CHAPTER XXVII. THE FIGHTING NEAR ELKHORN TAVERN—HARRY'S EXPERIENCE UNDER FIRE.
Van Dorn's movements were delayed by the obstructions on the roads by which he moved. As soon as General Curtis became satisfied that the rebels were trying to get around to his rear, he ordered General Dodge, who commanded the fourth division of the army, to cut down trees along the road leading north from Bentonville, and the order was instantly carried out. General Dodge had been ill in his tent for three days, but when the news of the approaching enemy reached him he was cured as if by magic. Remarking that it was no time to be sick, he got out of bed, assumed the active command of his division, and during the afternoon of the sixth supervised the work of a large detail of men, who felled trees across the road and otherwise blocked it to delay the rebel advance. He kept at it until the rebel skirmishers began to fire upon his men, and as he had orders not to bring on an engagement he prudently withdrew.
“General Dodge was a trump,” said Harry afterwards, when telling the story of the battle; “sick in his tent and in the doctor's hands before the battle began, he was almost constantly in the saddle for three days. When the battle was over and the enemy had retreated, he dropped to the ground and went back to his sick-bed. It's a good example of what a man can do under excitement.”
“And there was another example of the same sort,” said Jack. “There was Major Post, of the Thirty-seventh Illinois who became General Philip Sidney Post, and served gallantly in a good many battles. Early on the second day at Pea Ridge he was wounded in the arm, but he kept his place with his regiment and would not stop to have his wound dressed. The surgeon insisted, but he would n't go. 'I can walk and give orders,' he said, 'even if I can't use my arm, and I'm going to stay here.' The colonel of his regiment had to order him to go to the field hospital. He went very reluctantly, as he wanted to see the battle fought out to the end, and was determined to do all he could toward winning it.”
The same spirit prevailed among officers and men throughout the whole army. Of course there were instances of shirking, as will always be the case in any battle, but they were not numerous. Perhaps the knowledge that the enemy was right on the line of communications, so as to cut off retreat and render surrender necessary in case of a defeat, had something to do with the good conduct of a few, but it could not be the case throughout the whole army. And to do the rebels justice, they displayed similar courage, but they had the advantage of being the attacking party and knowing that they were superior in numbers to the union forces.
“On the morning of the seventh,” said Harry, in his story of the battle, “there was great activity all through the union camp. Every drum and fife in the army was called into use, and never before had the woods of Pea Ridge resounded to so much martial music. Rations for two days had been prepared, the soldier's cartridge-boxes were filled to their fullest capacity, every man made a careful inspection of the lock of his rifle to make sure that it was in perfect order, and then the order was given to load with ball cartridge and be in readiness to advance when the word was given.
“We were kept waiting while General Sigel had his fight with the enemy on the left of our line that I've already told about. While we were getting ready for work Jack and I went to General Vandever and asked what we should do.
“'What do you want to do?' said he.
“'We want to do the best we can,' I answered, 'and help all we can. We'll do anything you tell us to do.'
“'Well, then,' the general said, very quickly, 'stay near me and act as my volunteer aide till I tell you to do something else.' Then he turned away to attend to getting his brigade in order, and we stood still and waited till he came back.
“He was gone only a minute or two, and then told Jack to ride over to General Carr and say the second brigade was waiting for orders. He told me to go to General Dodge and ask if he had received orders to move yet, and to let him know whenever orders came.
“Jack came back with the order for the brigade to follow that of General Dodge, which had received its orders just before I got to it. One of General Carr's aids had brought the order to General Dodge, and he rode with me to General Vandever to repeat the order which Jack had already brought.
“The order to advance was loudly cheered, and the men stepped off as gayly as though they were going to dress-parade, and most of them a great deal more so. I couldn't help thinking how many of these gallant fellows would be stark and stiff on the ground or suffering with wounds before another morning sun would rise on them. We could hear the roll of musketry and the booming of cannon where General Sigel was engaged on the left, and before long our advance was engaged with that of the rebels, and the shot and shell were crashing among the trees as their artillery opened upon us.
“General Dodge's brigade marched up the main road toward the Missouri state line, and filed off to the east near Elkhorn Tavern. As soon as it got into position it opened with a battery upon the rebels, who were posted in a wood on a slope in front. The battery was promptly replied to, and then the shots were exchanged with great rapidity. There were six guns on each side, though some of our men thought the rebels had eight or ten guns, but we afterward learned they had only six; but it was the best battery in their whole army. Our battery was the First Iowa, and its captain prided himself on having brought it to a state of great efficiency, but he wasn't quite equal to his antagonist.
