There came to the Second Connecticut Heavy Artillery, on May 17, 1864, the summons which, after such long immunity, it had almost ceased to expect.
The preceding two weeks had been among the most eventful of the war. They had seen the crossing of the Rapidan by Grant on the 4th, and the terrible battles for days following in the Wilderness and at Spottsylvania, depleting the army by such enormous losses as even this war had hardly seen before. Heavy reinforcements were demanded and sent forward from all branches of the service; in the emergency this artillery regiment was summoned to fight as infantry, and so served until the end of the conflict, though for a long time with a hope, which survived many disappointments, of being assigned to its proper work with the heavy guns.
It started for the front on May 18th (1864), and on the 20th reached the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac, and was assigned to the Second Brigade, First Division, of the Sixth Corps, now under Major-General Horatio G. Wright, another leader of Connecticut origin, who had succeeded to the command of the Corps on the death a few days before of Litchfield County's most noted soldier, John Sedgwick.
General Sedgwick
The famous series of movements "by the left flank" was in progress, and the regiment was in active motion at once. For more than a week following its arrival at the front it was on the march practically all the time while Grant pushed southward. To troops unaccustomed to anything more arduous than drilling in the Defences at Washington, it was almost beyond the limits of endurance. At the start, without experience in campaigning, the men had overburdened themselves with impedimenta which it was very soon necessary to dispense with. "The amount of personal effects then thrown away," wrote the chaplain, Rev. Winthrop H. Phelps, "has been estimated by officers who witnessed and have carefully calculated it, to be from twenty to thirty thousand dollars. To this amount must be added the loss to the Government in the rations and ammunition left on the way." On some of the marches days were passed with scarcely anything to eat, and it is recorded that raw corn was eagerly gathered, kernel by kernel, in empty granaries, and eaten with a relish. Heat, dust, rain, mud, and a rate of movement which taxed to the utmost the powers of the strongest, gave to these untried troops a savage hint of the hardships of campaigning, into which they had been plunged without any gradual steps of breaking in, and much more terrible experiences were close at hand. Of these there came a slight foretaste in a skirmish with the enemy on the 24th near Jericho Ford on the North Anna River, resulting in the death of one man and the wounding of three others, the first of what was soon to be a portentous list of casualties.
The movements of both armies were bringing them steadily nearer to Richmond, and but one chance now remained to achieve the object of the campaign, the defeat of Lee's army north of the Chickahominy and away from the strong defences of the Confederate capital. The enemy, swinging southward to conform to Grant's advance, finally reached the important point of Cold Harbor on May 31st. Cavalry was sent forward to dislodge him, and seized some of the entrenchments near that place, while both armies were hurried forward for the inevitable battle. The Sixth Corps, of which the Second Artillery was part, reached its position on the extreme left near noon on June 1st, having marched since midnight, and awaited the placing of other troops before the charge, which had been ordered to take place at five o'clock.
It would have been a fearful waiting for these men could they have known what was in store for them. But they were drugged, as it were, with utter fatigue; the almost constant movement of their two weeks of active service had left them "so nearly dead with marching and want of sleep" that they could not notice or comprehend the significant movements of the columns of troops about them preparing for battle, or the artillery which soon opened fire on both sides; their stupor, it is related, was of a kind that none can describe. They heard without excitement the earnest instructions of Colonel Kellogg, who, in pride and anxiety at this first trial of his beloved command, was in constant consultation with officers and men, directing, encouraging, explaining. "He marked out on the ground," writes one of his staff, "the shape of the works to be taken,—told the officers what dispositions to make of the different battalions,—how the charge was to be made,—spoke of our reputation as a band-box regiment, 'Now we are called on to show what we can do at fighting.'" The brigade commander, General Emory Upton, was also watching closely this new regiment which had never been in battle. But all foreboding was spared most of the men through sheer exhaustion.