enemy's part is made to affect our lodgment on the slope.

As I toiled along the rugged, rocky slope,

[ocr errors]

climbing to get a view of the cliffs and of the enemy's position, an excellent brass band, attached to General Beatty's brigade, strikes up a stirring national air. The rebels on the mountain, as if lacerated and provoked beyond sufferance by the melody that filled the forest, stirred the sweetest echoes of the caverns, and, when an inequality in their rocky battlement softened and flushed it again, sending up in the blue expanse trilling as sweetly as an angel choir, and thrilling the hearts of the loyal and true, answered back the enchanting strains with a volley of bullets that crashed through the treetops and fell as harmless as pebbles around. Failing in that, they threw against the freighted air curses that could not but have been fresh coined in hell. The skirmishing grew brisker, and as I toiled along I could not but mark that as distance mellowed the strains of music the vicious crackle of the musketry lent, after all, an accompaniment that smacked of the musical. Colonel La Grange, whose short experience has already won for him in the army a distinction that few enjoy, for cool calculating judgment in the hour of danger, and brilliant dashing valor in the hour of battle, I regret very much to say encountered an overwhelming force to-day near Poplar Spring, on the main road from Cleveland to Dalton, and was captured. His officers and men in referring to his personal intrepidity as displayed in the effort to-day to retrieve his fortunes after others had almost ceased to hope, pay the highest tribute to his character that could be tendered.

The Colonel has for a long time been commanding a brigade of cavalry in Colonel Ed. McCook's division, which I have referred to before as operating on Schofield's left. The particulars are not fully given as yet, and perhaps will not be accurately known until the official report is forwarded. From what I can gather, however, it seems that Colonel La Grange, isolated and acting somewhat independently of the main force, encountered a force of rebel skirmishers near Poplar Spring, and drove them to the shelter of a little fort. From all appearances and from such information as he could obtain from the citizens, the rebels had no force of consequence at the fort, and he determined to charge and take it.

The enemy, it appears, had concealed two regiments of infantry, that rose and poured in such a destructive fire that the line was forced to withdraw. In this encounter Colonel La Grange's horse was shot under him, and he received some painful bruises. On either flank, in addition to the infantry that lay in ambuscade, a force of cavalry, much superior in numbers to the brigade under La Grange, had been concealed up to this time, and now bore down upon his little force to crush it at a blow.

Equal to any emergency where personal bravery is required, the Colonel prepared to resist, and did fight manfully until overpowered. His horse falling caused his capture. He

lost, I am informed, over a hundred men, killed, wounded, and missing.

Leaving the left for the time to visit the right and centre, we leave Schofield in his old position, Newton on the mountain, Wood and Stanley on the slope, and Davis confronting the Gap from the sentinel hills at its entrance.

Rocky Face Ridge suffers an abrupt depression at Buzzard Roost, and, curving to the east in the shape of a horse-shoe, rises again to the same lofty altitude and courses toward the south. The railroad that crosses the ridge to Dalton, just here passes between the two hills Davis carried, touching the one on the right. Between the road and hill on the left, which is bisected by a gorge, runs a tortuous little water course, which, at every crossing between our lines and the rebel works, was so firmly dammed with logs, stones, and earth, that the valley around was flooded to such a depth as to make an assault impracticable. Along the slope of the continuation of Rocky Face, on the right of the gap looking eastward along the road, and on the slope to the left, it was determined to make a simultaneous advance this afternoon, and Colonel Scribner's brigade of Johnson's division, and Morgan's brigade of Davis' division, were the attacking forces. It was late in the afternoon when the fighting began. The rebels on the loftiest pinnacle of the Chattanooga Range had planted a battery of four or five guns, and they used them with good effect.

Colonel Scribner's charge was characterized, as far as the troops are concerned, by the same tireless energy and fearless will to accomplish whatever task is set before them that has ever earned for them the confidence of commanders and the gratitude of the people. To say that Colonel Scribner himself bore his part unflinchingly, and evinced a clearness of judgment that fits him for the command of even more than a brigade, would be saying that which is so well known that it might be censured as a superfluity. I did not learn his loss. I saw the fighting, and when I commend him and his brigade I speak "that which I do know" he well deserves.

Colonel Hambright accompanied the brigade while charging, under command of Colonel Scribner, and was struck by a piece of shell in the head. There was universal regret in the army over his misfortune, for few men are more highly esteemed for his multitude of shining qualities of heart and head than Colonel Hambright.

