Skirmishing continues all day and the pickets are active, yet there is no set engagement, the head officers having decided on still another movement towards the inevitable left. At nine o'clock in the evening, we move out of our works, under orders to not speak above a whisper, so that our departure may not be suspected and the end of the 26th of the month beholds us approaching the recrossing of the North Anna.
Early in the morning of the 27th, we recross the river and at 2.30 a. m., some distance beyond the stream must halt and draw three days' rations, which we are told must last us six. An hour later we are on the march and struggle on through characteristic Virginia mud, so thick and adhesive that many a footgear is left in its tenacious clutches. There is very little halting for us, since we are trying to interpose ourselves between Lee and Richmond, and we must move more rapidly than the latter since he, being on the arc of an inner circle, has a less distance to overcome than we. At eight o'clock comes a welcome halt for breakfast, the pause being protracted for rest until nearly noon, when we are up and off again, with very little cessation till seven in the evening, having marched almost continuously twenty-two hours and covering twenty-five miles. We had not had our clothes off in twenty-four days; not a man thought of washing his face, much less of taking a bath; nor is the strain over yet. In what condition men, gently reared, found themselves may be imagined. Camp is pitched near Mangohick Church. The 28th begins as early as four o'clock, and following breakfast the march is resumed at six, and the Pamunkey River is crossed at Newcastle. Halting some three miles beyond the river, breastworks are built, the men proclaiming the digging easy, and here we halt for the night, being about fifteen miles from Richmond, the nearest point to the confederate capital as yet reached by the Thirty-ninth.
The record for the 29th is one of marching, waiting and digging. Though ordered out at four o'clock in the morning with the further direction to be ready to start at five, we wait till nearly noon, in the meantime seeing the arrival of the Ninth Corps, after an all night's march. On starting we find great masses of troops assembled in every direction, our Regiment halting near the Fifth Corps' headquarters, where we remain till near seven o'clock, when we proceed to the left, some two and a half miles, where the Brigade throws up breastworks; the Thirty-ninth going on picket later, the night proving a quiet one. It would have been enjoyable if our haversacks had not been empty, the injunction to make our last rations hold out six days not having been found practicable. Though we find roses in full bloom considerably earlier than at home, this does not offset hungry stomachs. About 7 a. m., we retire from the picket line and join the other troops of our Corps, and after a short march of about one mile, we draw rations of fresh beef, which help out somewhat, and later still came the rations we so much needed. The wagons could not come up so May 31, '64 one hundred men were detailed to go back to the train and bring the food with them, this being after a day given to efforts to repel attacks that did not seriously affect our Regiment. Beck of "E" Company records that this day the old Second Division got together again under the command of Brigadier General Henry H. Lockwood, though the fact is stated elsewhere as provisional.
COLD HARBOR
The sun of May 31st rose red and torrid and the day proved to be terribly hot. Fortunately the exegencies of the campaign did not require any considerable activity, and the men had the privilege of "sweltering" in the breastworks or of "lolling" under their shelter tents, just back of the trenches. General Warren records of the day that the skirmishers were pushed forward about one mile, without opposition, beyond Bethesda Church. While there is the sound of cannonading on both the right and left, the last day of May, so far as our Regiment is concerned, is the safest seen since crossing the Rapidan. The day is the prelude to the opening of the Cold Harbor fight, one which will cover June 1-12, and it closes with the Union forces extending nearly North and South. White House on the Pamunkey has become the new base of supplies and here the Eighteenth Corps, under General W. F. Smith, landed on the 30th, and by forced marches will be able to take position between the Fifth and Sixth Corps on the 1st of June. The section now harried by the opposing armies was the scene of active warfare two years ago, for Fair Oaks began on the 31st of May and to-morrow's Cold Harbor will begin to repeat the horrors of the Seven Days' Fight.
