Recollections of A Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac E-Book

Frank Wilkeson

• Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 258

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Recollections of A Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac is the personal narratives of soldier Frank Wilkeson.

Leseprobe

RECOLLECTIONS OF A PRIVATE SOLDIER IN THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC

..................

Frank Wilkeson

LACONIA PUBLISHERS

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Copyright © 2017 by Frank Wilkeson

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

I. FROM BARRACKS TO FRONT.

II. IN CAMP AT BRANDY STATION.

III. MARCHING TO THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS.

IV. THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS.

V. FIGHTING AROUND SPOTTSYLVANIA.

VI. THE FLANK MOVEMENT FROM SPOTTSYLVANIA TO THE NORTH ANNA RIVER.

VII. STUDYING CONFEDERATE EARTHWORKS AT NORTH ANNA.

VIII. THE BATTLE OF COLD HARBOR.

IX. FIGHTING AROUND PETERSBURG.

X. CONDITION OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC AFTER PETERSBURG.

XI. HOW MEN DIE IN BATTLE.

XII. EARLY IN FRONT OF WASHINGTON.

XIII. THE MILITARY PRISON AT ELMIRA.

XIV. IN THE SOUTHWEST.

RECOLLECTIONS

OF

A PRIVATE SOLDIER

IN THE

ARMY OF THE POTOMAC

BY

FRANK WILKESON

PREFACE

..................

THE HISTORY OF THE FIGHTING to suppress the slave-holders’ rebellion, thus far written, has been the work of commanding generals. The private soldiers who won the battles, when they were given a chance to win them, and lost them through the ignorance and incapacity of commanders, have scarcely begun to write the history from their point of view. The two will be found to differ materially. The epauletted history has been largely inspired by vanity or jealousy, saving and excepting forever the immortal record, Grant’s dying gift to his countrymen, which is as modest as it is truthful, and as just as it is modest.

Most of this war history has been written to repair damaged or wholly ruined military reputations. It has been made additionally untrustworthy by the jealousy which seeks to belittle the work of others, or to falsify or obscure it, in order to render more conspicuous the achievements of the historians. The men who carried the muskets, served the guns, and rode in the saddle had no military reputations to defend or create, and they brought not out of the war professional jealousy of their comrades. They and they alone can supplement the wonderful contribution made by Grant to the history of the struggle to suppress the rebellion. Who beside the enlisted men can tell how the fierce Confederates looked and fought behind their earthworks and in the open; how the heroic soldiers of the impoverished South were clothed, armed, and fed? Who beside our enlisted men can or will tell their countrymen how the volunteers who saved the republic lived in camp; lived in the field; on the march; what they talked about; how they criticised the campaigns, and criticised their officers and commanders; how oft they hungered and thirsted; how, through parts of campaigns, and through entire campaigns, they slept unsheltered on the ground, and too often in snow or mud; how they fought (honor and glory for ever and ever to these matchless warriors!) and how they died?

I was one of these private soldiers. As one of them, I make this my contribution to the true history of the war. And I call on those of my comrades in the ranks who yet survive, in whatever part of the country they served, to make haste to leave behind them as their contributions, what they actually saw and did, and what their commanders refused, or neglected or failed to do. Very many of you were the equals, and not a few of you were the superiors, of your officers in intelligence, courage, and military ability. Your judgment about the conduct of the war, by reason of the vastness of your number, will have the force of public opinion. That is almost invariably right. The opinion of the rank and file of an army of Americans will be equally right. The grumbling of a single soldier at a camp fire may be unreasonable and his criticism abusive. The criticism of 100,000 American soldiers will be absolute truth.

