Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer

by G. Moxley Sorrel

"If Longstreet's conduct was admirable, that of General Lee was perfectly sublime. He was engaged in rallying and encouraging the broken troops, and was riding about a little in front of the wood, quite alone—the whole of his staff being engaged in a similar manner farther to the rear. His face, which is always placid and cheerful, did not show signs of the slightest disappointment, care, or annoyance; and he was addressing every soldier he met, a few words of encouragement, such as: 'All this will come right in the end, we'll talk it over afterwards; but in the meantime all good men must rally. We want all good and true men just now,' etc. He spoke to all the wounded men that passed him, and the slightly wounded he exhorted 'to bind up their hurts and take up a musket in this emergency.' Very few failed to answer his appeal, and I saw many badly wounded men take off their hats and cheer him. He said to me, 'This has been a sad day for us, Colonel, a sad day; but we can't expect always to gain victories.'"

[From "The Battle of the Wilderness," by General Morris Schaff, pages 267-273, here quoted with the kind permission of the author. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin & Company, 1910.]

General M. L. Smith, a New Yorker and a distinguished graduate of West Point, doing engineer duty with Lee's army, had examined our left, and, finding it inviting attack, so reported to Longstreet. Now there is on Longstreet's staff a tall, trim, graceful young Georgian, with keen dark eyes and engaging face, whose courage and ability to command, Longstreet knows well, for he has been with him on many a field. His name is Sorrel, and his gallant clay is lying in the cemetery at Savannah, the long, pendulant Southern moss swaying softly over it. His "Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer" has for me, like all the books I love, a low, natural, wild music; and, as sure as I live, the spirits who dwell in that self-sown grove called Literature were by his side when he wrote the last page of his Recollections, his pen keeping step with his beating heart. Longstreet, on hearing Smith's report, called Sorrel to him, and told him to collect some scattered brigades, form them in a good line on our left, and then, with his right pushed forward, to hit hard. "But don't start till you have everything ready. I shall be waiting for your gun-fire, and be on hand with fresh troops for further advance," said Longstreet.

Sorrel picked up G. T. Anderson's, Wofford's, Davis's of Heth's, and Mahone's brigades, and led them to the old unfinished railroad bed; and, having stretched them out on it, formed them, facing north, for advance. Of course, had Gibbon obeyed Hancock's order, this movement of Sorrel's could not have been made; as it was, the coast was clear. On Birney's left, as everywhere along the front, our forces were in several broken lines, and those of the first had changed places with the second, to take advantage of the little fires at which they had boiled their coffee to boil some for themselves; for many of the troops had not had a bite since half-past three in the morning, and it was now past eleven. Save the skirmish line, the men were lying down, and not expecting any danger, when suddenly, from the heavy undergrowth, Sorrel's three widely-winged brigades burst on their flank with the customary yell, and before our people could change front, or, in some cases, even form, they were on them. Fighting McAlister tried his best to stay the tempest, and so did others, many little groups of their men selling their lives dearly; for the color-bearers planted their banners on nearly every knoll, and brave young fellows would rally around them; but being overpowered, panic set in, and the lines melted away.

As soon as Carroll, Lewis A. Grant, Birney, Webb, and Wadsworth heard Sorrel's quick volleys, they were all on their feet at once, for the character of the firing and the cheers told them that Peril had snapped its chain and was loose. In a few minutes fleeing individuals, then squads, and then broken regiments, began to pour through the woods from the left.

Kershaw and Field, being notified by Longstreet to resume the offensive as soon as they should hear Sorrel, now pressed forward, seriously and exultingly active. Wadsworth, to stay the threatening disaster (for that lunatic, Panic, travels fast, and every officer of experience dreads its first breath), flew to the Thirty-seventh Massachusetts at the head of Eustis's brigade, which was just getting back from the junction, and ordered Edwards, a resolute man, to throw his regiment across the front of Field, who, with several pieces of artillery raking the road, was advancing. The Thirty-seventh moved quickly by flank into the woods, and then, undismayed, heard the command, "Forward." And with it went my friends, Lieutenants Casey and Chalmers, and that pleasant and true one of many a day, Captain "Tom" Colt of Pittsfield, whose mother was a saint. "You have made a splendid charge!" exclaimed Wadsworth, and so they had—the ground behind them showed it; they thrust Field back, gaining a little respite for all hands before disaster; and very valuable it proved to be, for some of the broken commands thereby escaped utter destruction.

While Field and Kershaw assailed Carroll, Birney, and Wadsworth fiercely, fire was racing through the woods, adding its horrors to Sorrel's advance; and with the wind driving the smoke before him, he came on, sweeping everything. Seeing his lines falter, Sorrel dashed up to the color-bearer of the Twelfth Virginia, "Ben" May, and asked for the colors to lead the charge. "We will follow you," said the smiling youth spiritedly, refusing to give them up; and so they did. In the midst of the raging havoc, Webb, under instructions from Wadsworth, now in an almost frantic state of mind, tried to align some troops beyond the road so as to meet Sorrel, whose fire was scourging the flanks of Carroll and the Green Mountain men, through whom and around whom crowds of fugitives, deaf to all appeals to rally, were forcing their way to the rear. But the organizations, so severely battered in the morning, were crumbling so fast, and the tumult was so high, that Webb saw it was idle to expect they could hold together in any attempted change of position; he therefore returned to his command, and quickly brought the Fifty-sixth Massachusetts, Griswold's regiment, alongside the road. Fortunately his Nineteenth Maine, withdrawn during the lull to replenish its ammunition, had been wheeled up by the gallant Connor at the first ominous volley from the South. They had barely braced themselves on the road before Carroll, and then the old Vermont brigade, had to go; and now Connor and Griswold open on Sorrel, checking him up roundly.

Wadsworth undertook to wheel the remnants of Rice's regiments who had stood by him, so as to fire into the enemy on the other side of the road. In trying to make this movement he ran squarely onto Perrin's Alabama brigade, of Anderson's division, which had relieved a part of Field's, who rose and fired a volley with fatal effect, breaking Wadsworth's formation, the men fleeing in wild confusion. In this Alabama brigade was the Eighth Regiment, commanded that morning by Hilary A. Herbert who lost his arm. This gallant man, soldier, member of Congress, and distinguished lawyer was Mr. Cleveland's Secretary of the Navy.

The heroic Wadsworth did not or could not check his horse till within twenty odd feet of the Confederate line. Then, turning, a shot struck him in the back of the head, his brain spattering the coat of Earl M. Rogers, his aide at his side. The rein of Wadsworth's horse, after the general fell, caught in a snag, and, Rogers's horse having been killed by the volley, he vaulted into the saddle, and escaped through the flying balls. Wadsworth lies unconscious within the enemy's lines; his heart, that has always beaten so warmly for his country, is still beating, but hears no response now from the generous manly, truth-viewing brain. I believe that morning, noon, and night the bounteous valley of the Genesee, with its rolling fields and tented shocks of bearded grain, holds Wadsworth in dear remembrance.