Brave Deeds of Union Soldiers

by Samuel Scoville

"Captain, we're fishing for that fellow over in the tree," returned Johnson. "I'm the bait."

"Well, you won't be live-bait if you keep it up much longer," said his captain as Johnson again took another run while a bullet cut through his coat hardly an inch from his side. Johnson did keep it up, however. Now he would raise his cap on a stick and try to draw the enemy's fire in safety. Again he would suddenly spring up and make divers disrespectful gestures toward the sharp-shooter in his tree. Sometimes he would lie on his back and kick his legs insultingly up over a little breastwork that had been hurriedly thrown up. One bullet from the Confederate marksman nearly ruined a pair of good boots for Johnson while he was doing this, taking the heel off his left boot as neatly as any cobbler could have done. The hidden marksman, however, commenced to show the effect of this challenge by this unknown joker. Little by little he ventured out from behind the trunk of the tree in order to get a better aim. By the captain's orders no one fired at him in the hopes that he would give the watching Union sharp-shooter a deadly chance. At last his time came. Johnson started his most ambitious demonstration. He suddenly stood up in front of the breastworks in an attitude of the most irritating unconcern. Yawning, he gave a great stretch as if tired of lying down any longer, then he kissed his hand toward the sharp-shooter and started to stroll down the front of the line, first stopping to light his pipe. The whole company gave a gasp.

"That will be about all for poor old Folly," said one man to his neighbor and every minute they expected to see him pitch forward. His indifference was too much for the Confederate. Emboldened by the absence of any recent shots, he leaned out from behind the sheltering trunk in order to draw a deadly bead on the man who had been mocking him before two armies. This was the chance for which the Union sharp-shooter had been waiting. Before the Confederate marksman had a chance to pull his trigger there was the bang of a Springfield rifle a few rods from where Johnson was walking and the watching soldiers saw the Confederate sharp-shooter topple backward. The rifle which had done so much harm slipped slowly from his hand to the ground and in a minute there was first a rustle, then a crash through the dense branches of the oak as the unconscious body lost its grip on the limb and pitched forward to the ground forty feet below. Johnson's captain was the first man to shake his hand.

"It takes courage to fish for these fellows sometimes," he said, "but it takes braver men than I am to be the bait."

Nearly thirty years later this occurrence was remembered and Corporal Johnson awarded the medal of honor which he had earned.

Another man who drew the enemy's fire in order to save his comrades was John Kiggins, a sergeant in one of the New York regiments. It was at the battle of Lookout Mountain on November 24, 1863. The terrible battle of Chickamauga had been fought. The Union Army had been reduced to a rabble and swept off the field, except over on the left wing where General George H. Thomas with twenty-five thousand men dashed back for a whole afternoon the assaults of double that number of Confederates and earned the title which he was henceforth to bear of the "Rock of Chickamauga." The defeated army, followed afterward by General Thomas' forces, withdrew to Chattanooga, that Tennessee battle-ground surrounded by the heights of Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. Here the Union forces were invested on all sides by the Confederate Army under General Bragg. The supplies of the Union Army gave out. The Confederates commanded the Tennessee River and held all of the good wagon-roads on the south side of it. The Union Army was nearly starved. General Rosecrans had never recovered from the battle of Chickamauga. Not only was his nerve shattered, but he seemed to have lost all strength of will and concentration of purpose. General Grant, who had just been placed in supreme command of all the military operations in the West, decided to place Thomas in command of the Army of the Cumberland in place of the dispirited Rosecrans. He telegraphed Thomas to hold Chattanooga at all hazards.

"We'll hold the town until we starve," Thomas telegraphed back.

When Grant reached Chattanooga on October 23d, wet and dirty, but well, he realized as he saw the dead horses and the hollow-cheeked men how far the starving process had gone. Although he was on crutches from injuries received from a runaway horse, yet his influence was immediately felt throughout the whole army. He was a compeller of men like Napoleon and, like him, had only to ride down the line and let his men see that he was there in order to accomplish the impossible. He at once sent a message to Sherman, who was coming slowly along from Vicksburg. His messenger paddled down the Tennessee River in a canoe under a guerrilla-fire during his whole journey and handed Sherman a dispatch from Grant which said, "Drop everything and move your entire force toward Stevenson." Sherman marched as only he could. When his army reached the Tennessee River he laid a pontoon bridge thirteen hundred and fifty feet in length in a half day, rushed his army across, captured all the Confederate pickets and was ready to join Grant in the great battle of Chattanooga. General Hooker marched in from one side on November 24th and fought the great battle of Lookout Mountain above the clouds, through driving mists and rains and on the morning of November 25th the stars and stripes waved from the lofty peak of Lookout Mountain. The next day eighteen thousand men without any orders charged up the almost perpendicular side of Missionary Ridge and carried it, and the three-day battle of Chattanooga was ended in the complete defeat of Bragg's army and the rescue of the men whom he thought he had cornered beyond all hopes of escape.

