The History of the Twenty-ninth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry / in the Late War of the Rebellion

by William H. Osborne

During this battle, Charles H. Dwinnell of Company A, a worthy comrade and brave soldier, was killed, and William O’Conner of Company H was captured. Dwinnell was shot through the brain by a sharpshooter stationed in a tall pine. The ball was probably aimed at Captain Clarke, who was quite conspicuous at the time; the sharpshooter was instantly marked and shot by two of Dwinnell’s comrades, who fired simultaneously, the enemy’s body being seen to fall out of the tree.

The siege of the city commenced on the 17th, and progressed rather gradually, beginning on the west and northwest, and finally extending around the entire city, from river to river. As the work of investing the place continued, our pickets were constantly pressed in close upon the main works, so that by the 29th of November we scarcely held more than the slope of the plateau crowned by our main fortifications, and in some cases not even that.

To the right of Fort Sanders, named after a brilliant cavalry general who was killed early in the siege, and west of the city, Humphrey’s and Christ’s brigades picketed one side of the railroad cut, and the enemy the other.

On one occasion, before the pickets were drawn in, a little squad of the Twenty-ninth assaulted a house in front of them, and driving away the enemy’s pickets there stationed, captured it, and brought in the supplies, which consisted of a small sack of meal, a few pounds of bacon, a box of tobacco, an eight-gallon keg of blackberry brandy, and two boxes of cartridges. The enemy re-formed and recaptured the house, but our men brought their booty safely into camp. There was meal enough to give each man in the company to which these adventurers belonged, a dish of hasty-pudding, and tobacco enough to furnish every man in the regiment with a good-sized piece. The brandy and cartridges were accounted for during the night by some of the wildest picket-firing that occurred during the siege. There was by no means a large supply of food in the city when the siege began, but long before it concluded, all kinds of provisions became extremely scarce.

On the 19th, the Confederates drove in our outer pickets and took possession of the woods. On the evening of the 23d, they attacked our picket line in front of the Brigade, and seemed to be on the point of bringing on a general engagement. The order was given to set fire to a long line of buildings between the two armies. This was done to break the enemy’s lines and unmask their movements, and resulted very successfully. The conflagration that followed was both grand and awful. The dark wintry sky was lighted up by the flames, which roared and crackled with an unearthly sound, casting a broad belt of dazzling light over the fields and into the forests. In the round-house of the railroad, there was stored a large amount of condemned ammunition, and when the flames reached that, there was an explosion that shook the earth, and startled the anxious residents of the city.

The 26th of November was Thanksgiving Day. The men got a full ration of bullets, but only a half-ration of bread.

About midnight of the 28th, the picket line near the river on the southwest was driven in, and could not be re-established by the brigade which furnished it. The line in front of Fort Sanders had also been assailed and taken by the enemy, and about nine o’clock in the evening an order was sent to take the regiment out of the lines and place it in the immediate rear of the fort for special duty; Major Chipman had command. A little later in the evening, Companies A, C, D, and K were detached, and ordered to our lines near the river, where the enemy had a few hours before captured our rifle-pits.

