Brave Deeds of Union Soldiers

by Samuel Scoville

Cold Harbor was the last of this series of defeats which helped wear out Lee's army and ended in its capture and the occupation of Richmond. At the time, however, it was bitter to be borne by the millions of men and women and children who were hungering and thirsting for a victory of the Union arms. Marching and fighting and fighting and marching every day for a month, Grant was almost in sight of the spires of the Confederate capital. About six miles outside the city Lee had taken his last stand at Cold Harbor. He held a position of tremendous natural strength and had fortified and entrenched it so that it was practically impregnable. Grant tried in vain to flank it. On June 30th he ordered an assault in front. Against him was the flower of the Confederate Army commanded by the best general of the world and securely entrenched in a position than which no stronger was ever attacked throughout the whole war. Grant first gave his command to attack on the afternoon of June 2d, but then postponed it until the early morning of June 3d. Officers and men alike knew that they were to be sacrificed. All through the regiments men were pinning slips of paper, on which were written their names and addresses, to the backs of their coats, so that their dead bodies might be recognized after the battle and news sent to their families at the North. The battle was a short one. The second corps of General Hancock, one of the bravest and most dashing of all of Grant's generals, was shot to pieces in twenty-two minutes and fell back with three thousand of its best men gone, including most of its officers. All along the line the story was the same. At some places the Union men were beaten back without any difficulty and at other spots they penetrated the salients, but were driven back. Attack after attack was in vain against the generalship of Lee, the bravery of his men and the almost impregnable strength of his position.

Eugene M. Tinkham, of the 148th New York Infantry, was in that corps directly under the eye of Grant himself which attacked and attacked the Confederate position throughout that bloody morning, only to be driven back each time with tremendous losses. The 148th Infantry, in which Tinkham was a corporal, charged right up to the very mouth of the guns. Flesh and blood could not stand, however, against the volleys of grape and canister which ripped bloody, struggling lanes right through the masses of the charging men. As the corps of which Tinkham's regiment was a part was stopped by the wall of dead and wounded men piled up in front of them, the Confederates with a fierce Rebel yell charged over the breastworks on the confused attackers. For a minute the New York regiment held its own, but were finally slowly forced back fighting every foot to the shelter of their own rifle-pits. There they made a stand and the Confederate sally stopped and the men in gray dashed back to their own fortifications. In this charge, Tinkham received a bayonet wound through his left shoulder while a jagged piece of canister had ripped through his left arm. Not until he found himself back in the rifle-pit, however, did he even know that he was wounded. His bayonet and the barrel of his rifle were red clear up to the stock and he did not at first realize that the blood dripping from his left sleeve was his own. It was only as he lay on the dry sand and saw the red stain beside him grow larger and larger that he realized that he was hurt. One of the few men who had returned with him stripped off his coat, cut away the sleeve of his shirt and made a couple of rough bandages and extemporized a rude tourniquet from the splinters of one of the wheels of a battered field-piece which had flown into the pit. When that was over, Tinkham lay back and shut his eyes and felt the weakness which comes over a man who has lost much blood. To-day there was not the tonic of victory which sometimes keeps even wounded men up. He had seen his comrades, men with whom he had eaten and slept and fought for over two years, thrown away, as it seemed to him, uselessly. He was yet to learn, what the army learned first and the country last, that Grant was big enough and far-sighted enough to know that some victories must be wrought from failure as well as success. This was one of the hammer-strokes which seemed to bound back from the enemy's armor without leaving a mark, yet the impact weakened Lee even when it seemed that he was most impervious to it. It was absolutely necessary to Grant's far-reaching plans that Lee be fought on every possible occasion. Whether he won or lost, Grant's only hope lay on keeping Lee on the defensive. None of this, of course, could a wounded corporal in a battered, beaten and defeated regiment realize. All he knew was that his friends were gone, that he was wounded and, worst of all, had been forced to again and again retreat. He shut his eyes and there was a sound in his ears like the tolling of a great bell. It seemed to swell and rise until it drowned even the rattle and roar of the battle which was still going on. When Tinkham opened his eyes everything seemed to waver and quiver before him. Suddenly there came a short, thin, wailing sound which cut like a knife through the midst of the unconsciousness which was stealing over him. It was the cries of two wounded men lying far out in the field over which he had come. Tinkham raised his hand and strained his eyes. He could recognize two of his own file, men who a moment before had been by his side and who now lay moaning their lives away out on that shell-swept field. Tinkham listened to it as long as he could. Then he set his teeth, scrambled to his feet and in spite of his comrades who thought that he was delirious, climbed stiffly over the edge of the rifle-pit and began to creep out between the lines toward the wounded men. At first every motion was an agony. He was weakened by the loss of blood and he could bear no weight on his left arm, yet there was such a fatal storm of bullets and grape-shot whizzing over him that he knew that, if he rose to his feet, there would be little chance of his ever reaching his friends alive. Slowly and doggedly he sidled along like a disabled crab. Sometimes he would have to stop and rest. Many times bullets whizzed close to him and cut the turf all around where he lay. As soon as he had rested a few seconds, he would fix his eye on some little tuft of grass or stone or weed and make up his mind that he would crawl until he reached that before he rested again. It was a long journey before he reached his goal. On the way he had taken three full canteens of water from silent figures which would never need them more. When at last he reached the men, they recognized him and the tears ran down their faces as they called his name.

