The Thirty-Ninth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers, 1862-1865

by Alfred S. Roe

Resuming Colonel Peirson's excellent paper bearing on this campaign, we find him recording as follows:—

"As soon as the cavalry got out of the way Robinson's division at once deployed, with Lyle's brigade on the left and leading, the Maryland brigade (Third) coming upon his right, and Baxter's brigade (Second) supporting still further on the right. In this way they advanced, driving the skirmishers before them by and beyond Alsop's house, and, reaching a wooded knoll, reformed the line, which had become somewhat disordered, casting off their knapsacks in order to move more quickly, and because the heat made them almost unsupportable. Pushing forward again, they came in sight of a part of a light battery of the enemy, which was firing down the Brock Road, and breaking into a run nearly captured the two guns, driving them well to the rear. The leading brigade had now advanced some two miles since its deployment, and had reached a heavily wooded rise of ground, where they halted for a moment to get breath and some alignment; and having run much of the distance, had left the rest of the division far behind. The men were very much blown, and many had fallen from the way from sunstroke and fatigue. General Warren here rode up and, saying to General Robinson that his orders were to go to Spottsylvania Court House, ordered him forward. Robinson asked for time to get up his other brigades, but after a few moments of waiting Warren became impatient, and General Robinson ordered an immediate charge upon the enemy's line, then in plain sight behind some rude breastworks, saying, 'We must drive them from there, or they will get some artillery in position.'

"The enemy's line was formed on a ridge across the Brock Road, near its junction with a road leading to the Block House, and was protected by an incomplete breastwork, with small pine-trees felled for abatis and a rail fence parallel with the line to the front. The enemy was hard at work finishing their breastworks. They were two brigades of Kershaw's division of Longstreet's corps.

"Lyle's brigade, in which my regiment was, charged over 500 yards of open, badly gullied ground under a rapid fire from the enemy's muskets and from the artillery we had so nearly captured. The troops went over the rail fence, into the abatis, and up to within 30 feet of the works, getting shelter then from the hill and the felled pine trees. Here they lay to recover their wind, easily keeping down the fire of the enemy in their front, who fired hurriedly and aimlessly, and while waiting saw the May 8, '64 Third Brigade (Marylanders) advancing gallantly across the field to their support. The latter, however, after getting halfway to the rebel works, broke under the enemy's fire from the right and retreated in confusion, General Robinson being shot in the knee while trying to rally them. The remaining brigade was too far to the right and rear to assist in this assault. Lyle's brigade, having rested these few minutes, started to go over the works, and would have gone over, but at this moment, discovering a fresh brigade of the enemy advancing in line of battle upon our left, I (a lieutenant-colonel, upon whom the command had devolved, so few were the men to reach this spot) reluctantly gave the order to retire, and the command fell back in some confusion, but reformed when clear of the flanking fire, and taking advantage of the accidents of ground checked the advance of the enemy. The sun was so hot, and the men so exhausted from the long run as well as from the five days and nights of fighting and marching, that this retreat, though disorderly, was exceedingly slow, and we lost heavily in consequence from the enemy's fire. My own experience was that, while wishing very much to run, I could only limp along, using my sword as a cane. My color-bearer (Cottrell) was shot by my side, and unheeding his appeal to save him, I could only pass the colors to the nearest man, and leave the brave fellow to die in a rebel prison. The flanking brigade of the enemy, which so nearly succeeded in surrounding us, was part of Longstreet's corps (now under command of General R. H. Anderson) and it was his line we had so nearly broken.... That Longstreet's corps had but just arrived at the line of our assault is evident from the incomplete nature of the breast works, and from the fact that they had no artillery in position. Had there been any support for the brigade which got up to the rebel works, the enemy's line would have been broken, and our army would have been between Lee's army and Richmond; but as we have seen the only supporting brigade was far behind, and the rest of the Fifth Corps not yet up....

"The delay in Robinson's movement caused by the cavalry was unfortunate, and gave rise to a good deal of feeling at the time. General Meade, who was always for giving the infantry a free foot, had sent orders to General Sheridan, on the night of the 7th, to have his cavalry out of the Brock Road, but Sheridan, not receiving them, obstructed the road with a brigade, and as the cavalry and infantry became unavoidably mixed up, this delayed the advance.... It is known that in an interview at this time, General Meade was very indignant with General Sheridan, until he learned from him personally that he had never received the orders to clear the road, when Meade frankly apologized for what must have been harsh censure. In this interview which was described to me by Colonel Theodore Lyman, who was present, General Sheridan, being much chagrined by the censure of his superior officer, stated there was no force worth speaking of in front of the advance of the Fifth Corps; but he seems to have withdrawn this view, when in his cooler moments he came to write his report. Perhaps the feeling which caused Warren's unjustifiable removal from the command of the Fifth Corps at Five Forks began here.... The advanced troops fell back to the line which had been taken up by the Fifth Corps, intrenched, and waited for the Sixth Corps to come up, which they did in the afternoon, going into position on Warren's left. Crawford's division of the Fifth Corps made an attack in the afternoon, but with little result beyond capturing some seventy prisoners and losing considerably in killed and wounded."

