The real mettle of the officers and men of the regiment was fairly tested in this battle, and the result shows that they were among the bravest soldiers in the army. In the depressing adversities of the early morning, as well as in the success which followed later in the day, their courage was equally conspicuous. Stubborn and unflinching when the enemy burst upon them in greatly superior numbers, they were impetuous and daring while on the charge.
Captain Clarke, as Adjutant-General of the Brigade, led a large body of re-enforcements on the charge at six o’clock. Lieutenant-Colonel Browne, while carrying an order from the commander of the division, dashed on horseback directly through the lines of a Confederate regiment. Captain Pizer, Lieutenant Josselyn, Lieutenant McQuillan, and Lieutenant Scully, who were captured, all escaped, and fought with great gallantry in the latter part of the battle, and for their bravery were afterwards brevetted.
The captured of the regiment, who did not manage to escape, were carried to Petersburg, and confined in a small room till nine o’clock in the morning. They were then transferred to a large hall in the village, where they were all searched, and their overcoats taken from them. Towards noon they were marched from the hall, together with a number of other prisoners, to an open field on the outskirts of the town, and were kept there under guard till night, when they took the cars for Richmond. During the day it rained and snowed by turns, and the wind was cold and piercing, the poor soldiers, stripped of their overcoats, suffering intensely. No food was given them till about noon of the following day; and then nothing but a small quantity of bean soup, without any seasoning, brought to them in dirty iron kettles. The men were confined together in one room at the notorious Libby Prison; and, as further illustrating the barbarous nature of their treatment, it should be stated, that crowded into the same apartment, which was filthy in the extreme, alive with vermin, and poorly ventilated, were nearly two hundred other prisoners. The quantity and quality of the food dealt out to them was such as hardly to sustain life: the breakfast consisted of a small ration of smoked pork; for dinner they had bean soup; and at night a small loaf of bread, with water. All the food was of the most inferior quality; the meat especially, which frequently emitted a nauseating odor.
Happily, these men were not compelled to endure such privations for many days; but they were days of anxiety and suffering, as the author well knows from his own experience. The life of the wicked Rebellion was fast ebbing away; a few days before Lee’s surrender the men were released, and sent to the prison depot at Annapolis, Maryland, afterwards joining the regiment at Georgetown, District of Columbia.
After the repulse of the enemy on the 25th of March, and the recapture of our works, the regiment again occupied Battery No. 11, supported by the Fifty-seventh and Fifty-ninth Massachusetts regiments. The final movements of our army, which resulted in the surrender of General Lee, were close at hand. A state of feverish excitement prevailed among both armies in front of Petersburg. The enemy were disposed to be belligerent, and for nearly a week kept up a constant fire upon our lines.
On the 27th of March, General Sheridan began his grand movement on the left, and the whole army had orders to be ready to march at a moment’s notice.
On the 30th, General Parke, commanding the corps, was ordered to assault the enemy’s works in his front at four o’clock the next morning, but the order was subsequently countermanded by General Meade.
On the 1st of April, the order for an assault was renewed. At ten o’clock that night our artillery opened all along our line, and at the same time a heavy force of skirmishers was sent forward. General Griffin’s brigade captured the enemy’s picket line, opposite Forts Howard and Hayes, and a number of prisoners. During these movements our whole line was forming for the assault, which was made at about four o’clock in the morning of the 2d. The contest was a bloody one, but was very successful.
At the close of the day, during which the enemy made repeated attacks, General Parke was in possession of several hundred yards of the enemy’s lines, on each side of the Jerusalem Plank Road, including several formidable works. In the meantime a determined attack on the left had been made by the Sixth, Second, and parts of the Twenty-fifth corps, capturing a considerable number of prisoners.
During the battle on this part of the line, General A. P. Hill of the Confederate army was killed. He was one of the most distinguished officers of the long list of able and brilliant Southern Generals. The tragic account of his death, given by E. A. Pollard in his “Lost Cause,”[57] is probably incorrect, and is of the same sensational character as much else that this pseudo historian has written.