RETURN TO ARMY—IN WINTER-QUARTERS NEAR PORT ROYAL
On December 13, 1862, the great first battle of Fredericksburg had been fought, in which four men—Montgomery, McAlpin, Fuller and Beard—in my detachment had been killed, and others wounded, while the second piece, standing close by, did not lose a man. This section of the battery was posted in the flat, east of the railroad. As I was not present in this battle I will insert an account recently given me by Dr. Robert Frazer, a member of the detachment, who was severely wounded at the time:
"First battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862.—We reached the field a little after sunrise, having come up during the night from Port Royal, where we had been engaging the enemy's gunboats. The first section, under Lieutenant Graham, went immediately into action in front of Hamilton's Crossing.
"In conjunction with Stuart's horse artillery it was our mission to meet Burnside's movement against General Lee's right wing, resting on the Rappahannock. With the exception of brief intervals, to let the guns cool, we ceased firing only once during the entire day, and this was to move about a hundred yards for a more effective position. Excepting the few minutes this occupied, our guns and limber-chests remained in the same position all day, the caissons plying steadily between the ordnance-train and the battle line, to keep up the stock of ammunition. I do not recall the number of casualties, but our losses were heavy. When we came to make the change of position mentioned above, more than half the horses were unable to take a single step. One of the drivers, Fuller, was lying on the ground, his head toward the enemy. A shell entered the crown of his head and exploded in his body! Not long after this I heard some one calling me, and, looking back, I saw 'Doc' Montgomery prostrate. I ran to him and, stooping at his side, began to examine his wound. 'There is nothing you can do for me,' he said; 'I am mortally wounded, and can live but a little while. Take a message for my mother.' (His mother was a widow.) 'When the battle is over, write and tell her how I died—at my post—like a man—and ready to give my life for the cause. Now, Frazer, pray for me.' When the brief prayer was ended I resumed my place at the gun. It was about this time, I think, that Pelham came up and said, 'Well, you men stand killing better than any I ever saw.' A little later, just after sunset, I received two severe wounds myself, one of them disabling my right arm for life; and so I had to commit brave 'Doc's' dying message for his mother to other hands."
The third and fourth pieces, twenty-pound Parrott guns, were on the hill west of the railroad, and there Lieutenant Baxter McCorkle, Randolph Fairfax and Arthur Robinson were killed, and Edward Alexander lost an arm. This section of the battery was exposed to a fire unsurpassed in fierceness during the war. The ground, when it arrived, was already strewn with dead horses and wrecked batteries, and two horses that were standing, with holes in their heads through which daylight could be seen, were instantly killed by other shots intended for our guns.
Captain Poague told me since, that the orders General Jackson gave him as he came to the place were, "to fire on the enemy's artillery till it became too hot for him, and then to turn his guns on their infantry," and that he, Poague, had stated this in his official report, and the chief of artillery of the corps, before forwarding the report, had asked him if he was sure that these were General Jackson's orders. He told him he was. The report was then endorsed and so forwarded.
The scene, as described at the close of this battle near nightfall, was a melancholy one. As the two sections of the battery, which had separated and gone to different portions of the field in the morning—the one to the heights, the other to the plain—met again, on the caissons of each were borne the dead bodies of those of their number who had fallen, the wounded, and the harness stripped from the dead horses. The few horses that had survived, though scarcely able to drag the now empty ammunition-chests, were thus again burdened.
After going into bivouac and the dead had been buried, to clear the ground for a renewal of the battle on the following day, the wagon-horses had to be brought into requisition. These were driven in pairs to the position on the bluff and, as lights would attract the fire of the enemy, the dead horses had to be found in the darkness, and with chains dragged to the rear. The approach of the first instalment to a line of infantry, through which it had to pass and who were roused from sleep by the rattling of chains and the dragging of the ponderous bodies through brush and fallen timber, created no little excitement, and a wide berth was given the gruesome procession. By midnight the work had been accomplished.
At dawn of the following day a fresh detachment of men and horses having been furnished by another battery for the fourth piece, our battery again went into position. There it remained inactive throughout the day, while the enemy's dead within our lines were being buried by their own men under flag of truce. On the night which followed, as the two armies lay under arms, confronting each other, a display of the aurora borealis, of surpassing splendor and beauty, was witnessed. At such times, from time immemorial, "shooting-stars", comets, and the movements of the heavenly bodies have been observed with profoundest interest as presaging good or evil. On this occasion, with the deep impress of what had just been experienced and the apprehension of an even more determined conflict on the day next to dawn, it can readily be imagined that minds naturally prone to superstition were thrilled with emotions and conjectures aroused by the sight. At any rate, these "northern lights," reinforced by the memory of the fearful carnage so recently suffered, seem to have been interpreted as a summons home—as the Northern hosts, like the shifting lights, had vanished from view when daylight appeared.
In January, 1863, with William McClintic, of our company, I returned to the army, which was in winter-quarters near Guiney's Station in Caroline County.
