The Fourth Massachusetts Cavalry in the Closing Scenes of the War for the Maintenance of the Union, from Richmond to Appomatox

by William B. Arnold; Edward T. Bouvé; La Salle Corbell Pickett

All hope of victory or of escape from such a field was now utterly gone, but the colonel and his men were mad with the fury of battle, and wild with exultation over the bloody triumph already achieved. But one thought possessed them. The little battalion swept down the slope once more, pressing close behind their knightly leader and their blue standard. They crashed through three lines of their advancing enemies, tearing their formation asunder as the tornado cuts its way through the forest. But now, order and coherence were lost, and the troopers mingled with the Confederates in a bitter hand-to-hand struggle. A few scattered fighters were rallied from out this fearful melée by the gallant Captain Hodges, than whom a more chivalrous soldier never drew sabre. He led them in a last furious charge, in which he fell, as he would have wished, “amid the battle’s wildest tide.”

By this time, all was lost. Eight of the officers lay dead or wounded upon the field. Three were prisoners, their horses having been killed under them. The surgeon and chaplain, being non-combatants, were captured while in attendance upon the wounded.

The battle at High Bridge was finished, for General Read had been mortally wounded at the first fire after the infantry had rallied in support of the cavalry attack, and the two small regiments were overwhelmed and compelled to surrender as soon as the cavalry had ceased to be a factor.

Colonel Washburn had been shot in the mouth and sabred as he fell from his horse. He was found on the field with the other dead and wounded the next day, when the advance of the Army of the James came up. He was taken to the hospital at Point of Rocks but insisted upon being sent to his home in Massachusetts, where he died in the arms of his mother. Before his death, he was, at Grant’s request, brevetted as Brigadier General.

Of the other officers, Lieutenant Colonel Jenkins was severely wounded, as were Captain Caldwell and Lieutenants Belcher and Thompson. Captains Hodges and Goddard were killed, and Lieutenant Davis shot after having been made a prisoner, for resenting an insult offered him by a rebel officer. The adjutant, Lieutenant Lathrop, after his horse had been killed under him, was taken into the woods to be shot, because his captor asserted that he had slain his brother in the fight. Fortunately a Confederate staff-officer observed the proceeding, and rescued him from his would-be murderer.

Happily, the casualties among the enlisted men were much less in proportion than among the officers. They had to a man fought with the most desperate valor, keeping up the struggle after all the officers were down, until absolutely ingulfed in the masses of the enemy.

In telling of the practical annihilation of a body of troops, the statement that their standard was saved from capture seems almost incredible; yet such was the case in this instance. The color sergeant, a gallant soldier from Hingham by the name of Thomas Hickey, had carried the standard through the hottest of the battle. At the last moment, seeing that it was impossible to save it from capture except by destroying it, he managed to elude the enemies who were closing in upon him, and putting spurs to his horse, flew toward a hut which he had observed in the woods, and threw himself from his charger just as he reached it, with his foes close upon him. Rushing it, he thrust his precious battle flag into a fire which was blazing on the hearth. The painted silk flashed up in flame, and by the time that his pursuers broke in, it was ashes!

His life was spared in consideration of his devoted bravery, and he subsequently received a commission from the Governor of the Commonwealth, in recognition of his heroic deed.

The losses of the Confederates in this action were at least a half greater in number than Washburn’s whole force. By their own report, there were a hundred killed and wounded, among them a general, one colonel, three majors and a number of officers of lower grade.

The Battle at High Bridge was at first thought to have been a useless sacrifice. It was a sacrifice indeed, but it unquestionably hastened the termination of the war, by days, and perhaps weeks.