Notes of the Battle—Pathetic Scenes—Sketches of Officers.
The Seventh Regiment was particularly unfortunate in the loss of her brilliant officers. Colonel Bland and Lieutenant Colonel Hood both being killed, that regiment was left without a field officer. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Gist, of the Fifteenth, being permanently disabled, and Major William Gist being soon afterwards killed, the Fifteenth was almost in the same condition of the Seventh. So also was the Third Battalion. Captain Robert Jennings, commanding the battalion as senior Captain, lost his arm here, and was permanently retired, leaving Captain Whitner in command. Major Dan Miller had received a disabling wound in some of the former battles and never returned. Colonel Rice returning soon after this battle, he likewise received a wound from which he never sufficiently recovered for active service, so the Third Battalion was thereafter commanded by a Captain, Captain Whitner commanding until his death one year later. The Eighth Regiment met an irreparable loss in the death of Lieutenant Colonel Hoole. No officer in the brigade had a more soldierly bearing, high attainments, and knightly qualities than Colonel Hoole, and not only the regiment, but the whole brigade felt his loss. He was one of those officers whose fine appearance caused men to stop and look at him twice before passing. The many fine officers, Captains as well as Lieutenants, that [279] were killed or wounded here made a death and disabled roll, from the effects of which the brigade never fully recovered. Then the whole army mourned the supposed death of the gallant and dashing Texan, General Hood, but he lived to yet write his name in indelible letters on the roll-of fame among the many officers of distinction in the Army of Tennessee.
In our first general advance in the morning, as the regiment reached the brow of the hill, just before striking the enemy's breastworks, my company and the other color company, being crowded together by the pressure of the flanks on either side, became for the moment a tangled, disorganized mass. A sudden discharge of grape from the enemy's batteries, as well as from their sharpshooters posted behind trees, threw us in greater confusion, and many men were shot down unexpectedly. A Sergeant in my company, T.C. Nunnamaker, received a fearful wound in the abdomen. Catching my hand while falling, he begged to be carried off. "Oh! for God's sake, don't leave me here to bleed to death or have my life trampled out! Do have me carried off!" But the laws of war are inexorable, and none could leave the ranks to care for the wounded, and those whose duty it was to attend to such matters were unfortunately too often far in the rear, seeking places of safety for themselves, to give much thought or concern to the bleeding soldiers. Before our lines were properly adjusted, the gallant Sergeant was beyond the aid of anyone. He had died from internal hemorrhage. The searchers of the battlefield, those gatherers of the wounded and dead, witness many novel and pathetic scenes.
Louis Spillers, a private in my company, a poor, quiet, and unassuming fellow, who had left a wife and little children at home when he donned the uniform of gray, had his thigh broken, just to the left of where the Sergeant fell. Spillers was as "brave as the bravest," and made no noise when he received the fatal wound. As the command swept forward down the little dell, he was of course left behind. Dragging himself along to the shade of a small tree, he sought shelter behind its trunk, protecting his person as well as he could from the bullets of the enemy posted on the ridge in front, and waited developments. When the litter-bearers found him late at night, he was leaning against the tree, calmly puffing away at his clay pipe. When asked why he did not [280] call for assistance, he replied: "Oh, no; I thought my turn would come after awhile to be cared for, so I just concluded to quietly wait and try and smoke away some of my misery." Before morning he was dead. One might ask the question. What did such men of the South have to fight for—no negroes, no property, not even a home that they could call their own? What was it that caused them to make such sacrifices—to even give their lives to the cause? It was a principle, and as dear to the poorest of the poor as to him who counted his broad acres by the thousands and his slaves by the hundreds. Of such mettle were made the soldiers of the South—unyielding, unconquerable, invincible!
An old man in Captain Watts' Company, from Laurens, Uncle Johny Owens, a veteran of the Florida War, and one who gave much merriment to the soldiers by his frequent comparisons of war, "fighting Indians" and the one "fighting Yankees," was found on the slope, just in front of the enemy's breastworks, leaning against a tree, resting on his left knee, his loaded rifle across the other. In his right hand, between his forefinger and thumb, in the act of being placed upon the nipple of the gun, was a percussion cap. His frame was rigid, cold, and stiff, while his glossy eyes seemed to be peering in the front as looking for a lurking foe. He was stone dead, a bullet having pierced his heart, not leaving the least sign of the twitching of a muscle to tell of the shock he had received. He had fought his last battle, fired his last gun, and was now waiting for the last great drum-beat.
A story is told at the expense of Major Stackhouse, afterwards the Colonel of the Eighth, during this battle. I cannot vouch for its truthfulness, but give it as it was given to me by Captain Harllee, of the same regiment. The Eighth was being particularly hard-pressed, and had it not been for the unflinching stoicism of the officers and the valor of the men, the ranks not yet recruited from the results of the battle at Gettysburg, the little band would have been forced to yield. Major Stackhouse was in command of the right wing of the regiment, and all who knew the old farmer soldier knew him to be one of the most stubborn fighters in the army, and at the same time a "Methodist of the Methodists." He was moreover a pure Christian gentleman and a churchman of the straightest sect. There was no cant superstitions or [281] affectation in his make-up, and what he said he meant. It was doubtful if he ever had an evil thought, and while his manners might have been at times blunt, he was always sincere and his language chosen and chaste, with the possible exception during battle. The time of which I speak, the enemy was making a furious assault on the right wing of the Eighth, and as the Major would gently rise to his knees and see the enemy so stubbornly contesting the ground, he would call out to the men, "There they are, boys, give them hell!" Then in an under tone he would say, "May God, forgive me for that!" Still the Yankees did not yield, and again and again he shouted louder and louder, "Boys, give it to them; give them hell!" with his usual undertone, "May God, forgive me for that," etc. But they began closing on the right and the center, and his left was about to give way; the old soldier could stand it no longer. Springing to his feet, his tall form towering above all around him, he shouted at the top of his voice, "Give them hell; give them hell, I tell you, boys; give them hell, G—— souls" The Eighth must have given them what was wanting, or they received it from somewhere, for after this outburst they scampered back behind the ridge.
| Lieut. James N. Martin, Co. E., 36 S.C. Regiment. | Maj. Wm. D. Peck, Quarter Master of Kershaw's Division. (Page 162.) |
| Col. James D. Nance, 3d S.C. Regiment. (Page 353.) | David E. Ewart, Major and Surgeon, 3d S.C. Regiment. |
Years after this, while Major Stackhouse was in Congress, and much discussion going on about the old Bible version of hell and the new version hades, some of his colleagues twitted the Major about the matter and asked him whether he was wanting the Eighth to give the Union soldiers the new version, or the old. With a twinkle in his eye, the Major answered "Well, boys, on all ordinary occasions the new version will answer the purposes, but to drive a wagon out of a stall or the Yankees from your front, the old version is the best."