The efforts of Generals Grant and Meade to find an unguarded point through which the Union Army might interpose itself between Richmond and the Confederate Army have thus far proved unavailing. Whether active at the head of his forces or weak and ailing, borne along his line in a carriage, General Lee is still untiring in his watchfulness and, loyally supported by such lieutenants as Ewell, Hill, Early, Anderson and others, there is always a firm gray wall confronting the determined line in blue. Attempts to force it had been unsuccessful at the North Anna and Totopotomy and now, on McClellan's old battle fields, another fierce assault is to be made on the enemy's works, though the brunt of the charge will not come on the Fifth Corps this day; rather will the story be told by those who fought in the ranks of the Sixth and Eighteenth Corps, which had gained their places, some portions thereof, late in the afternoon, and after desperate fighting carried certain of the Confederate defences. Turning again to the words of General Warren, we learn that there was a movement against the rebel position which was intrenched with a large space of clear ground in front, swept by artillery. The Corps suffers a loss of two hundred killed and wounded and the line is extended four to five miles; the Corps is attacked in several places, quite severely on the right just before dark.
Lieutenant Dusseault of Company H has the following account of the night of the 31st of May and the 1st of June, showing very well what a portion of the Thirty-ninth was doing:—
"On the skirmish line, last night, I became completely exhausted. We were a mile and a half in advance of our main line; the sergeant with me was of the One Hundred and Fourth New York; I left him in charge and went to sleep. About midnight, when it was pitch dark, he roused me, with the words, 'They are coming! They are coming!' It seems that the enemy were marching in one, long, steady column towards our right. They were so near that we could hear their voices, and their tramping shook the earth where we lay. In the morning we found their earthworks empty, and we so reported at headquarters. June 1st was pleasant but hot, our skirmish line, a mile and a half from our main line, was in the woods and close up to the enemy. At daybreak when we found their works vacated, I reported to division officer of the picket, Major Pierce, of the Thirteenth Massachusetts, who ordered me to advance my line. But just as I was about to May 31, '64 do so, we found the enemy were moving back to our left. They passed within three hundred feet of our picket line, thus putting us in a precarious position. Their flankers were within two hundred feet of us, and we did not dare to move in the hour or more that it took them to pass. There must have been five or six thousand of them. They finally halted and slipped into their old works. Just then, the New York Ninth Infantry, deployed as skirmishers advanced to relieve us, making so much noise that they drew the enemy's fire and several of the New York boys were killed. The rebels must have thought the whole Yankee line was advancing, for they shelled the entire woods severely. We lay as closely as possible, and when there was a lull in the firing, we would fall back and thus gradually regained the Regiment, and went to work at building breastworks. About 7 p. m., we moved to our left, into an open field, where we threw up a new line of works, making the eighteenth that we had started in this campaign. There was a terrible battle in progress at our left, lasting till 9 p. m., the Sixth and Eighteenth Corps losing heavily."
Though no part of the experience of the Fifth Corps, it is quite in place to state that the battle which was heard at the Union left was that of the Sixth and Eighteenth Corps in the beginning of the sanguinary contest which was to rage along the lines of blue and gray for almost two weeks and which, in these, the opening hours, marked the attempt of the above named bodies to dislodge the Confederate divisions of Hoke, Kershaw, Pickett and Field, reading from rebel right to left, resulting in partial success but at the cost of between two and three thousand men on our side. During the night of the 1st Hancock and his Second Corps were withdrawn from the Union right, and by dint of a very trying march were found at the extreme Union left in the morning of the 2d of June, yet not in time for the early charge which had been ordered for that day. The several corps are now in order from left to right, Second, Sixth, Eighteenth, Fifth and Ninth, with a considerable gap between the Eighteenth and Fifth, covered by a picket line only. Captain Porter of the Thirty-ninth, in a paper read in 1881 before the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, refers to this hiatus as an "interval over a most desolate piece of country, woody, rocky, and quite hilly." The great 3rd of June charge, that to which Grant in his Memoirs refers, saying, "I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made," this bloody scene, also, was at the Union left, the brunt being borne by the Second Corps, and in less degree only by the men of the Sixth and Eighteenth Corps. Of the Fifth Corps, Porter says, "Warren, who occupied a front of nearly four miles, was altogether too much extended to allow of his having any available force to assault with, and he was content with carrying the enemy's skirmish line on his front." The Ninth Corps attacked the foe with some success, pushing its lines well to the right of the enemy's left.