It is not possible, within any reasonable limits, for a paper already too long for your patience, to undertake the recital of the numerous thrilling incidents. One may be mentioned:
An artillery sergeant, whose gun was at first stationed outside the fort behind an exterior parapet, was driven in by the rush of the enemy, and his men being all killed, he had to abandon it. Wounded himself in several places, he came into the Redoubt, frothing with rage at the loss of his piece, and demanded a crew of volunteers to go out with him and get it. Notwithstanding the deadly fire, he got them, and in three minutes was back with his recovered prize with more wounds to his account. A bloodier man was never seen, but he kept at his work, loading and firing, until a musket ball passed through his neck, and he dropped dead. The same ball traversed the body of an Iowa officer, with whom I was standing further back, and then struck me with force enough to take my breath. That ball had killed two men, and I preserved it with the name and date of the battle scratched on its but slightly distorted surface.
On Tourtellotte’s side a grim war comedy was enacted. The remains of two Mississippi Regiments—the 35th and 39th of Sears’ brigade, that had charged with desperation, found themselves as the surge of battle that broke upon the hill went back, lodged in a sheltered depression of the north front, whence they could move neither up nor down without concentrating upon themselves the fire of Tourtellotte’s whole front. Unable to determine what course to take, they remained where they were to think it over, and Tourtellotte, observing their embarrassment, thoughtfully sent a portion of the 4th Minnesota to their rescue and invited them to come in. One field and several line officers and 80 men with the colors of the two regiments were the reward of the Yankee courtesy.
After the fight was over we thankfully emerged from the shambles and went out to survey the field. The dead, the dying and the wounded lay everywhere. The ditches immediately outside the Redoubt were crammed with corpses. There were dead rebels within 100 feet of the work, and they were piled in stacks near the house where they had massed for the final assault which was never made, against the reopened artillery, and the rattle of the Henry rifles. But the appalling center of the tragedy was the pit in which lay the heroes of the 39th Iowa and the 7th Illinois. Such a sight probably was never before presented to the eye of heaven. There is no language to describe it. With all the glad reaction of feeling after the prolonged strain of that mortal day, and the exultant surge of victory that swelled our hearts, it was difficult to stand on the verge of that open grave without a rush of tears to the eye and a spasm of pity clutching at the throat. The trench was crowded with the dead, blue and homespun, Yank and Johnny, inextricably mingled in their last ditch. Our heroes, ordered to hold the place to the last, with supreme fidelity, had died at their posts. As the rebel line run over them, they struck up with their bayonets as the foe struck down, and rolling together in the embrace of death, we found them in some cases mutually transfixed. The theme cannot be dwelt upon.
For relief, take another one, so unique in the circumstances that I doubt at times my own recollection of it. It was in the morning when French first gained the west end of the ridge. The 93rd Illinois was in the vicinity of the outworks, a quarter of a mile or so from the Redoubt. I had been reconnoitering the ground, and the rebel column charged us sharply and without warning. We ran, of course, but in passing through or rather over an old work of low relief, one of our men stooped, grabbed a brick and turned. Curiosity overcame discretion, and I had to look. He threw the brick straight as a bullet at a rebel running toward us, and if I may be believed, the brick caught the man full in the face, and he went down like a log.
One more incident, and I am done. After the battle the wounded of both sides were collected, housed and cared for. One of the surgeons invited me to come to the hospital with him, and on the way said he had a wounded woman there. I expressed surprise, and he said: “See if you can pick her out.” We went through the hospital, and I saw no woman, but passing through again on the way back, the doctor stopped at a bed where a tanned and freckled young rebel, hands and face grimy with dirt and powder, lay resting on an elbow, smoking a corn-cob pipe. The doctor inquired, “How do you feel?” and the answer was, “Pretty well, but my leg hurts like the devil.” As we turned, the doctor said, “That is the woman,” and told me that she belonged to the Missouri Brigade, had had a husband and one or two brothers in one of the regiments, and followed them to the war. When they were all killed, having no home but the regiment, she took a musket and served in the ranks. Like an actor of the old Greek dramas, war has its two masks of tragedy and comedy, although it is difficult at times to determine to which the antiphonal scene belongs—so of this case. It is perhaps not proper in such a paper as this to expose or call attention to the shifts to which the Confederates were forced to fill their ranks, but the incident may be told nevertheless.
THE STORES SAVED.
The stores which had cost such heroic endeavor and expenditure of life, were saved; the stores, which, as Corse says in a private letter, “would have been such a prize as Hood in all his long and bloody career as a soldier had never secured.” This fact is due, independently of the main action, largely to the coolness and vigilance of Tourtellotte, who in addition to fighting Sears on his north front and flanking the attacks on the west Redoubt, kept his mind charged with the protection of the warehouses, even while his wound forced him to physical inaction. As has been stated, he pushed out the 18th Wisconsin to the southward to hold back the two regiments which were in front of the rebel batteries, and only withdrew them at 10:30 when the assaulting column had reached a point in front of the west Redoubt, whence it had a fire upon the rear of the outlying command. Thereafter Tourtellotte kept a wary eye out towards the stores, with men in his southern rifle pit and its vicinity constantly on guard, and cautioned to unceasing vigilance, and although several attempts were made by individuals and small parties to reach the warehouses and fire them, they died on the way and none of them ever attained their destination. We found several bodies scattered about in the vicinity, and one of them within 20 feet of the buildings, with the implements in his hand for firing them.
As to the amount of these stores, General Sherman, in his Memoirs, says there were “over a million rations of bread,” probably with Corse’s report at hand, in which the number is incorrectly stated at that amount. Cox, in his “Atlanta,” gives it more accurately at “nearly three millions.” The actual figures (2,700,000) are given in a letter from Sherman to Corse in acknowledging, on October 7th, Corse’s preliminary report of the same day.