The Union advance was promptly met by a sharp fire from the Confederate reserves, and the fight which ensued in the breach is known as the battle of the Crater.
THE ARKANSAS BOY SPY.
When the Confederate army abandoned Little Rock in 1863, one of its military operators, David O. Dodd, stayed back and lived some time in the Union lines. He was a lad of seventeen. Shortly after the town was Unionized he left there, ostensibly to go to Mississippi, but returned in a few days and lingered about in his old haunts. A second time he passed out of the picket lines, unrestrained until he reached the outposts, where the guards, searching him, discovered some curious pencil marks in a memorandum book carried openly in his pocket.
He was arrested, and at headquarters the marks were shown to be telegraphic dots and dashes that gave a full description of the Union fortifications and the distribution of forces about the city. His act was that of a spy, and his life was the forfeit. Having admitted that he had accomplices, he was offered pardon if he would betray them. A last appeal was made at the scaffold by his friends and relatives, but he firmly put the temptation aside and signalled the executioner to do his duty. Then the drop fell, carrying him and his secret to another world. My informant, who witnessed the hanging, declared that the lad met his doom with the coolness of a stoic, while the spectators, chiefly soldiers, wept like children.
WOMEN WHO DARED AND SUFFERED FOR THE FLAG.
War calls women to weep, not to take up the sword in battle, yet to such lengths does their devotion run that the place of danger finds them on hand unasked. On the Union side in the civil war military heroines came from every class and from every stage of civilization. Of those who put on uniforms the record is hard to trace, but their dead and mangled forms on countless battlefields proved that the American amazon was no myth. Not to speak of these, there were women who openly faced all the terrors and hardships of war. Michigan seems to have eclipsed the record in this class of heroines.
When the Second Michigan volunteers started for the seat of war in 1861, Annie Etheridge, a young woman just out of her teens, volunteered as daughter of the regiment. Her dress was a riding habit, and she wore a military cap as a badge of her calling. A pair of pistols rested in her holsters for use in emergencies. Annie served four years, part of the time with the Fifth Michigan, and always in the Army of the Potomac. Her service was the relief of wounded on the field, which means under fire. General Kearny presented her with the "Kearny badge" for her devotion to his wounded at Fair Oaks. Once while bandaging a wound for a New York boy a Confederate shell killed him under her hands.
Though not called on to fight, Annie had spirit enough to make a battle hero. At Chancellorsville she went to the outposts with the skirmishers, and was ordered back to the lines. The enemy was already shooting at the pickets. On the way back she passed a line of low trenches where the Union soldiers lay concealed, and spurning the thought that the affair must end in a retreat, she turned her face to the front and called out to the men, "Boys, do your duty and whip those fellows!" A hearty cheer was the response, and "those fellows" poured a volley into the hidden trenches. Annie was hit in the hand, her skirt was riddled, and her horse wounded. At Spottsylvania she turned a party of retreating soldiers back to their place in the ranks by offering to lead them into battle. No one but a miscreant could spurn that call.
The other Michigan heroines were Bridget Divers, of the First cavalry, an unknown in the Eighth and in the Twenty-fifth regiments who passed as Frank Martin, and Miss Seelye who served in the Second as Frank Thompson. "Thompson" and "Martin" wore men's disguise. Bridget Divers was the wife of a soldier, and performed deeds of daring in bringing wounded from the field, under fire.
Two Pennsylvania regiments carried women into battle in men's disguise—Charles D. Fuller, of the Forty-sixth, and Sergt. Frank Mayne, of the One Hundred and Twenty-sixth. "Mayne" was killed. The Fifth Rhode Island Regiment produced a heroine in Mrs. Kady Brownell, wife of a sergeant. She is credited with having been a skilful shooter with a rifle and also a brave color-bearer in time of danger. The wives of officers were accorded great freedom of action at the front, and many a gallant and noble deed was called forth by devotion to husband first and incidentally to the cause. Madame Turchin, wife of the Illinois general, went into battle and rescued wounded men, besides cheering and inspiring the soldiers of the general's command. Gen. Francis C. Barlow, of New York, was accompanied by his wife, who attended the wounded on the field. This devoted woman served at the front until 1864, and died of fever contracted in the hospitals at Petersburg.