The night had nearly gone, and the first glimmer of day had appeared, when the familiar charging yell of the enemy was heard directly in front of the fort. Our pickets at this point were forced in, and in a moment more a large body of the enemy’s infantry were swarming at the very edge of the ditch. The battalion of the Twenty-ninth, under Chipman, were hurried into the fort, and the four detached companies at once sent for. The latter had a perilous experience in joining their comrades, and though exposed to the fire of the enemy’s cannon, reached the works without the loss of a man, and in ample time to lend a hand in the severe contest which was now well under way. The Confederates, led by fearless officers, crowded the ditch, and crossing it on each other’s shoulders, began to ascend the bank; one of their standard-bearers came running up and planted his colors upon the parapet, in the very faces of Major Chipman’s men; but he had hardly performed his deed of daring, when one of our soldiers shot him through the heart, and he fell forward into the works. Inspired by the example of their color-bearer, a large body of the Confederates, led by a gray-haired old officer (Colonel Thomas of Georgia), with wild shouts made a dash up the bank. All seemed lost; but at this moment Companies A, C, D, and K of the regiment came running into the fort, and ranging themselves along the parapet, opened a deadly fire upon the assaulting party. The gray old leader of the enemy, while waving his sword and shouting to his men to come on, was shot dead. Many of his brave followers suffered the same fate, and the handful of survivors fell hurriedly back into the ditch. At the same instant, like scenes were transpiring all along the works. The Seventy-ninth New York was sharply engaged, and the artillerymen, not being able to use their pieces, busied themselves by tossing among the enemy lighted shell with their fuses cut to a few seconds’ length. Finally a sergeant of one of the batteries, observing a renewed preparation of the enemy to charge up the bank, slewed one of the large guns about so as to make it bear upon the edge of the ditch, and, with a single charge of canister, raked it for a distance of several yards with deadly effect. About this time the assault slackened; but in a few moments another column of the enemy came rushing towards the fort, and with almost sublime courage faced the withering fire of our troops, and large numbers of them gained the bank. The first terrible scenes of the battle were re-enacted; three of the enemy’s standards were planted simultaneously upon the parapet, but they were quickly torn away by our men. The resistance was as desperate as the assault: officers used freely their swords, the men clubbed their muskets, others used their bayonets, and others still axes and the rammers of the cannon. A struggle so severe as this could not be otherwise than of short duration. In a few minutes the enemy’s soldiers began to falter and fall back into the ditch. Seeing this, General Ferrero, who was in command of the fort and closely watching the fight, ordered one company of the Twenty-ninth on the left, and one company of the Second Michigan on the right, to go through the embrasures and charge the disorganized enemy. Sweeping down the ditch, these commands captured about two hundred of the enemy, and drove them into the fort, the little squad of the Twenty-ninth following their captives and bearing triumphantly two battle-flags of the foe; the capturers of which were Sergeant Jeremiah Mahoney of Company A, and Private Joseph S. Manning of Company K, both of whom afterwards received the medals of honor voted by the Congress of the United States.

The fight immediately died away in front of Fort Sanders, and the remnant of the enemy’s charging column shrank back within their lines in dismay and confusion. But on the left, where the Federal rifle-pits had been captured on the afternoon of the 28th, a fierce battle was heard. Hartranft’s division was sharply engaged with the enemy in its efforts to recapture the pits, and the effort was soon successful. The Confederates were everywhere routed, our entire line re-established, and by ten o’clock that Sunday morning quietness had settled down over the whole field. The enemy seemed appalled by the dreadful calamity that had overtaken him,—a calamity, as we shall presently see, that practically ended the siege. Ninety-eight dead bodies were taken out of the fatal ditch from a space of four hundred square feet around the salient. General Humphrey, who commanded the Mississippi brigade, was found dead on the glacis, within twenty feet of the face of the ditch. Lying among the dead in the moat, in every conceivable condition, were the wounded; and scattered all over the open space in front of the fort, through which telegraph wires had been stretched from stump to stump to impede the movements of the assailants, were scattered hundreds of both dead and wounded, and among them not a few of the enemy’s soldiers unhurt, who, dismayed at the awful storm of shell and grape that poured upon them, had lain prone upon the earth until the battle was over, only too willing to be captured. Nearly five hundred stand of small arms were collected on the field within our picket lines. Pollard states the enemy’s loss in this battle at seven hundred.

The great bravery of this charge entitles those who participated in it to honorable mention. The troops who engaged in this assault “consisted of three brigades of McLaw’s division; that of General Wolford,—the Sixteenth, Eighteenth, and Twenty-fourth Georgia regiments, and Cobb’s and Phillips’s Georgia legions; that of General Humphrey,—the Thirteenth, Seventeenth, Twenty-first, Twenty-second, and Twenty-third Mississippi regiments; and a brigade composed of Generals Anderson’s and Bryant’s brigades, embracing among others, the Palmetto State Guard, the Fifteenth South Carolina Regiment, and the Fifty-first, Fifty-third, and Fifty-ninth Georgia regiments.”[42] The troops that garrisoned the fort were Benjamin’s United States Battery, Buckley’s Rhode Island Battery, a part of Roemer’s New York Battery, the Seventy-ninth New York Highlanders, and, at the very beginning of the fight, a battalion of the Twenty-ninth under Major Chipman, and before the repulse of the assault on the salient, Captain Clarke’s and the other companies of the regiment already named. When the battle was well advanced, and affairs had assumed a serious aspect, the One Hundredth Pennsylvania was moved up in the rear of the fort, and a few minutes before the close of the fight, the Second Michigan was ordered into the works on the right, one of its companies being detailed to sweep the ditch. Our loss in the fort was eight killed and five wounded, and among the former were two members of the Twenty-ninth; namely, Sergeant John F. Smith of Company H, and Corporal Gilbert T. Litchfield of Company K, both most excellent soldiers. The loss of the enemy in this encounter doubtless exceeded greatly that given by Mr. Pollard; one of our officers engaged stating it to be fourteen hundred.