It was during this first day's battle in the mist on Lookout Mountain that Kiggins distinguished himself. The New York regiment, in which he was a sergeant, had crawled and crept up a narrow winding path, dragging their cannon after them up places where it did not seem as if a goat could keep its footing. They had already come into position on one side of the higher slopes when suddenly a battery above them opened fire and the men began to fall. Through the mists they could see the stars and stripes waving over this upper battery, which had mistaken them for Confederate soldiers. They were shielded from the Confederate batteries by a wall of rock, but it was necessary to stop this mistaken fire or every man of the regiment would be swept off the mountain by the well-aimed Union guns. Sergeant Kiggins volunteered to do the necessary signaling. He climbed up on the natural wall of rock which protected them from the Confederate batteries and sharp-shooters and waved the Union flag toward the battery above him with all his might. They stopped firing, but evidently considered it simply a stratagem and wigwagged to Kiggins an inquiry in the Union code. It was necessary for Kiggins to answer this or the fire would undoubtedly be at once resumed. Unfortunately he was a poor wigwagger and as he stood on the wall, he was exposed to the fire of every Confederate battery or rifleman within range. The perspiration ran down his face as he clumsily began to spell a message back to the battery above. Over his head hummed and whirled solid round shot and around him screamed the minie balls from half-a-dozen different directions. Once a shot pierced his signaling flag right in the middle of a word. He not only had to replace the flag, but he had to spell the word over again which was even worse. The whole message did not take many minutes, but it seemed hours to poor Kiggins. His life was saved as if by a miracle. Several bullets pierced his uniform, his cap was shot off his head and when the last word was finished, he dropped off the wall with such lightning-like rapidity that his comrades, who had been watching him with open mouths, thought that at last some bullet must have reached its mark. Kiggins, however, was unharmed, but made a firm resolve to perfect himself in wigwagging. We have no record whether he carried out this good resolution, but his unwilling courage saved his regiment in spite of his bad spelling and won for himself a medal of honor.

It was at the end of that terrible Wilderness campaign of Grant's which in a little more than a month had cost him fifty-four thousand nine hundred and twenty-nine men, a number nearly equal to the whole army of Lee, his antagonist, when the campaign was commenced. Grant's first object in this campaign was to destroy or capture Lee's army. His second object was to capture Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. A special rank of Lieutenant-General had been created for him by President Lincoln with the approval of the whole country. His victory at the dreadful battle of Shiloh, his successful siege of Vicksburg and his winning above the clouds the battle of Chattanooga, had made the silent, scrubby, commonplace-looking man, with the gray-blue eyes, who never talked but acted instead, the hope of the whole nation. In this campaign, Grant's one idea was to clinch with Lee's army and fight it as hard and as often as possible. He fought in the wilderness, tangled in thickets and swamps. He fought against strong positions on hilltops, he fought against entrenchments defended by masked batteries and tremendous artillery. He fought against impregnable positions and although he lost and lost and lost, he never stopped fighting. Lee had beaten McClellan and Pope and Burnside and Hooker, all able generals, who had tried against him every plan except that which Grant now tried, of wearing him out by victories and defeats alike. Grant's army could be replenished. There were not men enough left in the Confederacy to replace Lee's army. It was a terrible campaign and only a president of Lincoln's breadth of view and only the supreme confidence which the American people have in a man who fights, no matter how often he is beaten, kept Grant in command. If, after the bloody defeats in the Wilderness and at Spottsylvania or at Cold Harbor, he had turned back like any of his successors would have done, undoubtedly his past record would not have saved him the command. It was like the celebrated battle between Tom Cribb, the champion of England, and Molineaux, the giant black, in the eighteenth century for the championship of the world. Again and again and again Cribb was knocked down by blows so tremendous that even his ring generalship could not avoid them. Battered and bloody he always staggered to his feet and bored in again for more. Molineaux at last said to his seconds, "I can't lick a fellow like that; the fool doesn't know when he is beaten." It was so with Grant and Lee. Grant never knew when he was beaten. Lee's generalship could knock him down, but could not keep him back, and the Confederate leader realized himself that sooner or later some chance of war would give Grant the opportunity for a victory from which the Confederate Army could not recuperate.