A Boy Trooper with Sheridan

by Stanton P. Allen

He was dead.

“He was so much like my boy who was killed at Antietam,” said the surgeon, as he folded the dead Confederate's hands over the mother's picture.

Search was made for a letter or writing that would identify the boy or reveal his mother's address. Only one letter was found in his pocket. There was no envelope; no postmark. It began, “My darling soldier boy,” and breathed the mother's anxiety for the welfare of her son, and the prayer that he would be spared to return and make glad that mother's heart. And the signature—“Your fond and affectionate mother.” Nothing more. There was no time for ceremony; barely time to bury the dead. The boy's body was wrapped in a U. S. blanket and put in a trench hastily dug and hastily filled.

The advance on Cold Harbor was led by the First and Second Divisions of the cavalry corps under Sheridan. The Third Division under Wilson had been sent out on the right flank to tear up the Virginia Central railroad. That duty was performed, and at the same time Wilson's division engaged the Georgia cavalry under Gen. P. B. M. Young, at Hanover Court House. The Confederates were driven out. In the meantime we were having our hands full at Cold Harbor, toward which place we marched all night, after the fight at Hawes's Shop. Sheridan had pushed forward Torbert's division, and a severe fight was had with the enemy, resulting in the occupancy of Cold Harbor and the important cross-roads by the First Division. While Torbert's men were fighting at Cold Harbor, our division guarded the road near Old Church. An order came from Sheridan for Gregg to send re-enforcements, to Torbert, and Davies's brigade was ordered to the front. We arrived too late to help the First Division drive out the rebels, but we were in time to assist in holding Cold Harbor the next day till the infantry came to our relief.

Sheridan had concluded that he could not hold Cold Harbor without infantry support, and the doughboys were eight or ten miles away. Orders were given to fall back to Old Church during the night of May 31. The withdrawal was made in good order, and we were congratulating ourselves on escaping from the trap the rebel infantry was preparing to spring upon us at daybreak, when we received orders to face about and hold Cold Harbor “at all hazards.” Back we went, and preparations were made for resisting the attack of the enemy, which we felt sure would be made at daylight. If the rebels had discovered that we had moved out of the breastworks in their front, and had advanced and occupied the line, they could have held Cold Harbor against our four brigades, as the Confederate cavalry was supported by Hoke's and Kershaw's infantry.

Our position at Cold Harbor was anything but satisfactory, as we “turned doughboys” and began to dig for our lives, the necessity of entrenching our line being well understood, as we were to fight on foot. Sheridan says in his Memoirs, speaking of the return to Cold Harbor: “We now found that the temporary breastworks of rails and logs which the Confederates had built were of incalculable benefit to us in furnishing material with which to establish a line of defense, they being made available by simply reversing them at some points, or at others wholly reconstructing them to suit the circumstances of the ground. The troops, without reserves, were then placed behind our cover, dismounted, boxes of ammunition distributed along the line, and the order passed along that the place must be held. All this was done in the darkness, and while we were working away at our cover, the enemy could be distinctly heard from our skirmish line giving commands and making preparations to attack.”

Thursday morning, June 1, the rebels attacked Sheridan at Cold Harbor. The troopers were not directed to withhold their fire till they could “see the whites of the eyes” of the foe, but they permitted the Johnnies to come within short range before opening on them. The Confederate infantry charged the breastworks, the rebel yell being heard above the terrible din of battle. Sheridan's men demonstrated to their commander and to the world that they could fight afoot or on horseback. The rebels did not get near enough to stick any of our boys with their bayonets, which had been fixed for that sort of butchery. Before they came within bayonet distance they were so badly demoralized by the raking fire of the Federal cavalrymen armed with breach-loading carbines, that they took to their heels and skedaddled back to the woods from which they had started on their charge. Their flight was accelerated by the terrible fire poured into their ranks by our flying artillery, which had opened on the rebels as they came forward to the attack.

Again the Johnnies came, after they had recovered somewhat from their first repulse. But the Yankees gave the enemy another red-hot reception, and the rebels were forced to take to the woods. Before the second charge our regiment was mounted and sent out on the flank to support a battery that had been ordered to shell the Confederates out of a piece of woods.

It was a very trying situation. The artillerymen ran their guns out to the skirmish line, unlimbered and opened on the woods. The rebels replied with artillery and infantry, and the enemy's gunners got our range in a short time. The shells were bursting all around and over us for fifteen or twenty minutes. We sat on our horses ready to charge the rebels should they dash out of the woods and attempt to capture our artillery. It was far more trying on the nerves to sit bolt upright in the saddle as a target for rebel cannoneers and infantry, than it would have been to charge the enemy's lines and engage in hand-to-hand conflict.

A solid shot cut Corporal Goddard's haversack from his saddle without injuring the corporal or his horse. Corporal Jack Hazelet was on the left of the squadron. The corporal was given to stammering, and so was the captain and brevet major in command of the next squadron on our left. As a shell went shrieking through the air just over our heads, the boys naturally began to dodge. Then the captain shouted: