Personal Recollections of the Civil War / By One Who Took Part in It as a Private Soldier in the 21st Volunteer Regiment of Infantry from Massachusetts

by James Madison Stone

During the evening we were relieved and went back to the city to the place under the river bank and had a good supper and a good drink of whiskey. It is notorious that not a single general officer crossed the river in front of the city at the Battle of Fredericksburg. It is not strange that General Burnside should have failed in command of the Army of the Potomac. Any officer who should have succeeded General McClellan would have met with the same fate, that army was so divided by jealousies and partisanship. Army correspondents spoke of these strifes and bickerings as notorious and scandalous. The efficiency of the command was thus seriously impaired by the internal dissensions. Before we went to sleep the report was circulated about the regiment, that General Burnside would lead the 9th Army Corps against Mary’s Heights the next morning, and Reno’s old brigade was to have the advance.

The next day, the 14th, we remained in camp down by the riverside all day, and no attack was made. In the evening we went back to the same part of the battlefield where we had fought, relieved some troops there, and we were told we were to stay there through the next day and that we were to hold that position at all hazards. We were about fifteen or eighteen rods from the Johnnies’ line at the foot of the hill. They were behind a line of breastworks; we had almost nothing in front of us. The men we relieved had dug up a little earth and had dragged together a few dead bodies, but only a few. As soon, however, as our boys understood what was expected of them, they set to work. But digging was pretty slow work with the ground frozen and nothing but bayonets and case knives to dig with. But a good many dead men were dragged together, so that some of the men had something of a semblance of a protection. Thus we prepared for the day, which soon came. But it did not seem as if it would ever pass. We could not fire a gun. The Johnnies might fire as much as they liked. We must lie as still as the dead men about us. But finally the day did pass, night came on; we were able to get up and stretch ourselves and shake some of the cold from our half frozen bodies. At twelve o’clock we quietly withdrew, passed through the city, which was now deserted crossed the pontoon bridge and went back to our old camp.

After a great battle there are no end of stories of experiences and hair-breadth escapes going the rounds of the camp. The following story which went the rounds at the time, appealed to me and has thus stuck in my memory. A man who was in a Massachusetts battery that was in Hooker’s corps and was engaged around to the right of us, on the east side of the heights, had an interesting encounter with a Johnnie which might have resulted very differently from what it did. His duty when in action was to swab out the cannon after it was fired, then in loading to ram down the cartridge. His position was thus near the muzzle of the gun and the most advanced of any of the men working the piece. The battery took an advanced and an exposed position. The Confederates charged on it hoping to capture the guns, but the battery mowed them down furiously. One Reb, however, kept right on, marched right up and made a bayonet thrust at him. He turned, parried the thrust with his swab, knocking the muzzle of the Johnnies’ gun down; the bayonet, however, went through the thick part of his left leg just below the knee. At that moment the sergeant in command of the gun who stood a few feet to the rear, drew his revolver and shot the Johnnie who fell to the ground, the stock end of the musket going down with him. The bayonet sticking through the leg of our friend, thus gave him a dreadful twist, but he stooped over, picked up the gun and pulled the bayonet out of his leg, jumped on to the cannon and as the other men had brought up the horses he rode away. He thus made his escape and the battery lost no guns.

The morning of the 17th it was my fortune to be one of a detail of fifty men ordered out on special fatigue duty. We were marched down to the headquarters of the corps guard and stayed there all day. At night rations were sent down to us, and we slept in one of the guard tents that night. The next morning (the 18th) we were marched down to the river bank under a flag of truce. The Johnnies showed a flag of truce on the other side of the river. We got into a boat and crossed over. As soon as we were on the other side, we learned that we were to go up onto the battlefield and bury our dead. We marched through the city out onto the very field where we had fought, and where we did picket duty the 15th, to witness the most ghastly, the most shocking, the most humiliating scene possible. The field was covered with dead men. Dead men everywhere, some black in the face, most of them had the characteristic pallor of death; nearly all had been stripped of every article of clothing. All were frozen; some with their heads off, some with their arms off, some with their legs off, dismembered, torn to pieces, they lay there single, in rows, and in piles. I did not count them, but there must have been three hundred dead men in the row behind which we concealed ourselves on the 15th, a part of which we dragged together the night before. Just to the left of our regiment, at the time of the fight there stood a brick house. From this house, inside and just behind it, we carried more than forty dead men. I have no idea how many men were lying behind the board fence, but there were certainly one-quarter of a line of battle—one-half of a single line.