The mill on the left slope was a kind of partnership affair; and, as in matters so amicably conducted by the Generals, where one of the party steps in and gets pummelled awhile and kindly retires, to let his neighbor at his elbow feel a few stunning counters, no one with prudence will interfere without common consent, I prefer not to dispense the honors, according to my judgment, least I should drop the wreath

where it does not properly belong. There may have been an object in that outlandish medley of musketry, artillery, shouts, cheers, commands, etc., etc., but not knowing the object, of course I can't properly gauge the success.

Geary's struggle for Dug Gap was perhaps

one of the stubbornest conflicts of the cam

paign, and certainly in boldness is surpassed by none. During the afternoon of to-day General Geary, with two brigades (Buschbeck's and Candy's), made an effort to carry one of the most rugged and scraggy heights along the Chattoogata range. Dug Gap is in what the citizens call John's Mountain. I learn from a deserter, who, by the way, was exceedingly intelligent, that the rebels regarded that gap as of great importance, and yet, from the impregnable character of the place, up to the time Geary suffered his first repulse, and until after that, the place was held by but one brigade (once the famous McNair's), now commanded by the rebel General Reynolds.

The brigade consists of the First and Second Arkansas regiments and the Eighth Mississippi. It was feared that Geary would renew the assault, and Cleburne's brigade reinforced the enemy. Not possessed of the gift of ubiquity, I cannot be at every point along the line, the right and left of which are fourteen miles apart, and hence I was unable to witness what is pictured to me as one of the boldest and most pertinacious struggles for the numbers engaged during the war. The story of the ascent-how coolly they bared their breasts to the rebel volleys that swept the rugged steep-how long and gallantly they clung to the hazardous and almost hopeless effort to gain the top, and how at last the stalwart little band retired but to return again, and again to return unsuccessfulis only a repetition of what has occurred and been read of a hundred times since the war begun. I will not weary you with the details, but return to Buzzard Roost.

This was the entertainment to which I was treated an hour or so before retiring to-night. Morgan, the common, unassuming, old farmerwarrior, was still fighting under the dark foliage of the mountain slope on Davis' left.

Our artillerists are a set of tireless fellows who want no better fun than what they call "plugging the rebels," and would, if they had ammunition enough, begin at the top of Rocky Face and shoot the whole mountain away in a very few days. The rebels from their cloud battery were plugging shells through what seemed a cloud in our direction until long into dark. Not a breeze was stirring. Camp fires blazed all through the valley, and as the mountain battery would discharge its missile a long bright sheet of sparks would shoot down the rocks as if some one had thrown out into the darkness a crucible of molton iron.

There is poetry in war, but isn't it more enjoyable in a book on a sofa in a neat, cozy room? What do the drafted men say?

VOL. XI.-Doo. 3

[blocks in formation]

the Yankees.

All

than ever with artillery, evidently to learn Enemy opened out this morning more heavily where our newly planted batteries were. the forenoon busily toiled the men, digging, tugging, hauling, and cutting, and just after noon displayed, much I apprehend to rebel chagrin, the number and calibre of our guns, and the superb manner in which they may be handled.

Operations on the eleventh.

Clouds were still sailing overhead portending another storm. All day the musketry rattles as before. The artillery now and then bellows and answers back. Misty, drizzling showers succeed each other, and through the fog the flame that shouts from the rebel mountain guns, glares fiercely over us.

General Dodge, in command of all the troops of the Sixteenth army corps available in the present contingency, is ordered to pass through Snake Creek Gap, hurry forward to Resacca, and if possible cut the railroad and hold the works. General Sweeney, with the Second division, led the advance. From the moment the movement began, the enemy's skirmishers displayed a determination to oppose all the resistance possible against so superior a force, and succeeded in wounding numbers of good men during the advance."

Colonel Phillips' Ninth Illinois mounted infantry was skirmishing in front. The Colonel's horse was killed under him, and he himself was too badly wounded to support himself in the saddle. Covered in front by a light force of cavalry the division continued to move toward Resacca. Passing the junction of the Dalton and Resacca roads the column was greeted, much to its surprise, with a shower of shell from a rebel battery on the ridge directly in front, afterwards occupied by batteries of the Fifteenth corps.

The advance force consisted of the Sixtysixth Illinois sharpshooters, the Eighty-first Ohio, Lieutenant-Colonel Bob Adams command

« PreviousContinue »