“General Vandever's brigade went a little beyond Elkhorn Tavern and took position on the left of the road nearly opposite to where General Dodge had stretched out to the right. As I sat on my horse close behind the general I could see that we had a dry ravine in front of us and a wooded slope farther on, and it did not need sharp eyes to discover that this slope was well occupied by rebels. The general ordered the Dubuque battery (Captain Hayden) to open fire on these gray and butternut coats, and as he did so there was a lively running of the fellows to cover. They showed by their actions that Captain Hayden's shots were well aimed; but we had not given them more than two or three rounds before a battery on the other side replied to us.
“That battery was evidently in the hands of a good officer, as he got our range at the very first fire. A shot came whistling close to the general, and I thought it passed between him and me, but an officer who was there said it went over our heads. You have no, idea if you've never heard it, what a spiteful screeching a cannon-shot makes when it goes by you. Involuntarily you dodge, but really dodging is of no use, as the ball has gone past you before you hear it. A cannon-ball moves a great deal faster than sound. According to our school-books sound moves one thousand one hundred and forty-two feet a second, and the scientific gunners say the velocity of a cannon-ball is from one thousand four hundred to one thousand, eight hundred feet a second. That of a rifle-ball is greater, and so by the time you can hear the sound made by a missile, whether large or small, it has gone way past you.
“At the third fire the rebels blew up one of our limber-chests, which was standing close behind the gun to which it belonged. The great puff of smoke that rose from it showed the rebels that they were taking good aim, and they poured in their shot very rapidly after that. In ten minutes more they blew up another limber-chest, and then the general ordered the battery to change its position, and sent me to carry the order to Captain Hayden.
“It was about nine o'clock in the morning when the first shots were exchanged on this part of the field, and in fifteen minutes the whole of General Carr's division was engaged. Before I could get to Captain Hayden to give him General Vandever's order the rebels made a rush upon the battery and captured one of the guns; the rest were hauled back a short distance, and at the same time the Ninth Iowa, which was supporting the battery, poured in a heavy fire and covered the ground with the enemy's dead and wounded. The rebels were driven back to their cover in the woods, and the gun that had been captured was retaken, as they did not have time to drag it from the field.
“'They stand like veterans,' said General Vandever, referring to the soldiers of the Ninth Iowa. 'Their long march yesterday has n't affected their courage. There were never better men on a battlefield.'
“Just as he said this Colonel Herron, of the Ninth came up, and the general congratulated him; and then the general rode along the line and said to the soldiers the same that he had to their commander. The men cheered him and were evidently determined to do their part toward winning the battle for the union side. But would they succeed against all those masses of men that could be seen on the hill-slope to the east and west, and crowded in the brushwood and among the trees that stretched away to the north?
“After this for a while there was a lull in the fighting, and meantime we could hear the artillery and small arms to the left, where General Sigel and General Davis, with their divisions, were sustaining the shock of the enemy. They were overmatched in numbers, but their weapons were more effective, and they had a better supply of ammunition. Many of the enemy were armed only with squirrel-rifles and shot-guns, and, of course, they could not load and fire with the rapidity of our men. Had they been able to do so, and had their weapons been equally effective with ours, the battle would have been hopelessly lost to us by reason of the great superiority of the rebels in numbers alone and their better knowledge of the ground.
“By and by we heard that Sigel and Davis had driven away the enemy and were slowly drawing in their lines, as only a small force were in front of them. The attack on General Carr's division was renewed by the rebel artillery, and we could see that they had a great number of men gathered behind their battery to charge upon our lines at the proper moment. So General Carr sent an order for General Vandever to fall back, and at the same time he gave a similar order to General Dodge.
“We fell back perhaps a hundred and fifty yards, close to Elkhorn Tavern and a little to the north of it. There our battery opened fire again, still supported by the Ninth Iowa, and there the rebel battery again poured its fire upon us.
“Near the house were two companies of infantry drawn up in line and waiting orders to move. I had just gone to carry an order for them to come up to the support of the Ninth, when a shell passed close to me and struck in their ranks, where it burst. Two of the men were killed and five were wounded by this shell. Almost at the same time another shell exploded on the ground in front of the house and shattered the leg of a soldier who stood there. Another fell among some horse-teams, frightening the animals into running away. They dashed up the road in the direction of the enemy, and were lost in a cloud of dust. In its runaway career one of the wagons knocked down some of our soldiers, wounding one seriously and two or three slightly. A solid shot struck the house and went completely through it, but did no damage to any one, as the family had taken refuge in the cellar.”