I am conscious of imperfect performance of the task I set to myself in the writing of this book. In a later edition I hope to have the opportunity to correct my short-coming. Moderation and forbearance of statement and opinion have been my error. Occasionally I ceased to write as a soldier in the ranks. Too frequently I wrote as a generous narrator a quarter of a century after the events. I ought to have written from title-page to cover as if I were still in the ranks. And the limited compass of the book forbade the consideration of two subjects about which I feel deeply, and which I propose hereafter to treat with what strength I possess. For much thinking over my experience as a private in the Army of the Potomac has confirmed me in the belief I then entertained, that the two capital errors in the conduct of the war on the Union side were;

First. The calling for volunteers to suppress the rebellion, instead of at the outset creating armies by drawing soldiers ratably and by lot from the able-bodied population, between the ages of twenty and forty, of all the free States and territories.

Second. The officering of the commands in the various armies with West Point graduates by preference, on the assumption that they knew the art of war and were soldiers, and were therefore the fittest to command soldiers.

It is my purpose in the future edition of this book to show how the resort to volunteering the unprincipled dodge of cowardly politicians, ground up the choicest seed-corn of the nation; how it consumed the young, the patriotic, the intelligent, the generous, the brave; how it wasted the best moral, social, and political elements of the republic, leaving the cowards, shirks, egotists, and money-makers to stay at home and procreate their kind; how the Lexingtons being away in the war, the production of Lexington colts ceased.

Again, I carried out with me from the ranks, not only the feeling, but the knowledge derived from my own experience and from the current history of the war, that the military salvation of this country requires that the West Point Academy be destroyed. Successful commanders of armies are not made. Like great poets they are born. Men like Caesar, Marlborough, Napoleon, and Grant are not the products of schools. They occur sparingly in the course of nature. West Point turns out shoulder-strapped office-holders. It cannot produce soldiers; for these are, as I claim, born, and not made. And it is susceptible of demonstration that the almost ruinous delay in suppressing the rebellion and restoring the Union; the deadly failure of campaigns year after year; the awful waste of the best soldiers the world has seen; and the piling up of the public debt into the billions, was wholly due to West Point influence and West Point commanders. They were commanders, but they were not soldiers.

Frank Wilkeson.

RECOLLECTIONS OF A PRIVATE.

I. FROM BARRACKS TO FRONT.

..................

I WAS A PRIVATE SOLDIER in the war to suppress the rebellion. I write of the life of a private soldier. I gloss over nothing. The enlisted men, of whom I was one, composed the army. We won or lost the battles. I tell how we lived, how we fought, what we talked of o’ nights, of our aspirations and fears. I do not claim to have seen all of Grant’s last campaign; but what I saw I faithfully record.

The war fever seized me in 1863. All the summer and fall I had fretted and burned to be off. That winter, and before I was sixteen years old, I ran away from my father’s high-lying Hudson River valley farm. I went to Albany and enlisted in the Eleventh New York Battery, then at the front in Virginia, and was promptly sent out to the penitentiary building. There, to my utter astonishment, I found eight hundred or one thousand ruffians, closely guarded by heavy lines of sentinels, who paced to and fro, day and night, rifle in hand, to keep them from running away. When I entered the barracks these recruits gathered around me and asked, “How much bounty did you get?” “How many times have you jumped the bounty?” I answered that I had not bargained for any bounty, that I had never jumped a bounty, and that I had enlisted to go to the front and fight. I was instantly assailed with abuse. Irreclaimable blackguards, thieves, and ruffians gathered in a boisterous circle around me and called me foul names. I was robbed while in these barracks of all I possessed—a pipe, a piece of tobacco and a knife. I remained in this nasty prison for a month. I became thoroughly acquainted with my comrades. A recruit’s social standing in the barracks was determined by the acts of villany he had performed, supplemented by the number of times he had jumped the bounty. The social standing of a hard-faced, crafty pickpocket, who had jumped the bounty in say half a dozen cities, was assured. He shamelessly boasted of his rascally agility. Less active bounty-jumpers looked up to him as to a leader. He commanded their profound respect. When he talked, men gathered around him in crowds and listened attentively to words of wisdom concerning bounty-jumping that dropped from his tobacco-stained lips. His right to occupy the most desirable bunk, or to stand at the head of the column when we prepared to march to the kitchen for our rations, was undisputed. If there was a man in all that shameless crew who had enlisted from patriotic motives, I did not see him. There was not a man of them who was not eager to run away. Not a man who did not quake when he thought of the front. Almost to a man they were bullies and cowards, and almost to a man they belonged to the criminal classes.