"God bless you, Corporal," said one; "it's just like you to come for us."

Tinkham had no breath left to talk, but he gave each wounded man a refreshing drink from the canteens. Both of them were badly, although not fatally, wounded. One had a shattered leg and the other was slowly bleeding to death from a jagged wound in his thigh which he had tried in vain to staunch. Tinkham bandaged them up to the best of his ability and started to drag them both back to safety. With his help and encouragement, each of them crawled for himself as best he was able. It was a weary journey. During the last part of it, however, he was helped by other volunteers who were shamed into action by seeing this wounded man do what they had not dared. All three recovered and lived to take part in the latter-day victories which were yet to come.

Tinkham was but one of the thousands of brave men who risked their lives to save their comrades. There was Michael Madden who at Mason's Island, Maryland, was on a reconnaissance with a comrade within the enemy's lines. His companion was wounded. A number of the enemy's cavalry started out to cut off the two men who were at the same time exposed to concentrated fire from the enemy's sharp-shooters. Madden picked his comrade up as if he had been a child, hoisted him to his back and ran with him to the bank of the Potomac, and plunged off into the water. Swimming on his back, he kept his comrade's head up and crossed the river in safety with the bullets hissing and spattering all around him.

Then there was Julius Langbein, a drummer-boy fifteen years old. In 1862 at Camden, N.C., the captain of his company was shot down. Langbein went to his help, but found that unless he received surgical treatment, he could not live an hour. Unstrapping his drum, he ran back to the rear and found a surgeon who was brave enough to go out to the front with him and under a heavy fire give first-aid to the wounded officer. Then the two carried the unconscious captain back to safety.

It is a brave man that can rally himself in a retreat. Usually men go with the crowd. Once let the tide of battle begin to ebb and a company or a regiment or a brigade commence a retreat, it takes not only unusual courage, but also unusual will-power for any single man to stand out against his fellows and resist not only his own fears, but theirs. Such a man was John S. Kenyon. At Trenton, S.C., on May 15, 1862, the whole column of his regiment, the 3d New York Cavalry, was retreating under a murderous fire from the enemy. Kenyon was in the rear rank. The retreat had started at a trot, had increased to a gallop and finally the whole column was riding at breakneck speed away from the shot and shell which crashed through their ranks. At the very height of their speed a man riding next to Kenyon was struck in the right shoulder by a grape-shot. The force of the blow pitched him headlong from the saddle. He still held to his reins with his left hand with a death-grip and was dragged for yards by his plunging, snorting horse. Kenyon was just ahead and knew nothing of the occurrence until he heard a faint voice behind him calling breathlessly, "Help, John, help!" He looked back and saw his comrade nearly fifty yards behind lying on the ground. Already his fingers were loosening their grip on the rein and the blood was flowing fast from the gash on his shoulder. Behind him the Confederate cavalry came thundering along not a quarter of a mile away while the massed batteries behind them swept the whole field with a hail of lead and steel. John hesitated for a minute and for the last time he heard once more the call of help, this time so faint that he could hardly hear it above the din of the battle. With a quick movement, he swung his horse to one side of the column.

"Don't be a fool, John," shouted one of the men ahead; "it's every man for himself now. You can't save him and you'll only lose your own life."

It was the old plausible lie that started when Satan said of Job, "Skin for skin, all that a man hath will he give for his life." It was a lie then and it is just as much a lie to-day.

"Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friend," said our Master. Every day when the crisis comes we see men who will do that. Kenyon was one of these men. As he said afterward, "I should never have been able to get Jim's voice out of my mind if I hadn't stopped."