CHAPTER XXVIII. GENERAL CARR'S DIVISION DRIVEN BACK—JACK BECOMES A PRISONER.
WHEN I had delivered my orders, and just as I was returning to General Vandever,” continues Harry, “the rebels made a charge upon our battery and the infantry that supported it. This was about noon, or perhaps a little later; I can't say exactly, as I was too much excited to make a note of the time.
“It was n't a bayonet charge that they made, because they had no bayonets to charge with. They charged with double-barreled shotguns, loaded with ball and buckshot, and to judge by the result, the shotgun in this way is a formidable weapon. They reserved their fire until they were pretty close to our lines; then they delivered it at short range and without taking any particular aim, relying on the scattering of the balls and buckshot to give a deadly effect to the assault. They were met with well-delivered volleys from our rifles and driven back, and they left the ground strewed with their dead and wounded.
“Again they charged, after resting a little while, and again they met with the same reception; but they managed to force us back a little. Then there was another lull, but only a short one, and suddenly the shot and shell rained along the whole length of our line. General Dodge was forced back, and so was General Vandever. Many of our officers fell and were carried to the hospitals in the rear, and many of our brave soldiers were stretched on the ground. There was a melancholy satisfaction in knowing that the enemy was losing heavily, but with his advantage in numbers he could keep up the fight, if only his ammunition held out, long after our whole force would be used up. General Carr sent several times for reinforcements, but there were none to be sent to him. General Curtis told him to 'persevere,' and so he did, and, fighting whenever the enemy advanced, he continued all through the afternoon.
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“'I must have three regiments and two batteries, before sunset and darkness,' said the general, 'or I cannot hold on.'”
Just before one of the charges which the rebels made near Elkhorn Tavern, General Vandever sent Jack with an order to Colonel Herron. On came the rebels, and down went Jack's horse with a bullet through his neck; another bullet grazed Jack's side, but only scratched the skin, after tearing a great hole in his coat. At the same time Colonel Herron's horse fell dead, a cannon-shot having gone clear through him, and in the fall the colonel was severely hurt; a musket-ball struck his leg, and between the fall and the wound he was unable to stand. Jack rushed to his side to raise him, and as he did so the rebels closed around them.
“Surrender!” said a tall fellow in a butternut coat and trousers, as he flourished a shotgun and pointed it at Colonel Herron.
“There's nothing else to be done,” replied the colonel. “But you'll have to help me to go along with you; I don't believe I can walk.”
“I 'll show you how to walk,” exclaimed the fellow. What he proposed to do will be forever unknown, as just then an officer came up and received the colonel's surrender. He ordered two men to assist him to the rear, and then went on to look after the fighting that was raging in front.
Jack's presence had not been specially observed, as both soldier and officer had been attracted to the advantage of securing the captured colonel. Jack was meditating on the possibility of slipping through the lines somehow and getting to his friends, when he thought of the wounded colonel and the possibility of assisting him.
“It 'll be a hard time for Colonel Herron, wounded and a prisoner,” said Jack to himself, “and it 'll be mighty risky for me to try to run back through the lines. I might be shot by my own friends, and that I should n't like.”
Whether he meant by this that he had no objections to being shot by the enemy we will not undertake to say, but certain it is that he was not unlike others in being specially averse to being shot by mistake. One of the bitterest reflections that has ever been made by the southern people on the death of Stonewall Jackson is, that he was killed by his own men, who mistook him and his escort for a scouting party of the enemy.
Jack had hastily made up his mind to stay by the colonel, when he was rudely taken in charge by one of the rebel soldiers and ordered to march along with him. He asked to be allowed to remain with Colonel Herron. At first the request was refused, but on the latter giving his parole not to attempt to escape, and vouching that Jack would do the same, he was permitted to accompany the officer to whom he was so much attached.
They were sent to the rear, but for some minutes were not out of danger, as the cannon-shot from their own lines were crashing through the trees or plowing up the ground in their vicinity. A limb cut from a tree by one of these shots fell close to Jack, and some of the twigs brushed him in their descent; had the limb fallen upon him the result might have been serious. Not six feet from where he was standing at one time a falling branch killed a Confederate soldier and severely wounded two or three others. A company of cavalry was completely broken up by an exploding shell, the horses taking alarm and becoming utterly uncontrollable. In spite of the efforts of their riders to restrain them they ran away, and the men were violently thrown to the ground or brushed off among the trees.