I had been in this den of murderers and thieves for a week, when my uncle William Wilkeson of Buffalo found me. My absence from the farm had caused a search of the New York barracks to be made for me. My uncle, finding that I was resolute in my intention to go to the front, and that I would not accept a discharge, boy as I was, did the best thing he could for me, and that was to vouch for me to the major, named Van Rensselaer, I think, who .was in charge of the barracks. He knew my family, and when he heard that I had run away from home to enlist, and that I would not accept a discharge, he gave me the freedom of the city. I had a pass which I left in charge of the officer of the guard when not using it, because I was afraid I would be robbed of it if I took it into the barracks. The fact of my having a pass became known to the bounty-jumpers, and I was repeatedly offered large sums of money for it. In the room in which I slept, a gang of roughs made up a pot of $1,700, counting out the money before me, and offered it to me if I would go out and at night put my pass in a crack between two designated boards that formed a portion of a high fence that surrounded the penitentiary grounds. I refused to enter into the scheme, and they attacked me savagely, and would have beaten me, perhaps to dean, if the guards, hearing the noise, had not rushed in. Of course they swore that I had madly assaulted them with a heavy bed slat, and, of course, I was punished, and, equally of course, I kept my mouth shut as to the real cause of the row, for fear that I would be murdered as I slept if I exposed them. In front of the barracks stood a high wooden horse, made by sticking four long poles into large holes bored into a smooth log, and then standing it upright. Two ladders, one at each end, led up to the round body of the wooden steed. A placard, on which was printed in letters four inches long the word “Fighting,” was fastened on my back. Then I was led to the rear ladder and told to mount the horse and to shin along to the other end, and to sit there until I was released. The sentinel tapped his rifle significantly, and said, earnestly: “It is loaded. If you dismount before you are ordered to, I shall kill you.” I believed he meant what he said, and I did not get off till ordered to dismount. For the first hour I rather enjoyed the ride; then my legs grew heavy, my knees pained dreadfully, and I grew feverish and was very thirsty. Other men came out of the barracks and climbed aloft to join in the pleasure of wooden horseback riding. They laughed at first, but soon began to swear in low tones, and to curse the days on which they were born. In the course of three hours the log filled up, and I dismounted to make room for a fresh offender. The placard was taken from my back, and I was gruffly ordered to “get out of this.” I staggered back a few yards, stooped to rub my lame knees, and looked at the gang who were sadly riding the wooden horse. Various words were printed on the cards that were fastened to their backs, but more than half of them announced that the bearers were thieves.

