Vermont riflemen in the war for the union, 1861 to 1865 / A history of Company F, First United States sharp shooters

by William Young Warren Ripley

The rebels, flushed with the very substantial advantages they had gained during the past summer, were confident and full of enthusiasm. Posted in an exceptionally strong position, their flanks resting on the Potomac while their front was covered by the deep and rapid Antietam, they calmly awaited the Union attack, confident that the army which they had so signally discomfitted under Pope would again recoil before their fire. But the Union situation was not the same that it had been a month before; McClellan had resumed the command, not only of the old Army of the Potomac—the darling child of his own creation, and which in turn loved and honored him with a devotion difficult for the carping critic of these modern times to understand—but of the remains of the army of Northern Virginia as well.

These incongruous elements he had welded together, reorganized and re-equipped while still on the march, until, when they stood again before Lee's hosts on the banks of Antietam creek on the 17th of September, they were as compact in organization and as confident as at any previous time in their history. Then, too, they were to fight on soil which, if not entirely loyal, was at least not the soil of the so called Confederate States; and the feeling that they were called upon for a great effort in behalf of an endangered North, gave an additional stimulus to their spirits and nerved their arms with greater power. But with the history of this great battle we have little to do. The Fifth Corps was held in reserve during the entire day. It was the first time in the history of the company that its members had been lookers on while rebel and Unionist fought together; here, however, they could, from their position, overlook most of the actual field of battle as mere spectators of a scene, the like of which they had so often been actors in.

On the day after the battle they received a welcome addition to their terribly reduced ranks by the arrival of some fifty recruits under Lieut. Bronson, who had been detached on recruiting service while the army yet lay along the Chicahominy during the previous month of June. On the 19th of September the pursuit of Lee's retreating army was taken up, the Fifth Corps in the advance, and the sharp shooters leading the column. The rear guard of the enemy was overtaken at Blackford's ford, at which place Lee had recrossed the Potomac.

The rebel skirmishers having been driven across the river, preparations for forcing the pursuit into Virginia were made, and the sharp shooters were ordered to cross and drive the rebel riflemen from their sheltered positions along the Virginia shore. The water was waist deep but, holding their cartridge boxes above their heads, they advanced in skirmish line totally unable to reply to the galling fire that met them as they entered the stream. Stumbling and floundering along, they at last gained the farther shore and quickly succeeded in compelling the rebels to retire.

Advancing southward to a suitable position, Co. F was ordered to establish an advanced picket line in the execution of which order a party under Corporal Cassius Peck discovered the presence of a small body of the enemy with two guns, who had been left behind for some reason by the retreating rebels. This force was soon put to flight and both guns captured and one man taken prisoner. The captured guns were removed to a point near the river bank, from which they were subsequently removed to the Maryland shore. Remaining in this position until after dark the sharp shooters were ordered back to the north bank of the river, to which they retired. Morning found them posted in the bed of the canal which connects Washington with Harper's Ferry, and which runs close along the Maryland shore of the Potomac at this point. The water being out of the canal, its bed afforded capital shelter, and its banks a fine position from which to fire upon the rebels, now again in full possession of the opposite shore from which they had been driven by the sharp shooters the previous afternoon, but which had been deliberately abandoned to them again by the recall of the regiment to the northern shore on the preceding night.

It now became necessary to repossess that position, and a Pennsylvania regiment composed of new troops were ordered to make the attempt. Covered by the close and rapid fire of the sharp shooters, the Pennsylvanians succeeded in crossing the river, but every attempt to advance from the bank met with repulse. Wearied and demoralized by repeated failures, the regiment took shelter under the banks of the river where they were measurably protected from the fire of the enemy, and covered also by the rifles of the sharp shooters posted in the canal. Ordered to recross the river, they could not be induced by their officers to expose themselves in the open stream to the fire of the exulting rebels.

Every effort was made by the sharp shooters to encourage them to recross, but without avail. Calvin Morse, a bugler of Co. F, and thus a non-combatant (except that Co. F had no non-combatants), crossed the stream, covered by the fire of his comrades, to demonstrate to the panic stricken men that it could be done; but they could not be persuaded, and most of them were finally made prisoners. In these operations Co. F was exceptionally fortunate, and had no casualties to report.

The regiment remained at or near Sharpsburgh, Maryland, until the 30th of October following. The members of Co. F, except the recruits, were but poorly supplied with clothing; much had been abandoned and destroyed when they left their camp at Gaines Hill on the 27th of June, and much, also, had been thrown away to lighten the loads of the tired owners during the terrible marches and battles they had passed through since that time, and the little they had left was so worn and tattered as to be fit for little more than to conceal their nakedness. The rations, too, were bad; the hard bread particularly so, being wormy and mouldy, and this at a place and time when it seemed to the soldiers that there could be no good reason why such a state of things should exist at all. But time cures all ills, even in the army, and on the 30th of October the regiment, completely refitted, rested and in fine spirits, crossed the Potomac at Harper's Ferry and were once more on the sacred soil of Virginia. Moving southwardly towards Warrenton they arrived, on the evening of November 2d, at Snicker's Gap and were at once pushed out to occupy the summit. The night was intensely dark, and the ground difficult; but a proper picket line was finally established and occupied without event through the night. The next morning's sunlight displayed a wonderful sight to the eyes of the delighted sharp shooters. They were on the very summit of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and below them, like an open map, lay spread out the beautiful valley of Virginia.

Scathed and torn as it was, to a close observer, by the conflicts and marches of the past summer, from the distant point of view occupied by the watchers, all was beautiful and serene. No sign of war, or its desolating touch, was visible; except that here and there could be seen bodies of marching men, and long trains of wagons, which told of the presence of the enemy. Now, however, the head of every column was turned southward, and the rebel army, which had swept so triumphantly northward over that very country only two months before, was retiring, beaten and baffled, before the army of the Union. The scene was beautiful to the eye, while the reflections engendered by it were of the most hopeful nature, and the sharp shooters descended the southern slope of the mountain with high hopes and glowing anticipations of speedy and decisive action.

From Snicker's Gap the army advanced by easy marches to Warrenton, where, on the 7th of November, Gen. McClellan was relieved from the command and Gen. Burnside appointed to that position. The army accepted the change like soldiers, but with a deep sense of regret. The vast mass of the rank and file honored and trusted Gen. McClellan as few generals in history have been trusted by their followers. He was personally popular among the men, but below and behind this feeling was the belief that in many respects Gen. McClellan had not been quite fairly treated by some of those who ought to have been his warm and ardent supporters. They felt that political influences, which had but little hold upon the soldiers in the field, had been at work to the personal disadvantage of their loved commander, and to the disadvantage of the army and the cause of the Union as well.