Yet we recovered our cheerfulness at once after taking the first nibble of the crackers issued to us there, and made a jest of the scantiness of the supply. One tall, lean mountaineer, Jim Thomas by name, who received a slight wound every time he was under fire, and was never sufficiently hurt to quit duty, was standing on a bank of earth slowly munching a bit of his last cracker and watching the effect of some artillery fire which was in progress at the time, when a bullet carried away his cap and cut a strip of hair from his head, leaving the scalp for a space as bald as if it had been shaved with a razor. He sat down at once to nurse a sharp headache, and then discovered that the cracker he had held in his hand was gone, leaving a mere fragment in his grasp. At first he was in doubt whether he might not have eaten it unconsciously; but he quickly discovered that it had been knocked out of his hand and crushed to bits by a bullet, whereupon as he sat there in an exposed place, where the fire was unobstructed, he lamented his loss in soliloquy.
“If I had eaten that cracker half an hour ago, it would have been safe,” he said. “I should have had none left for next time, but I have none left as it is. That shows how foolish it is to save anything. Whew! how my head aches. I wish it was from overeating, but even the doctor couldn’t lay it to that just now. The next time I stand up to watch the firing, I’ll put my cracker—if I have any—in a safe place down by the breastworks, where it won’t get wounded, poor thing! By the way, here’s a little piece left, and that’ll get shot while I sit here talking.” And with that he jumped down into the ditch, carefully placed the mouthful of hardtack at the foot of the works, and resumed his interested observation of the artillery duel.
Trifling of that kind was constant among the men throughout that terrible campaign from the Wilderness to Petersburg, and while it yielded nothing worth recording as wit or humor, it has always seemed to me the most remarkable and most significant fact in the history of the time. It revealed a capacity for cheerful endurance which alone made the campaign possible on the Confederate side.
With mercenary troops or regulars the resistance that Lee was able to offer to Grant’s tremendous pressure would have been impossible in such circumstances. The starvation and the excessive marching would have destroyed the morale of troops held together only by discipline. No historical criticism of our Civil War can be otherwise than misleading if it omits to give a prominent place, as a factor, to the character of the volunteers on both sides, who, in acquiring the steadiness and order of regulars, never lost their personal interest in the contest, or their personal pride of manhood as a sustaining force under trying conditions. If either side had lacked this element of personal heroism on the part of its men, it would have been driven from the field long before 1865. It seems to me the most important duty of those who now furnish the materials out of which the ultimate history of our Civil War will be constructed to emphasize this aspect of the matter, and in every possible way to illustrate the part which the high personal character of the volunteers in the ranks played in determining the events of the contest. For that reason I like to record one incident which I had an opportunity to observe at Cold Harbor.
Immediately opposite the position occupied by the battery to which I belonged, and about six or eight hundred yards distant across an open field, lay a Federal battery, whose commander was manifestly a man deeply in earnest for other and higher reasons than those that govern the professional soldier: a man who fought well, because he fought in what he felt to be his own cause and quarrel.
His guns and ours were engaged almost continuously in an artillery duel, so that I became especially interested in him, particularly as the extreme precision of his fire indicated thoroughness and conscientiousness of work for months before the campaign began. One day—whether before or after the great assault, I cannot now remember—that part of our line which lay immediately to the left of the position occupied by the battery to which I belonged was thrown forward to force the opposing Federal line back. It was the only large movement in the way of a charge over perfectly open ground that I ever had a chance to observe with an unobstructed view, and merely as a spectator.
When we, with a few well-aimed shells, had fired a barn that stood between the lines, and driven a multitude of sharp-shooters out of it, the troops to our left leaped over our works and with a cheer moved rapidly across the field. The resistance made to their advance was not very determined,—probably the Federal line at that point had been weakened by concentration elsewhere,—and after a brief struggle our men crossed the slight Federal earthworks and pressed their adversaries back into the woods and beyond my view. It was a beautiful operation to look at, and one, the like of which, a soldier rarely has an opportunity to see so well; but my attention was specially drawn to the situation of the artillery commander, to whom I have referred as posted immediately in our front. His position was the pivot, the point where the Federal line was broken to a new angle, when that part of it which lay upon his right hand was pressed back while that on his left remained stationary.
He fought like a Turk or a tiger.
He directed the greater part of his fire upon the advancing line of Confederates, but turned a gun every few minutes upon our battery, apparently by way of letting us know that he was not unmindful of our attentions, even when he was so busily engaged elsewhere.
The bending back of the line on his right presently subjected him to a murderous fire upon the flank and rear,—a fire against which he had no protection whatever,—while we continued a furious bombardment from the front. His position was plainly an untenable one, and so far as I could discover with a strong glass, he was for a time without infantry support. But he held his ground and continued to fight in spite of all, firing at one time as from two faces of an acute triangle.