On my urgent solicitation Major Van Rensselaer promised to ship me with the first detachment of recruits going to the front. One cold afternoon, directly after the ice had gone out of the Hudson River, we were ordered out of the barracks. We were formed into ranks, and stood in a long, curved line 1,000 rascals strong. We were counted, as was the daily custom, to see if any of the patriots had escaped. Then, after telling us to step four paces to the front as our names were called, the names of the men who were to form the detachment were shouted by a sergeant, and we stepped to the front, one after another, until 600 of us stood in ranks. We were marched to the barracks, and told to pack our knapsacks as we were to march at once. The 400 recruits who had not been selected were carefully guarded on the ground, so as to prevent their mingling with us. If that had happened, some of the recruits who had been chosen would have failed to appear at the proper time. The idea was that if we were kept separate, all the men in the barracks, all outside of the men grouped under guard, would have to go. Before I left the barracks I saw the guards roughly haul straw-littered, dust-coated men out of matresses, which they had cut open and crawled into to hide. Other men were jerked out of the water-closets. Still others were drawn by the feet from beneath bunks. One man, who had burrowed into the contents of a water-tight swill-box, which stood in the hall and into which we threw our waste food and coffee slops, was fished out, covered with coffee grounds and bits of bread and shreds of meat, and kicked down stairs and out of the building. Ever after I thought of that soldier as the hero of the swill-tub. Cuffed, prodded with bayonets, and heartily cursed, we fell into line in front of the barracks. An officer stepped in front of us and said in a loud voice that any man who attempted to escape would be shot. A double line of guards quickly took their proper positions around us. We were faced to the right and marched through a room, where the men were paid their bounties. Some men received $500, others less; but I heard of no man who received less than $400. I got nothing. As the men passed through the room they were formed into column by fours. When all the recruits had been paid, and the column formed, we started to march into Albany, guarded by a double line of sentinels. Long before we arrived at State Street three recruits attempted to escape. They dropped their knapsacks and fled wildly. Crack! crack! crack! a dozen rifles rang out, and what had been three men swiftly running were three bloody corpses. The dead patriots lay by the roadside as we marched by. We marched down State Street, turned to the right at Broadway, and marched down that street to the steamboat landing. Previous to my enlistment I had imagined that the population of Albany would line the sidewalks to see the defenders of the nation march proudly by, bound for the front, and that we would be cheered, and would unbend sufficiently to accept floral offerings from beautiful maidens. How was it? No exultant cheers arose from the column. The people who saw us did not cheer. The faces of the recruits plainly expressed the profound disgust they felt at the disastrous outcome of what had promised to be a remunerative financial enterprise. Small boys derided us. Mud balls were thrown at us. One small lad, who was greatly excited by the unwonted spectacle, rushed to a street corner, and after placing his hands to his mouth, yelled to a distant and loved comrade: “Hi, Johnnie, come see de bounty-jumpers!” He was promptly joined by an exasperating, red-headed, sharp-tongued little wretch, whom I desired to destroy long before we arrived at the steamboat landing. Men and women openly laughed at us. Fingers, indicative of derision, were pointed at us. Yes, a large portion of the populace of Albany gathered together to see us; but they were mostly young males, called guttersnipes. They jeered us, and were exceedingly loth to leave us. It was as though the congress of American wonders were parading in the streets preparatory to aerial flights under tented canvas.

Once on the steamboat, we were herded on the lower deck, where freight is usually carried, like cattle. No one dared to take off his knapsack for fear it would be stolen. Armed sentinels stood at the openings in the vessel’s sides out of which gangplanks were thrust. Others were stationed in the bows; others in the dark narrow passage-ways where the shaft turns; still others were on the decks. We were hemmed in by a wall of glistening steel. “Stand back, stand back, damn you!” was the only remark the alert-eyed, stern-faced sentinels uttered, and the necessity of obeying that command was impressed on us by menacing bayonets. Whiskey, guard-eluding whiskey, got in. Bottles, flasks, canteens, full of whiskey, circulated freely among us, and many men got drunk. There was an orgie on the North River steamer that night, but comparatively a decent one. In spite of the almost certain death sure to ensue if a man attempted to escape, two men jumped overboard. I saw one of these take off his knapsack, loosen his overcoat and then sit down on his knapsack. He drew a whiskey flask from an inner pocket and repeatedly stimulated his courage. He watched the guards who stood by the opening in the vessel’s side intently. At last they turned their heads for an instant. The man sprang to his feet, dropped his overcoat and ran to the opening and jumped far out into the cold waters of the river. Instantly the guards began to fire. Above us, in front of us, at our sides, behind us, wherever guards were stationed, there rifles cracked. But it was exceeding dark on the water, and I believe that the deserter escaped safely. Early in the morning, before it was light, I again heard firing. I was told that another recruit had jumped overboard and had been killed.