After the Johnnies had got us picks and shovels, we set to work to dig in the frozen earth the trenches which were to contain the men and fragments of men who had given up their lives on the plains in front of Mary’s Heights. We put them in rows, one beside the other, wrapped them up in blankets or in whatever else we could get to put around them. There was practically no means of identifying one out of a hundred of them. Thus they lay in unknown graves.

Two long days we worked there tearing a trench in the frozen earth and filling it with the bodies of frozen men, with nothing to eat but what the guards could spare us from their scant rations. Our party buried nine hundred and eighty-seven men.

About sundown, our work being finished, we went down to the river, crossed over and returned to camp. Those days at Fredericksburg were among the most disheartening and most dreadful I have every known. The assault on Mary’s Heights was so ill-advised; the day’s picket duty on the field was so nerve-racking; then the two days’ work in a half-starved condition, burying the dead, a work so heartrending at best, was enough to upset one’s mind if anything could upset it. I do not think there were any desertions from our regiment during the next month or two, but there was a great deal of desertion from the army, and it was not to be wondered at. There was a general feeling of despondency pervading the Army of the Potomac, the feeling was deep and wide spread. The conviction was general that the men in the ranks were superior in intelligence to the southerners and just as brave, that the army was better disciplined and much better supplied, that what we lacked was leaders, the men were not tired of fighting, but they were tired of being sent to the slaughter by incompetent generals. From what I was able to observe when burying the dead the 18th and 19th, the Rebels were in a happy state of mind, they had full confidence in their leaders, and perfect faith in the success of their cause. With us complaining, scolding and faultfinding, was indulged in by all. Croaking had become as common as eating and showed the moral of the army was depressingly low, and had Lee been the general the South believed him to be he would have taken Washington the summer of 1863. It is reported that there were 8000 men absent without leave. This campaign and the mud campaign that followed it, did one good thing if nothing more, it showed those people at the North who were always complaining and demanding that the army move, how difficult it was to campaign in Virginia during the winter season.

December 20. At about ten o’clock, who should appear in camp but my brother, the assistant surgeon of the 19th Massachusetts. He had come up to see how I had weathered the storm. I took him into my tent and we had a little talk. I told him about the ordeal we had passed through, and he related to me his experience and his duties in taking care of the wounded, and how they were not yet all cared for. But he had got away as soon as he could, to come up and see how it had gone with me. After a short time, he seeing I was unhurt, became drowsy, dropped over on my couch and in an instant he was fast asleep. I straightened him out, put my blanket over him and let him sleep. He never moved until ten o’clock in the evening when as taps were sounded I woke him up and he went back to his wounded again.

Doing picket duty down by the river was pretty uncomfortable work the last of December, and the 21st was honored with that kind of duty altogether too often. Sitting or crouching in those rifle pits, always on watch through those long winter nights was pretty tough. One night a lot of the boys broke into the Lacy house, a fine, large mansion that stood a short distance back from the river, and tore a pipe organ to pieces, each man taking a pipe and the next morning when we returned to camp we all played,—perhaps you would call it a tune. It may have been amusing to the mules in the train parks along the way, but judging from the howls that issued from the camps we passed, I am not of the opinion that it was appreciated by the men. But it afforded us some amusement and what did we care for mules’ ears or men’s ears, for that matter? If they did not like our music they could stuff cotton-batting in their ears.

A captain of one of the companies was given a furlough about this time and went home for a time. When he returned he wore a brand new coat with shoulder straps of the recruiting officer’s size. He marched around the camp with an air of great importance. One day, one of the boys of his company did some little thing not to his liking and that man was tied up by the thumbs. This was so uncalled for and so unjust, it caused a very bitter feeling against the officer throughout the company. Practically every man in the company became his enemy. He realized the existence of this feeling and soon after resigned and went home. It was freely remarked in the regiment that the officer referred to did not dare to go into another fight with that company. And since the war he has never, to my knowledge attended a reunion of the regimental association.