The Captured Scout of the Army of the James / A Sketch of the Life of Sergeant Henry H. Manning, of the Twenty-fourth Mass. Regiment

by H. Clay Trumbull

The Twenty-fourth Massachusetts was a noble battalion, with a glorious record. Through its four years of service, its well-earned reputation for good discipline, thorough drill, and staunch courage was unsurpassed; and few regiments were its equals in hard fighting and practical efficiency. It would be enough for any man's soldierly reputation that he stood well in that regiment; for he who won honor there deserved it everywhere. Hence the good name there secured by Henry Manning shows his personal worth, and indicates the value of his services. Said Col. Ordway, at the close of Manning's term of service, "I have known his whole course since he has been a soldier.... He has always been a brave, faithful, truthful, soldier, ... honest and temperate, and in every way to be trusted." Maj. Edmands added, "I can cheerfully say, that I have never known a braver man in the regiment—and I was formerly his captain. He is, I believe, competent to fill any position where fidelity, integrity, and energy are required." Adjutant Stoddard also testified, "[He] has always been especially noticed for the efficient manner in which he has performed his duties as a soldier: always ready for any daring undertaking, he has won for himself a place in the hearts of the officers and his comrades of the Twenty-fourth Massachusetts; and his name can never be obliterated from the pages of the history of that regiment."

FIGHTING AND PRAYING.

The Twenty-fourth went out in the Burnside expedition to the waters of North Carolina, and, passing the perils of Hatteras "Swash," had an honorable and distinguished part, under brave and beloved Gen. John G. Foster, in the battles of Roanoke, Newbern, Little Washington, Rawl's Mills, Kinston, Whitehall, and Goldsboro'. In all this service, Manning gained in manliness and in the Christian graces, under the developing influences of active army life. At Kinston he had a narrow escape from death. A bullet struck the rail of a fence, behind which he was stationed as a sharpshooter, just in range of his head; a knot turned it aside so that it barely passed his cheek, scattering the splinters in his eyes.

In the spring and early summer of 1863, the Twenty-fourth was in South Carolina, passing months on the sickly sea-islands, where it was said no white man had before lived at that season of the year. It was there that the writer of this sketch—then chaplain of another regiment in the same brigade—first met young Manning. His regiment then having no chaplain, he was one of an association of earnest Christians who had banded together to keep up religious meetings, and to do good as they had opportunity, among their fellows. Under their rustic canopy of boughs, beneath the grand old live oaks, and amid the stately palms of Seabrook Island, were enjoyed never-to-be-forgotten hours of prayer and praise.

JAMES ISLAND.—HOSPITAL SUPPLY OF REBEL SHELLS.

From Seabrook to James Island, the Twenty-fourth moved, in July, 1863, under Gen. Terry, in co-operation with Gen. Gillmore's advance on Morris Island. Stricken down with sunstroke there, his whole system prostrate under repeated attacks of fever and chills, fastened on him in the malarial regions of his recent service, Manning lay sick in the rude regimental hospital on the morning of July 16, when the enemy in force made a sudden attack on the Union lines. The shock of this battle was bravely met by Col. Shaw's Fifty-fourth Massachusetts regiment, then first in action. The hospital of the Twenty-fourth was found to be in the focus of the enemy's sharpest fire, and a hurried move was ordered down the island. As the poor invalids, with failing limbs, dragged their tedious way to the beach, shell after shell from the enemy's guns came shrieking past, or bursting among them. One such seemed to explode in Manning's very face, and he fell, with the half conviction that it had killed him. As he rose again to his feet, another burst above him, and a ragged fragment of the hot iron tore down along his very side, laying open his clothing, and bruising and lacerating his arm. But this injury probably saved him from a severer; for, checked by it a moment, he saw yet another shell explode directly before him, in the group he had fallen behind, killing and wounding not a few of that number. Sorry comfort, this, for sick soldiers! Yet such was but an incident in the trying army service of our Union soldiers, in the prolonged war with rebellion.

CHARLESTON SIEGE-WORK.—SHARPSHOOTING.

Immediately after the fight at James Island, the Twenty-fourth passed over to Morris Island, to have a part in the operations against Charleston from that point, commencing with that terrible assault on Fort Wagner in which Col. Shaw lost his life,—when Gen. Stevenson's brigade (including the Twenty-fourth) was in reserve, holding the front after the sad repulse. There, Manning was again stricken down with sunstroke. Later, he was assigned to a company of sharpshooters in active service at the extreme front. He then had narrow escapes daily. On one occasion, as he and a comrade were alternating in rifle firing through a loop-hole, he had thrown himself down to rest under his rubber blanket, raised for a shade, when a bullet wounded his comrade in the face; as he sprang up to aid him, a huge fragment of a mortar shell came tearing down through the air, and crushed the rubber blanket into the ground on the very spot where Manning had lain. Those were toilsome days on Morris Island, in the slow dragging siege; men who were there will not soon forget its shifting sands, its blazing sunlight, its unintermitted fire of artillery and musketry, its labors on traverse and parallel and sap, its frequent struggles of sortie or assault, and its atmosphere laden with disease:

"How they marched together, sound or sick, Sank in the trench o'er the heavy spade! How they charged on the guns at double-quick, Kept ranks for Death to choose and to pick, And lay on the beds no fair hands made!"

The Twenty-fourth sweltered and toiled with the other regiments, and won for itself a proud name by its brilliant charge on the rifle-pits in the very face of Wagner's guns. Thence it passed down the coast to Florida, and had a little rest in the quaint old Spanish city of St. Augustine.