In this steamboat were two mysterious men clad in soldiers’ clothing, whom I had not seen until after we left Albany. Their appearance was so striking, they were so alert and quick-eyed, so out of place among us, that my attention was attracted to them. One of these men was an active, trim built, dark-eyed, black-haired, handsome fellow of 25 years. The other was a stocky, red-faced blonde of about 30. They moved quickly among the recruits. They made pleasant, cheerful remarks to almost every man on the steamboat. They told stories which were greatly enjoyed by the recruits who heard them. “Where did those two men join us? Where did they come from, and who are they?” were questions I musingly asked myself over and over and over again, as I sat on my knapsack in a corner. Finally I walked to a guard and asked who they were. He eyed me suspiciously for an instant, and then furiously answered: “Stand back, you bounty-jumping cur!” and he lunged at me with his bayonet as though to thrust me through. I stood back, and then I sat down on my knapsack in a corner and wondered musingly if I were a patriot or simply a young fool.

Morning came, and we disembarked in New York, and were marched, still heavily guarded, to the low, white barracks, which then stood where the post-office now stands. There we were securely penned and decently fed. The men fretted and fumed, and burned to escape. Many of them had previously jumped bounties in New York. They knew the slums of the city. They knew where to hide in safety. Dozens of them said that if they could get out of the barracks they would be safe. But they could not get out. This time they were going to the front. The officers and men, in whose charge we were, were resolute in their intention to deliver one consignment of bounty-jumpers to the commands they belonged to. That afternoon five days’ cooked rations were issued to us, and we were escorted by a heavy double line of guards down Broadway to the Battery. There we turned to march along a street that led to a dock where an ocean steamer lay. The head of the column was opposite the dock, when four recruits shed their knapsacks and ran for the freedom they coveted. One of these men marched two files in front of me. He dashed past the guard, who walked by my side, at the top of his speed. Not a word was said to him. The column halted at command. The guard near me turned on his heels quickly, threw his heavy rifle to his shoulder, covered the running man, and shot him dead. Two of the remaining three fell dead as other rifles cracked. The fourth man ran through the shower of balls safely. I thought he was going to escape; but a tall, lithe officer ran after him, pistol in hand. He overtook the fugitive just as he was about to turn a street corner. He made no attempt to arrest the deserter, but placed his pistol to the back of the runaway’s head and blew his brains out as he ran. The dead man fell in a pile at the base of a lamp-post. That ended all attempts to escape. We marched on board the steamer, a propeller, and descended narrow stairs to between decks, where the light was dim and the air heavy with a smell as of damp sea-weed. There were three large hatches, freight hatches probably, in the deck above us, through which the heavy, cold, outside air sank, and through which three systems of draughty, sneeze-provoking ventilation were established as soon as the air in the hold became heated. Tobacco smoke arose from hundreds of pipes and cheap cigars, and the air grew hazy. At short distances the forms of men were indistinct and phantom-like. In this space were about 600 men. False history and dishonest Congressmen who desire to secure re-election by gifts of public money and property to voters, say they were brave Northern youth going to the defence of their country. I, who know, say they were as arrant a gang of cowards, thieves, murderers, and blacklegs as were ever gathered inside the Avails of Newgate or Sing Sing.

Money was plentiful and whiskey entered through the steamer’s ports, and the guards drove a profitable business in selling canteens full of whiskey at $5 each. Promptly the hold was transformed into a floating hell. The air grew denser and denser with tobacco smoke.

