From this time until the beginning of August the regiment experienced such hardships and sufferings from diseases and hard service, that it sustained far greater losses from these causes than any other regiment from our state had met with in open battle. Pine Bluff was a veritable pest-hole; the water was of a greenish color, the air full of germs of disease and poisonous vapors. Continually surrounded and threatened by a vigilant enemy, the exhausted and sickly soldiers had to get up at three o’clock every morning for the purpose of working at the entrenchments and strengthening and protecting our position in different ways. Meanwhile the number of those fit for duty was daily decreasing at an appalling rate. The hospitals were overcrowded with patients, and the few men left for duty were continually occupied in caring for the sick and burying the dead, until there were not men enough left to bury their dead comrades, and I was obliged to ask a regiment, which had recently arrived, to help us perform that sad duty.
At this critical moment I received orders from Washington to take six companies to Minnesota, on a six weeks’ veteran furlough, to which the regiment was entitled. Those went who were able to. Many died on the way, but those of us who survived until we reached Minnesota were soon restored to usual health and strength, so that we could return in due time and again take part in the campaign in Arkansas. The remaining four companies, which had been furloughed the previous winter, were ordered from Pine Bluff to Duvall’s Bluff, on White river, where the whole regiment was reunited under my command in the beginning of October, and remained in winter quarters until the spring of 1865.
Shortly after our return to Arkansas I assumed command of the First Brigade, First Division, Seventh army corps. This brigade consisted of my own regiment, the Twelfth Michigan, the Sixty-first Illinois, and a United States colored regiment. Our prospects for remaining in winter quarters for several months being favorable, many of the higher officers sent for their wives. I did the same, having first erected a comfortable log house for us. My wife and two little children arrived a few days before Christmas, and stayed in the camp the whole winter. No important event took place during the winter, excepting that we were once ordered to make an expedition up White river, with a considerable force of cavalry and infantry, and, after a fatiguing march, succeeded in breaking up a camp of irregular Confederate troops, and taking many prisoners.
I will relate two incidents which took place near Duvall’s Bluff, one of a serious, the other of a comic nature.
The first was the shooting of a young soldier of the Twenty-second Ohio regiment, who time and again had deserted his post, and finally joined a band of rebel marauders. It became my sad duty to execute the sentence of death. My brigade formed a hollow square, facing inward, and the doomed man, a strong, handsome youth of twenty years, sat on a coffin in an open ambulance, which was driven slowly along the inside of the square, while a band marched in front of the wagon playing a funeral march. After the completion of this sad march the deserter was placed in the middle of the square, in front of the coffin, with his eyes blind-folded. A detachment of twelve men under a sergeant now fired simultaneously, upon the signal of the provost marshal. Eight rifles were loaded with balls, and the unfortunate young man fell backwards into his coffin and died without a struggle.
SHOOTING A DESERTER.
One day while taking a ride on horseback in company with my wife, who had a fine saddle horse, and had become an expert rider during her long stay in the camp, we galloped mile after mile along the fine plain, outside of the picket-lines where men of my own brigade were on guard, till at last we found ourselves several miles from the place where we had passed through our lines. Returning toward camp, we struck the picket line at a point where a recently arrived regiment was stationed, and where the ground was soft and marshy. Being challenged by the guard I answered who I was, but as he could not plainly distinguish my uniform in the twilight and did not know me personally, he ordered us, with leveled gun, to stand still until he could call the officer of the guard. It was no easy matter to obey his orders, for the horses continually sank down in the soft ground, but finally the officer arrived, and we succeeded in getting to the camp without further trouble. I was not the first officer who thus got into trouble by neglecting to write out a pass for himself.
On a fine April day, which can never be forgotten, the news came that our president, Abraham Lincoln, had been murdered. Stricken with consternation I hurried down to the Third regiment in person to tell the sad news. Never, either before or since, have I witnessed such a scene as the one that followed. Some of the men went completely wild with sorrow, weather-beaten veterans, embracing each other, wept aloud, others swore and cursed. In the prison yard, which was guarded by men belonging to my regiment, a rebel prisoner took off his cap, waived it in the air and cried, “Hurrah for Booth!” A man by the name of Stark immediately loaded his gun and shot the rebel dead on the spot. Many others, both inside and outside the camp, were shot because they expressed joy at the death of Lincoln. Passions were strong, and all tolerance and patience exhausted among the Union soldiers on that occasion. The main army of the Confederates had already surrendered when this calamity occurred, and the war was in fact over. A few days afterward we sent our families home.