We may remark here that owing to the wooded nature of the ground where the battle of Pea Ridge was fought, the cavalry on both sides were of comparatively little use. Among the brushwood and trees that spread over that region it was impossible to preserve the formation of the lines sufficiently to make a charge with any effect, except in a very few instances. Then, too, where the artillery was firing, the crashing of the shot and shell among the trees and the falling of the limbs frightened the horses, as we have just seen, and rendered them worse than useless. The cavalry was unable to accomplish anything of consequence, through no fault of the men, but owing to the nature of the country, and in several instances the runaway horses demoralized the infantry by dashing through the lines at inopportune moments.
The history of warfare in all ages abounds in accounts of panic created by runaway animals on the battlefield. Frightened elephants and horses caused the loss of battles by the Greeks, Romans and other warriors of antiquity, long before the invention of gunpowder. Since its discovery and use the instances of its panic-producing qualities are numerous. So much is this the case that the elephant among the Eastern nations has been almost entirely discarded on the battlefield, and is now only used in war for the more prosaic purposes of a beast of burden. With the increased range of artillery and small-arms in the past forty years the horse is gradually diminishing in importance as a fighting animal, and cavalry is chiefly useful nowadays for scouting purposes and for pursuing a demoralized enemy in retreat.
We will leave the two captives in the hands of their captors and return to Harry, whom we left with General Vandever.
The Ninth Iowa was getting out of ammunition, and the general sent Harry to order up a fresh supply. Away he rode to the rear, where the ammunition-wagons were stationed, and very quickly hunted up the one that he wanted and sent it forward. He not only sent but accompanied it, partly in order to show the road and partly to make sure that the driver did not turn aside on the way and seek a place of greater safety than where the shot and shell were falling. The driver was a brave fellow, however, and energetically lashed his team to keep up with the galloping youth in front of him.
By the time they reached the fighting line the regiment had again fallen back, leaving Elkhorn Tavern in the hands of the enemy. Not only did Harry bring the ammunition, which was speedily distributed, but he brought a message from General Curtis to General Carr that he was about to be reinforced.
“General Asboth has just returned from pursuing the rebels on the left,” said Harry, “and is coming with two regiments and a battery to support you.”
The word ran along the line like wildfire, and the men cheered heartily. Again the rebels came on in great force, and again they were met by a withering fire, and also by a bayonet charge by the infantry of both brigades of Carr's division.
But the rebels were as brave as the men they were facing, and before the reinforcements could reach the sorely-pressed division there was another charge, which forced the union line back across a series of open fields to the edge of a wood, which gave it the same sort of shelter the rebels had enjoyed during the greater part of the day. The union forces had the advantage now, as the enemy was obliged to make its charges across the fields, which could be raked with the artillery and small-arms with destructive effect.
“We've got'em now,” said General Vandever, turning to one of his officers; “and here we'll stick till night comes to stop the fighting. Sunset will come in an hour, and we can easily hold the position till then.”
His prediction was verified. The only attack made by the rebels on the last position was easily repulsed, and then the sun dipped below the horizon and the battle was over for the day.
The hostile forces lay within a thousand feet or so of each other all through the night, neither party daring to light a fire anywhere along its front, for fear of revealing its whereabouts. The air was still, and conversation was carried on in whispers, for fear of scouts creeping close up to the lines and overhearing what was said. The weary men lay down where they were, and sought the sleep they so much needed after the long day's fighting. As for the generals and other officers few of them closed an eye during the long night, as they were occupied with plans and preparations for the morrow.
In all the camp there was no one more active than our young friend Harry. He sadly missed the companionship of Jack, but having learned from a prisoner taken in the last charge and repulse of the rebels that his friend was uninjured and with Colonel Herron, he rejoiced, on the whole, at the situation. “He 'll be useful to the colonel, and perhaps it's all for the best that he's a prisoner just now,” was his soliloquy as he turned to General Vandever and asked if he had any orders.
“Yes,” answered the general. “Go to camp and order up some coffee, bread and meat for the men, and send along their blankets and overcoats. We'll stay right here through the night, and be ready for what comes in the morning.”
Away went Harry with the order. When he reached the camp he found the order had been anticipated, as the camp-guard and wagon-drivers had a good supper ready, as good as the army rations afforded, and in less than fifteen minutes it was loaded into wagons, where the overcoats and blankets already were piled, and dispatched to the front.