The following is an extract from my journal, written on the battlefield the second day after we crossed the river:
Battle-field, Fredericksburg, Va.,
December 13, 1862.
In consequence of one of General H.’s staff officers being ill I have volunteered to take his place, and am now aide-de-camp to General H. I wish my friends could see me in my present uniform! This division will probably charge on the enemy’s works this afternoon. God grant them success! While I write the roar of cannon and musketry is almost deafening, and the shot and shell are falling fast on all sides. This may be my last entry in this journal. God’s will be done. I commit myself to Him, soul and body. I must close. General H. has mounted his horse, and says Come—!
Of course it is not for me to say whose fault it was in sacrificing those thousands of noble lives which fell upon that disastrous field, or in charging again and again upon those terrible stone walls and fortifications, after being repulsed every time with more than half their number lying on the ground. The brave men, nothing daunted by their thinned ranks, advanced more fiercely on the foe—
Plunged in the battery’s smoke,
Fiercely the line they broke;
Strong was the saber stroke,
Making an army reel.
But when it was proved to a demonstration that it was morally impossible to take and retain those heights, in consequence of the natural advantage of position which the rebels occupied, and still would occupy if they should fall back—whose fault was it that the attempt was made time after time, until the field was literally piled with dead and ran red with blood? We may truly say of the brave soldiers thus sacrificed—
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s but to do and die.
Among the many who fell in that dreadful battle perhaps there is none more worthy of notice than the brave and heroic Major Edward E. Sturtevant, of Keene, New Hampshire, who fell while leading the gallant Fifth in a charge upon the enemy. He was the first man in New Hampshire who enlisted for the war. He was immediately authorized by the Governor to make enlistments for the First New Hampshire Volunteers, and was eminently successful. He held the commission of captain in the First Regiment, and afterwards was promoted major of the Fifth.
One of the leading papers of his native State has the following with regard to him: “He was in every battle where the regiment was engaged, nine or ten in number, besides skirmishes, and was slightly wounded at the battle of Fair Oaks. He commanded the regiment most of the time on the retreat from the Chickahominy to James river. The filial affection of the deceased was of the strongest character, and made manifest in substantial ways on many occasions. His death is the first in the household, and deep is the grief that is experienced there; but that grief will doubtless be mitigated by the consoling circumstance that the departed son and brother died in a service that will hallow his memory forever. A braver man or more faithful friend never yielded up his spirit amidst the clash of arms and the wail of the dying.”
I well remember the desperate charge which that brave officer made upon the enemy just before he fell, and the thinned and bleeding ranks of his men as they returned, leaving their beloved commander on the field, reminded me of the “gallant six hundred,” of whom Tennyson has written the following lines: