A Yankee Private's Civil War chronicles a soldier's path from starry-eyed volunteer to hardened veteran with a combination of brutal realism and unwavering good humor. Strong's vivid accounts of the intensity of battle and the horrors of war are punctuated by his stories of day-to-day survival tactics and vignettes recounting the quiet heroism of his comrades in arms. His keen observations and perceptions constitute a historical treasure and essential reading for all Civil War buffs.
A Yankee Private's Civil War chronicles a soldier's path from starry-eyed volunteer to hardened veteran with a combination of brutal realism and unwavering good humor. Strong's vivid accounts of the intensity of battle and the horrors of war are punctuated by his stories of day-to-day survival tactics and vignettes recounting the quiet heroism of his comrades in arms. His keen observations and perceptions constitute a historical treasure and essential reading for all Civil War buffs.
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Overview
A Yankee Private's Civil War chronicles a soldier's path from starry-eyed volunteer to hardened veteran with a combination of brutal realism and unwavering good humor. Strong's vivid accounts of the intensity of battle and the horrors of war are punctuated by his stories of day-to-day survival tactics and vignettes recounting the quiet heroism of his comrades in arms. His keen observations and perceptions constitute a historical treasure and essential reading for all Civil War buffs.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780486316161 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dover Publications |
| Publication date: | 04/29/2013 |
| Series: | Dover Military History, Weapons, Armor |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Sales rank: | 523,448 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
Read an Excerpt
A Yankee Private's Civil War
By Robert Hale Strong, Ashley Halsey
Dover Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 2013 Dover Publications, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-31616-1
CHAPTER 1
Much of any war is waiting. After frenzied preparations for combat, everything halts. Servicemen of World War II reduced it to a phrase: "Hurry up and wait." It applied equally in the Civil War. Bob Strong's company was mustered into the Union Army September 2, 1862. For eighteen months, it served on garrison duty in Kentucky and Tennessee and sampled the debatable joys of behind-the-lines life. Not until February, 1864., did it get to the front.
we march off to swipe treason from the earth
When we left Chicago, we were sent to Louisville, Kentucky. On the way there, our train stopped in the early morning at Indianapolis. Some of us, Henry Rolf and I with others, left the train to get something to eat. Pretty soon, we saw a girl some twelve or fourteen years old looking at the train of soldiers. We asked her if she knew where we could get some milk. We asked the right person. Yes, she said, her father ran a dairy and never refused a soldier milk. So we went with her, just a short ways. Her mother met us at the door, took us in, gave us both a bowl of bread-and-milk, and refused to take any pay for it. Both of them at parting, said, "God bless you and all soldier boys." On reaching Louisville, we stayed in camp only two days. Then we were ordered to march to Frankfort, Kentucky, to drive the Rebs away from that vicinity. From that time, we commenced to march in earnest. At Frankfort we drew our guns, cartridge and cap boxes, belt to carry them, and forty rounds of cartridges to every man. Added to our blankets, haversacks, canteen, clothing, which came to sixty-eight pounds, and extras including books, pictures, writing materials, etc., our load must have averaged over eighty pounds to a man, or rather, to a boy, for most of us were under twenty-one years of age. We were pretty well loaded, and no danger of playing much after our march each day was over.
I shall never forget how heavy my load got before we stopped for dinner the day we left Louisville. I thought the straps of my knapsack would pull my shoulders out of joint. The straps of my haversack (smaller bag) and canteen seemed no bigger than a thread, and were cutting the top of my shoulders. My gun seemed to weigh a ton. Never before nor since did I see such a heavy gun!
By the time we halted for dinner, everyone knew more about soldiering than they did in the morning. Nearly everyone went through their goods, emptying what they could best spare. I remember going through mine, but as tired and sore as I was, I could find nothing to spare. During the afternoon, though, I threw away one blanket. That night, no one had any difficulty in finding plenty of stuff that they could spare. It was said that a number of Jews followed the army with wagons and picked up big loads of clothing and other stuff. I know the people, living along the route, picked up lots of stuff.
That second night, Chat Smith got sick and I was left to take care of him and bring him on as soon as he was able to travel. His illness was only a touch of colic, so we resumed, he and I, some time in the A.M. We persuaded the planter at whose house we were left to send a nigger and a one-mule cart to help us on our way. We reached camp after night, and had a hard time to find our company.
At this point, we did some thinking. We had left home burning with a desire to wipe treason from the earth, and in fear that the war would be over before we could get into it. I remember Al Fisher of my company warning us boys not to be too anxious. He spoke of how boys watered elephants, carrying buckets and buckets, to get into the circus free. "Don't be impatient, boys, to see the elephant," Al said. "You will see him soon enough and you won't like him a damn bit, either." And he was right.
The very next night, I found myself on picket duty. I was posted at the extreme left flank, a scary spot. My beat extended along a fence almost to a swamp. The man whom I relieved said he had heard suspicious noises in the swamp, and advised me to keep my eyes wide open. After I had been there some time, I heard noises. Of course, orders were very strict not to fire unless at the enemy.