After arriving in a box-car at this station, about midnight, during a pouring rain, we found one section of the battery camped three miles from Port Royal. The other section, to which I belonged, was on picket twelve miles beyond—at Jack's Hill, overlooking Port Tobacco Bay. The section near Port Royal had comfortable winter-quarters on a hillside and was well sheltered in pine woods; and, as most of my mess were in this section, I was allowed to remain until the contents of my box brought from home were consumed. One night soon after my arrival, while making a visit to members of another mess, Abner Arnold, one of my hosts, pointing to a large, dark stain on the tarpaulin which served as the roof of their shanty, said, "Have you any idea what discolored that place?" As I had not, he said, "That's your blood; that is the caisson-cover on which you were hauled around at Sharpsburg—and neither rain nor snow can wash it out."
The infantry of the Stonewall Brigade was in camp seven miles from us, toward the railroad. Having ridden there one morning for our mail, I met two men in one of their winter-quarters streets. One of them, wearing a citizen's overcoat, attracted my attention. Then, noticing the scars on his face, I recognized my former messmate, Wash. Stuart, on his return to the battery for the first time since his fearful wound at Winchester the preceding May. His companion was Capt. Willie Randolph, of the Second Virginia Regiment, both of whom will be mentioned later.
The chief sport of the troops in their winter-quarters was snowballing, which was conducted on regular military principles. Two brigades would sometimes form in line of battle, commanded by their officers, and pelt each other without mercy. In one such engagement a whole brigade was driven pell-mell through its camp, and their cooking utensils captured by their opponents.
Once a week quite regularly an old negro man came to our camp with a wagon-load of fine oysters from Tappahannock. It was interesting to see some of the men from our mountains, who had never seen the bivalve before, trying to eat them, and hear their comments. Our custom was to buy anything to eat that came along, and so they had invested their Confederate notes in oysters. One of them gave some of my messmates an account of the time his mess had had with their purchases. When it was proposed that they sell their supply to us, he said, "No, we are not afraid to tackle anything, and we've made up our minds to eat what we've got on hand, if it takes the hair off."
While in this camp, although it was after a five-months' absence, I invariably waked about two minutes before my time to go on guard, having slept soundly during the rest of the four hours. One officer, always finding me awake, asked if I ever slept at all. The habit did not continue, and had not been experienced before. An instance of the opposite extreme I witnessed here in an effort to rouse Silvey, who was generally a driver. After getting him on his feet, he was shaken, pulled, and dragged around a blazing fire, almost scorching him, until the guard-officer had to give him up. If feigning, it was never discovered.
The contents of my box having long since been consumed, I, with several others, was sent, under command of Lieut. Cole Davis, to my section at Jack's Hill. There we were quartered in some negro cabins on this bleak hill, over which the cold winds from Port Tobacco Bay had a fair sweep. On my return from the sentinel's beat one snowy night I discovered, by the dim firelight, eight or ten sheep in our cabin, sheltering from the storm. The temptation, with such an opportunity, to stir up a panic, was hard to resist. But, fearing the loss of an eye or other injury to the prostrate sleepers on the dirt floor, by the hoof of a bucking sheep, I concluded to forego the fun. After a stay of several weeks we were ordered back to the other section, much to our delight. In that barren region, with scant provender and protected from the weather by a roof of cedar-brush, our horses had fared badly, and showed no disposition to pull when hitched to the guns that were held tight in the frozen mud. To one of the drivers, very tall and long of limb, who was trying in vain with voice and spur to urge his team to do its best, our Irish wit, Tom Martin, called out, "Pull up your frog-legs, Tomlin, if you want to find the baste; your heels are just a-spurrin' one another a foot below his belly!"
We were delighted to be again in our old quarters, where we were more in the world and guard duty lighter. Several times before leaving this camp our mess had visits from the two cousins, Lewis and William Randolph, the firstnamed a captain in the Irish Battalion, the second a captain in the Second Virginia Regiment, who stopped over-night with us, on scouting expeditions across the Rappahannock in the enemy's lines, where Willie Randolph had a sweetheart, whom he, soon after this, married. Lewis Randolph told us that he had killed a Federal soldier with a stone in the charge on the railroad-cut at second Manassas; that the man, who was about twenty steps from him, was recapping his gun, which had just missed fire while aimed at Randolph's orderly-sergeant, when he threw the stone. William Randolph said, "Yes, that's true; when we were provost-officers at Frederick, Maryland, a man was brought in under arrest and, looking at Lewis, said, 'I've seen you before. I saw you kill a Yankee at second Manassas with a stone,' and then related the circumstances exactly."
William Randolph was six feet two inches in height, and said that he had often been asked how he escaped in battle, and his reply was, "By taking a judicious advantage of the shrubbery." This, however, did not continue to avail him, as he was afterward killed while in command of his regiment, being one of the six commanders which the Second Virginia Regiment lost—killed in battle—during the war.
In March we moved from our winter-quarters to Hamilton's Crossing, three miles from Fredericksburg, where we remained in camp, with several interruptions, until May. Our fare here was greatly improved by the addition of fresh fish, so abundant at that season of the year in the Rappahannock and the adjacent creeks. In April the great cavalry battle at Kelly's Ford, forty miles above, was fought, in which the "Gallant Pelham" was killed.