In the preceding pages General Peirson refers to the fact of the command of the Regiment devolving on himself; it might have been stated that Colonel Davis, a very large and stout man, though doing his best to lead his men whose pace was more than double-quick, was completely overcome by the heat and mounted upon one of the Rebel Battery horses, cut out by Milton F. Roberts of "C," was carried to the rear. Modesty no doubt influenced General Peirson not to state that he was, himself, hit by a portion of a buckshot-cartridge, three of the missiles lodging in his right arm or shoulder, his sword-cane giving place to the stalwart shoulders of Isaac H. Mitchell of "A." Two of the bits of lead were picked out by the surgeon, the other is there yet. The wound did not keep the resolute officer long from his post.

Here is the story as told by I. H. Mitchell, Company A, and transcribed by Channing Whittaker, Company B.:—

"It must have been very near to where the Johnnies were that Lieutenant Colonel Peirson received three buck-shot in his right arm above the elbow, on May 8th, 1864. It was after we had been ordered to fall back that I first saw him after he was wounded. He was conscious, but perfectly helpless. He was trying to get back. I took him right upon my shoulder and carried him quite a distance into and part way through the woods, where we May 8, '64 had formed line just before the last charge in which he was wounded. I had carried him 100 yards sure, and was still carrying him to the rear, when we met a man with a horse who was looking for some officer. I told him that I had got to have the horse to carry the Lieutenant Colonel. He did not object, because he could not find his man, and the bullets were whistling about pretty thick at that time. He then led the horse and I held the Lieutenant Colonel on his back, while I walked by his side. We followed the general direction of those who were going to the rear. I was not sure whether we were going in the right direction, and fearing that we might get into the hands of the Johnnies, I stopped, took him from the horse and carried him a little distance from the road into the woods. If I remember rightly, I made some coffee for him there waiting perhaps two hours, before we could get a stretcher for him. While we were there General Robinson was carried by. He had been wounded and he was saying things. In the meantime they had established a division hospital in the rear, and I then hailed some stretchers bearers, who took the Lieutenant Colonel there and I returned to my place in the Regiment. He came back to the Regiment very soon and was in our next fight."

As the day advanced the other corps came into their respective positions, the Second being massed at Todd's Tavern, protecting the rear of the army and the Ninth was at the extreme Union left, and there was more or less fighting along the whole line at some time in the day. A melancholy train was that made up of ambulances and baggage wagons which on the 8th set out for Fredericksburg, bearing 12,000 wounded men, thence via Belle Plain Landing and the Potomac to be distributed to the great hospitals of Washington and points further North. Sheridan and his troopers also received orders to set out upon their famous raid which would flank Lee's army, reach the outer defenses of Richmond, slay J. E. B. Stuart, the most remarkable cavalryman of the Confederacy, and leave a gruesome token of its venturesome trip by a trail of decaying horseflesh and freshly made graves for considerably more than a hundred and fifty miles. The magnitude of this adventure, which began Monday morning, May 9th, may be seen when we know that it comprised 10,000 horsemen, riding in fours and well closed up, yet constituting a column thirteen miles long requiring, according to a rebel authority, four hours at a brisk pace to pass a given point; what an eye opener such a force must have been to the Confederates at home, who had little notion of the resources of the North. Rejoining the Federal army at Chesterfield Station, on the 25th, its results were summed up in having deprived Lee's forces of their "Eyes and Ears" (cavalry) since all of the mounted rebels started in pursuit, as soon as the move was understood; it had damaged Lee's communications, liberated nearly four hundred Union prisoners, destroyed an immense quantity of supplies, killed the leader of his cavalry, saved the Union Government the subsistence of ten thousand horses and men for more than two weeks, perfected the morale of the cavalry corps and produced a moral effect of incalculable good to the Union cause.

Returning to the incident of the artillery referred to by Colonel Peirson in his paper, it is interesting to find the same affair recounted by one of the leading Confederates, General Fitzhugh Lee, in one of his war sketches. After alluding to the ubiquity of the cavalry and the work it had done in preparing the way for the arrival of R. H. Anderson's (Longstreet's) Corps, he says:—