A good many pickets had been shot by the enemy while on post. Yet our orders were to "halt" everybody three times and, if not obeyed, to fire. The balance of the picket post and the reserve would then rush to the spot, but so many needless alarms had been given that we were told to be cautious.
Well, as I kept walking my beat I saw something moving in among the trees, but could not tell what it was. It did not take me long, alone in the middle of the black night, to make up my mind that it was someone hunting the picket to kill him. As I came back to the end of my beat next time, I plainly saw the enemy by moonlight. I watched him a few moments. He had worked himself quite close to my beat or path. There were several of them. They, as I approached, evidently thought they were discovered and moved off a little. I followed them carefully until quite a ways from my beat, when I ordered them to halt. Then I shot one of them so dead he never squealed.
The reserve came up on the run, and wanted to know what I had fired at. I told them something or someone moving in the brush. Another squad came up and the long roll or drumbeat summoning everyone to arms sounded in camp. Nothing was to be found, though, and all soon settled down. Then I quietly passed the word to our own boys in the company of what I had actually seen and shot, for I knew pretty well what I had done. They came up and cut the hams and shoulders from the dead "enemy," and for breakfast we had fresh ham steak. Even Put Scott, our company lieutenant, had a piece. That was the first blood I shed during the war, but not the last. Oh, dreadful!
The next day we entered Franklin, driving the Rebs out without a fight. We charged over a bridge which they, on retiring, had set on fire. We put out the fire and saved the bridge. Then we went back into camp at Frankfort and drilled and drilled and drilled some more.
Nothing much of importance happened while we lay at Frankfort, except that we made a number of trips after the Rebel General John Morgan. At one time we were started in a terrible hurry at one A.M. and marched eighteen miles, part of the way on the run, and reached a point where-we could see Morgan's camp. The officer in charge of us ordered up a battery and fired at the sleeping camp, thereby notifying Morgan that the enemy was near. He just mounted his men and fled. We, without any rest at all, turned about and marched back to Frankfort without firing a gun. We marched the thirty-six miles between one A.M. and three o'clock the next afternoon—pretty good for comparatively green troops.
At Frankfort there is, or was, the best kept and best laid out cemetery I ever saw, with the finest monuments, etc. I visited the tomb of Daniel Boone, and from a cedar tree growing in the enclosure I whittled out a matchbox and sent it to brother Albert. I don't know what became of it. He never received it.
Our life was uneventful and consisted of camp duty, that is, cleaning camp and sweeping the streets; or picket duty, and the everlasting drill. Our camp was always laid out in streets. Each company occupied a street, so that each regiment had ten streets. Officers' quarters at the head or front, cook house at the rear.
Up to the time we left Frankfort we had large tents, which when we moved were carried on wagons. But when we left Frankfort, each man was given the half of a shelter tent—pup tent, we called them—and we had to carry them ourselves. Each half was a little smaller than a sheet, but heavier stuff, with a row of buttons and buttonholes on three sides, and eyelet holes with looped rope on the fourth side. The buttons and buttonholes were to connect two or more half tents together, and the ropes were to hold the tents in position by means of pegs driven in the ground. Two of the halves buttoned together and stretched over a pole made a shelter from dew, but were not much shelter from rain. Six of them, the length of two with one at each end, would hold six men by a little crowding.
The night before we left for Bowling Green, Kentucky I was on guard duty, and I never saw a harder snowstorm. When the guards walked their beat they kept the snow packed. On each side of their path, the snow was two feet deep in no time. We finally went into camp at Gallatin, Tennessee. The mud was deep, the season unhealthy, and between guard duty and chasing Morgan, the men sickened and died rapidly. The dead march was played every day as someone from the regiment was buried.
In the fall of '63, our regiment was sent to do garrison duty near Nashville. Four companies were stationed in Fort Negley. The other six companies were stationed just outside the fort. Our duty there consisted in providing pickets and occasionally furnishing guards for railroad trains carrying ammunition and supplies to the front. The rail head was at first at Bridgeport, then at Stevens, Alabama.
Then the scene changed again. At Chattanooga—I think it was in February, 1864—we were ordered to the front. We marched all the way over ground fought over by Generals Buell and Bragg. For miles and miles the road was full of dead horses and mules that had been killed or had given out along the way. One day after marching over the dead bodies of mules all day, we went into camp on the bank of a small stream just at dark.
It was my turn to procure water to cook our supper with, so I took our mess canteens and coffee pot down to the stream. I was fortunate to find an old log extending a little ways into the creek, so I stood on the log and filled my vessels. We made coffee, ate our supper and went to bed. The next morning I went back by daylight for water for our day's march, and found that the "log" that I stood on the night before was a dead and rotting mule. It was raining, and the rain had been running off the mule's body, and our coffee had been partly mule soup. I filled my canteens at another place this time.
Shortly thereafter, we went into camp permanently at the foot of Lookout Mountain near the spot where they fought the famous "Battle Above the Clouds." Our camping place was called Wauhatchie Valley. On the north of us loomed up mountains; on the south was Wauhatchie Creek, and just over the creek was Lookout Mountain. I spent many a day fishing from an old ruined mill dam in the creek. Chattanooga was about five miles from us, and just beyond it was Rebeldom.
