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

At about two o'clock P. M. Birney's Division arrived at the threatened point and were at once deployed for action on the Brock road, and to the left, or south, of its intersection with the plank road. Here the men of Co. F. found themselves again shoulder to shoulder with their friends.

The old Vermont brigade formed part of Getty's Division and were already deployed and sharply engaged; so that Co. F. found themselves in the immediate neighborhood of the gallant Vermonters. Immediately upon the arrival of the head of the division upon the field, and pending the necessarily slower formation of the main line, the sharp shooters were pushed out towards the enemy and at once came under a heavy fire. It was their first fight under Hancock, and they felt that not only was their own well earned reputation to be sustained, but that the honor of the now dead and gone Third Corps was in a measure committed to their keeping. There, too, just on their right stood the men of the old brigade, proud of their own glorious record, and just a little inclined to rate their own courage and skill above that of any other troops in the army.

Under the stimulus of these conditions the sharp shooters as a regiment, and the men of Co. F in particular, fought with a dash and energy which surprised even their own officers who had learned long before that there was almost no task which the rank and file thought themselves unequal to. This contest of a skirmish line against lines of battle continued for nearly two hours; but at about four o'clock P. M., the whole of the Second Corps having arrived and being in position, a general advance was ordered, and now the fighting, which had been very severe before, became simply terrific. The ground was such that the artillery could not easily be brought into action. Only two guns could be brought up, which were placed on the plank road where they rendered excellent service. The musketry, however, was continuous and deadly along the whole line. The roar of battle was deafening, and struck upon the ear with a peculiar effect from the almost total absence of artillery, usually so noisy an accompaniment of modern battle. The men who noted this fact, however, were men accustomed to warfare, and who knew that the fire of infantry was much more deadly than that of artillery, and never before had they heard such continuous thunder or confronted such a storm of lead as on this occasion. The fierce struggle continued with unabated ferocity until the merciful night put an end to it. The Brock road was held, but it had been impossible to do more. The enemy were badly shattered, and at points the line had been broken; but the nature of the ground was such as to prevent an orderly and systematic pushing of such advantages as were, here and there, gained, and, except that the key point remained in the hands of the federals, it was a drawn battle.

The men lay on their arms during the night, in the position in which the cessation of the battle found them; and, as illustrative of the closeness of the contending lines, and the labyrinthian character of the ground, it may be stated that during the night many men from both armies while searching for water, or for their wounded friends, strayed within the opposing lines and were made prisoners. Among the above were Sergt. Paul M. Thompson and J. H. Guthrie of Co. F. Besides these two men, Co. F had lost terribly in killed and wounded during the day. Corporal David French, W. J. Domag and E. E. Trask were killed on the field; A. C. M. Cross and Wm. Wilson were mortally wounded, while M. Cunningham, Spafford A. Wright, John C. Page, S. M. Butler and Wm. McKeever suffered severe and painful wounds—a total of twelve men lost out of the forty-three who answered to the roll call on that morning, and this in the first fight of the campaign.

But the survivors felt that they had well and nobly sustained the honor of their corps, and of their state. They were proud, also, to have received the commendation of distinguished officers of the old Vermont Brigade, and so, with mingled emotions of sorrow and gladness, they lay down on the bloody field. It will be remembered that the sharp shooters had been pushed out on the left of the plank road immediately upon their arrival and while the troops of the line were being formed on the Brock road. In this formation, Birney's Division had been sent to the north or right of the plank road, and formed on Getty's right; so that during the subsequent battle the sharp shooters had been separated from their brigade, and had been fighting in an entirely independent manner, subject to no orders but those of their regimental and company officers. At daylight the men were rallied on the colors and moved to the north of the plank road in search of their proper command, which, after some search in the tangled forest, they found the shattered remains of. The brigade commander, Gen. Alexander Hays, and very many other gallant officers and men had fallen on the preceding day, and so heavy had been the losses that the entire brigade when deployed, hardly covered the front of an average regiment as they had stood when the army crossed the Rapidan.