Drunken men staggered to and fro. They yelled and sung and danced, and then they fought and fought again. Rings were formed, and within them men pounded each other fiercely. They rolled on the slimy floor and howled and swore and bit and gouged, and the delighted spectators cheered them to redouble their efforts. Out of these fights others sprang into life, and from these still others. The noise was horrible. The wharf became crowded with men eager to know what was going on in the vessel. A tug was sent for, and we were towed into the river, and there the anchors were dropped. Guards ran in on us and beat men with clubbed rifles, and were in turn attacked. We drove them out of the hold. The hatch at the head of the stairs was closed and locked. The recruits were maddened with whiskey. Dozens of men ran a muck, striking every one they came to, and being struck and kicked and stamped on in return. The ventilation hatches were surrounded by stern-faced sentinels, who gazed into the gloom below and warned us not to try to get out by climbing through the hatches. Men sprang high in the air and clutched the hatch railings, and had their hands smashed with musket butts. Sentinels paced to and fro along the vessel’s deck, and called loudly to all row-boats to keep off or they would be fired upon. They did not intend that any fresh supplies of whiskey should be brought to us. The prisoners in this floating hell were then told to “go it,” and they went it. We had been searched for arms before we entered the barracks at Albany. The more decent and quiet of us had no means of killing the drunken brutes who pressed on us. There was not a club or a knife or an iron bolt that we could lay our hands to. I fought, and got licked; fought again, and won; and for the third time faced my man, and got knocked stiff in two seconds. It was a scene to make a devil howl with delight. The light grew dimmer and dimmer, and then the interior of the hold was dark, except such portions as were dimly lighted by the bars of light that shot through the ports and that which was reflected down the hatches in square columns. We fought and howled and swore with rage and pain. Through it all the smell was overpowering. The deadly, penetrating odors of ulcerous men, who suffered from unnamable diseases, of stale tobacco-smoke, the sickening fumes of dead whiskey, and the smell of many unclean ruffians made the air heavy with a horrible stench. Many recruits lost their bounty money. They were robbed and beaten almost to death. Exhaustion quieted the devils down during the night, and then we slept on the filthy floor. There was not a bunk in the entire hold. The next morning we awoke with sore heads and faint stomachs, and, under orders, washed out the vast room as well as we could. We remained in New York harbor for two days, waiting for the officer who had killed the runaway to be tried and acquitted. During the delay the guards refused to allow a row-boat to come near us. Then we started for Alexandria, in Virginia.

Shortly after we had begun to steam for the sea I saw the two alert-eyed recruits, who had attracted my attention when we were on the Hudson River steamboat, in the hold with us. I am positive that they were not with us while we lay in New York harbor. They walked among us for a couple of hours, talking pleasantly. The younger of the twain inquired kindly as to how I got my face pounded, and he got me a bowl of clean water to bathe it in. Toward noon they produced chuck-luck cloths and dice boxes, and furious gambling began. I was the only man on board who was not bounty paid or laden. I had but $10, which my father had given to me when I was in the New York barracks, so I could not join in the sport. I have seen gambling—and wild, reckless gambling too—in many mining camps, and in towns where Texas cattle were sold, and in new railroad towns beyond the Missouri; but never since the war closed have I seen such reckless gambling as went on day and night in this vessel. Men crowded around the brace games, and speedily lost their bounties. Then the losers would boldly, in broad daylight, rob their comrades. I saw gangs of robbers knock men down and go through their pockets, and unbuckle money belts from their waists; and if they protested, their cries were silenced with boot heels stamped into their faces.

By the time this floating hell and its cargo of cowardly devils had got into Chesapeake Bay, the two alert-eyed gamblers possessed about all the money the six hundred recruits had. Then they grew fearful of the men they had robbed, and hired some of the soldiers to guard them. I saw two soldiers paid $100 each for guarding them while they slept. Unguarded, they would have been killed and torn limb from limb. At Alexandria we, dirty and smelling so vilely that the street dogs refused to approach us, were marched to clean barracks and well fed. That evening I paid a soldier $5 to stand over a bathtub and watch me while I bathed. I had to go outside of the barracks to bathe. The next morning the two alert-eyed gamblers were missing. I never saw them again. I knew that they were not recruits, but gamblers in league with high officials—gamblers carefully selected for their professional skill and pleasing address, and that they had been sent on the sea-voyage to rob the bounty-laden recruits. The trip had been exceedingly profitable. At the lowest calculation there had been $240,000 in the recruits’ pockets when they left New York. I do not believe the same pockets contained $70,000 when we arrived at Alexandria.