I could tell many an anecdote of our camp life, but you want to hear of our March to the Sea, Mother, so I must hurry on or I will never get to it.
CHAPTER 2Early in 1864, Union strategy called for another vertical split in the Confederacy. The Mississippi River campaign had cut off southern states beyond the river. Now a massive Unionforce under William Tecumseh Sherman prepared to drive another wedge—down from Tennessee through Georgia to the sea. The move would sever another portion of the Confederacy. One of more than 100,000 bluecoats in it was Bob Strong, private, Company B, 105th Illinois Infantry.
action at last: the bullets hum like bugs
In the spring of 1864, our regiment, the 105th Illinois, was consolidated with other troops and became part of the First Brigade, Third Division, 20th Army Corps. Major General Joe Hooker commanded the corps. Brigadier General William T. Ward commanded our brigade, which consisted of the 102nd, 105th and 129th Illinois, and the 79th Ohio and 70th Indiana. This last was commanded by Colonel Benjamin Harrison.
Soon our first little brush with the enemy came. It was at Buzzards' Roost, a mountain pass in upper Georgia. Up to this time we had had no big fights and had lost no men by bullets although we had been at "war" for nearly two years.
About this time, Company B, my company, was on scout. We halted for dinner on a bluff overlooking a creek, with a field beyond the creek and woods beyond that. Just after we halted, we heard a peculiar noise in the tree tops. It sounded like a lot of tumble bugs flying through the air. We wondered what caused the noise. Then small twigs began to drop near us. Then we heard guns going off and knew the "tumble-bug" noise was bullets. No one was hit. But it was soon to come.
On May 20th, the army advanced nearly to Resaca, Georgia. Our brigade was ordered to the right flank to support the troops engaged in fighting there. I distinctly remember how plain we could hear the whole business: the roar of the artillery, the crack of musketry, the cheers of the Yankees and the yells of the Johnnies. Through it all, we were lying in a thick wood and could see nothing. When we would hear the Yankees cheer, our hearts would almost stop beating. Then would come the roar of Rebel cannon, and as our boys were beaten back the Rebs would nearly split their throats yelling.
We lay there in a fever of impatience until our turn came. We marched around to the left, and were ordered to unsling knapsacks and put them in a pile. We left a guard over them and marched almost to the edge of the woods. My company, B, was ordered to advance as skirmishers—that is, in a thin, spread-out line well ahead of the main advance. Skirmishers are likely to see more of the world than anyone else, up to the point when they are suddenly shot.
We were told that just in our front was a Rebel fort that had been charged repeatedly, and every charge had been repulsed. Now we had to take it. Well, we knew there was "death in the pot" for some of us, wounds of all awful sorts for more of us, and supposed glory untold for the ones who came out alive. We were given forty extra cartridges to a man, and were told not to fire a gun until ordered to do so.
Company B, deployed as skirmishers, led the way out of the woods into an open field and then the work began. We were to advance in a steady line with guns at "shoulder arms" until the order to charge was given. Then the skirmishers were to lie down and let the column charge over us.
We first had to cross a small field and then go through a scattered peach orchard. Then, on a hill beyond, the fort sat waiting. As soon as we skirmishers moved out of the woods onto the field, the Rebs began shooting at us. Someone cried out that there was a sharpshooter in a tree sniping at us. So, in spite of our orders not to fire, a dozen of us fired into the tree. The man came tumbling down, legs spread out, and struck the ground with a thud. I remember thinking as he fell that he resembled a big squirrel.
We advanced with no more shooting on our part. The bugle sung out "Skirmishers, lie down," and in the next minute, "Charge!" and the rest of the boys went over us with a yell. Most of the skirmishers, I among them, got up and joined the charging column and went up the hill with the rest. We were driven back from the works once, but in a moment we rallied and without waiting for orders—men were dropping all around us, but we had no time to look after them— with a rush and a cheer, which I can imagine I hear now, we drove the Rebs from the first line of works back into the second line, where their cannon were.
The hill was so steep that the cannon fired over the first line. Then we were reinforced by the Second Brigade, and we kept on going and drove the Rebs from their guns. Our brigade was ordered back, leaving the Second Brigade to hold what we had gained. You have a history of the rebellion which says the Second Brigade made this charge, but the writer of that history is mistaken. They held the line after we had captured it.
A great many amusing and pathetic incidents happened during and after our charge, only a few of which I will repeat. Undoubtedly you remember the massacre of the prisoners captured at Fort Pillow, Kentucky, by the Rebel General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Well, when we rushed from the first line that we captured to the second line, where the Rebel cannon were, we of course captured a good many prisoners. Some of the enemy who refused to run or surrender were killed there. Some crawled under the gun carriages to escape the storm of bullets and bayonets.
One big red-headed man, a cannoneer, crawled out and begged for quarter. He had his shirt off, and on one arm was tattooed in big letters, "Fort Pillow." As soon as the boys saw the letters on his arm, they yelled, "No quarter for you!" and a dozen bayonets went into him and a dozen bullets were shot into him. I shall never forget his look of fear.
(Continues...)
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