Notwithstanding his severe losses of the day before, Gen. Grant (who, by the way, was understood to have expressed the opinion at some time that "The Army of the Potomac had never been fought up to its capacity") ordered another general assault along the whole line at five A. M. on the sixth.

Promptly at that hour the Second Corps advanced along the Orange plank road, the sharp shooters being now on the right of that thoroughfare with their own division. They were, as on the day before, in the front line, but on this occasion they were heavily supported from the start, Birney's and Mott's Divisions being in the first line while Getty's Division formed a second line, the whole supported by Carroll's and Owen's brigades of the Second Division of the same corps.

The attack was made with great vigor and impetuosity, and was for a time successful, the enemy being driven with great loss and disorder from two strong lines of works, one about four hundred yards behind the other, which they had materially strengthened during the night. Birney's left, in front of which was Co. F, advanced further than his right, driving the Confederates before them and completely disrupting their line at this point; in fact so far did they penetrate that they were in a position to take the rebel left in flank and rear, and at one time the sharp shooters, during a momentary lull on their own front, turned their attention to a Confederate battery which was actually in rear of their right, and which they had passed beyond in their charge. They were not destined to reap the fruits of this victory, however, for at this time Longstreet's command arrived on the field and commenced a furious attack on Birney's exposed left. Changing fronts to meet this new enemy, the sharp shooters, with the aid of their comrades of Birney's Division, made a vigorous resistance to this counter attack. The momentum of their own charge was gone; they had now fought their way through nearly a mile of thickets and swamps and had, necessarily, lost their alignment and cohesion. The utmost they could now hope to do was to beat back the oncoming rebels and give the Union troops time to reform for another assault. It was a vain effort, for the fresh masses of rebel troops succeeded in forcing the advanced left back as far as the center and right, which was at the same time, about seven o'clock A. M., struck by a strong force of Confederates. By desperate effort the line was held and a reorganization effected, and at about nine o'clock the offensive was resumed along the plank road. The force of this attack was seriously impaired by the supposed necessity of protecting the extreme left which was greatly exposed. For some time heavy firing had been heard in that direction, and ugly rumors of columns of infantry, too strong to be checked by the cavalry, were rife. Then, too, a considerable body of infantry was discovered actually approaching the left and rear from the direction of Spotsylvania. All this necessitated the detachment of considerable bodies of troops to guard that wing, which weakened the force of the main attack. The infantry force which had occasioned so much uneasiness proved to be a body of convalescents trying to rejoin the Union army, and the troops sent to oppose them were restored to the point of action. By this time, in the movement of the lines, the sharp shooters found themselves, with most of the division, again on the left of the plank road. The fighting now became as close and severe as that of the preceding day; so dense and dark was the thicket, that the lines were often close together before either could determine whether the other was friend or foe; regiments lost their brigades and brigades their divisions. Indeed, so confused was the melee that it is stated that one regiment, being surrounded and ordered to surrender, actually laid down their arms to another regiment of their own brigade.

Still, progress was made, and, on the whole, the federals, although losing heavily, were gaining substantial ground. After half an hour of this work the troops on the right of Birney's Division having given way, Birney detached two of his own brigades to fill the gap, and at about eleven o'clock the resistance in front of Hancock's Corps having nearly ceased, another halt was called to readjust the confused and irregular lines. Before this could be accomplished a new enemy appeared square on the left of Birney's Division, which was doubled up by the suddenness and impetuosity of the attack, and the confusion became so great along the whole line that Gen. Hancock directed a withdrawal of the entire corps to the breastworks which had been constructed on the Brock road, and from which they had advanced on the day before. It began to look like the same old story—as though Chancellorsville was to be repeated—and as though the most cheerful bulletin Grant would have to send North would be the often repeated one, "The Army of the Potomac is again safe across the Rapidan."

But there, some way, seemed to be no actual movement looking in that direction—in fact, Grant had ordered the bridges removed as soon as the last troops had crossed the river, and for twenty-four hours there had been no possibility of recrossing had any one been so minded. Lines of retreat seemed to have no place in the plans of the new general-in-chief.