PENNSYLVANIA RESERVES RESISTING AN ATTACK NEAR THE BETHESDA CHURCH, JUNE 2.
From a sketch made at the time.
VIEW OF UNION BREASTWORKS ON THE COLD HARBOR LINE, JUNE 1. From a sketch made at the time.
description of Warwick’s last straggle, in which he says that around the king-maker’s person there “centered a little war,” and I applied the phrase to the heroic fellow who was so superbly fighting against hopeless odds immediately in front of me. Several of his guns were dismounted, and his dead horses were strewn in rear. The loss among his men was appalling, but he fought on as coolly as before, and with our glasses we could see him calmly sitting on his large gray horse directing the work of his gunners and patiently awaiting the coming of the infantry support, without which he could not withdraw his guns. It came at last, and the batteries retired to the new line.
When the battalion was gone and the brief action over, the wreck that was left behind bore sufficient witness of the fearfulness of the fire so coolly endured. The large gray horse lay dead upon the ground; but we preferred to believe that his brave rider was still alive to receive the promotion which he had unquestionably won.
Note.—The effective strength of the Union army in the Wilderness is estimated at 118,000 of all arms.
On the 1st of June the Army of the Potomac, at and about Cold Harbor, numbered 103,875 “present for duty,” and General W. F. Smith brought from the Army of the James about 10,000, exclusive of 2500 left to guard the landing at White House. The losses of this army (including those sustained by the reinforcements received at Spotsylvania and Smith’s corps at Cold Harbor), from May 5th to June 16th, were as follows:
BATTLES, ETC.	| Killed.	Wounded.	1 Captured or Missing.	Total.
The Wilderness		2216	12,037	3383	17,666
Spotsylvania		2725	13,416	2258	18,399
North Anna and Totopotomoy		591	2,734	661	3,986
Cold Harhor and Bethesda Church	1844	9,077	1816	12,737
Sheridan’s first expedition		64	337	224	625
Sheridan’s second expedition		150	741	625	1,516
Grand total from the ^				
Wilderness to the James 5		7620	38,342	8967	54,929
Lee’s effective force at the commencement of the campaign was not less than 61,000. Reinforcements aggregating 14,400 men reached him after crossing the North Anna. The Confederate losses during the campaign are nowhere authoritatively stated.
fired a barn that stood between the lines, and driven a multitude of sharp-shooters out of it, the troops to our left leaped over their works and with a cheer moved rapidly across the field. The resistance made to their advance was not very determined,— probably the Federal line at that point had been weakened by concentration elsewhere,— and after a brief struggle our men crossed the slight Federal earthworks and pressed their adversaries back into the woods and beyond my view. It was a beautiful operation to look at, and one the like of which a soldier rarely has an opportunity to see so well; but my attention was specially drawn to the situation of the artillery commander to whom I have referred as posted immediately in our front. His position was the pivot, the point where the Federal line was broken to a new angle, when that part of it which lay upon his right hand was pressed back ■while that on his left remained stationary. He fought like a Turk or a tiger. He directed the greater part of his rapid fire upon the advancing line of Confederates, but turned a gun every few moments upon our battery, apparently by way of letting us know that he was not unmindful of our attentions, even when he was so busily engaged elsewhere. The bending back of the line on his right presently subjected him to a murderous fire upon the flank and rear, a fire against which he had no protection whatever, while we continued a furious bombardment from the front. His position was plainly an untenable one, and, so far as I could discover with a strong glass, he was for a time without infantry support. But he held his ground and continued to fight in spite of all, firing at one time as from two faces of an acute triangle. His determination was superb, and the coolness of his gunners and cannoneers was worthy of the unbounded admiration which we, their enemies, felt for them. Their firing increased in rapidity as their difficulties multiplied, but it showed no sign of becoming wild or hurried. Every shot went straight to the object against which it was directed; every fuse was accurately timed, and every shell burst where it was intended to burst. I remember that in the very heat of the contest there came into my mind Bulwer’s superb 250
possible in such circumstances. The starvation and the excessive marching would have destroyed the morale of troops held together only by discipline. No historical criticism of our civil war can be otherwise than misleading if it omits to give a prominent place, as a factor, to the character of the volunteers on both sides, who, in acquiring the steadiness and order of regulars, never lost their personal interest in the contest, or their personal pride of manhood, as a sustaining force under trying conditions. If either force had lacked this element of personal heroism on the part of its men it would have been driven from the field long before the spring of 1865. It seems to me the most important duty of those who now furnish the materials out of which the ultimate history of our war will be constructed is to emphasize this aspect of the matter, and in every possible way to illustrate the part which the high personal character of the volunteers in the ranks played in determining the events of the contest. For that reason I like to record one incident which I had an opportunity to observe at Cold Harbor.
Immediately opposite the position occupied by the battery to which I belonged, and about six or eight hundred yards distant across an open field, lay a Federal battery, whose commander was manifestly a man deeply in earnest for other and higher reasons than those that govern the professional soldier: a man who fought well because he fought in what he felt to be his own cause and quarrel. His guns and ours were engaged almost continuously in an artillery duel, so that I became specially interested in him, particularly as the extreme precision of his fire indicated thoroughness and conscientiousness of work for months before the campaign began. One day—whether before or after the great assault I cannot now remember —that part of our line which lay immediately to the left of the position occupied by the battery to which I belonged was thrown forward to force the opposing Federal line back. It was the only large movement in the way of a charge over perfectly open ground that I ever had a chance to observe with an unobstructed view, and merely as a spectator. When we, with a few ־well-aimed shells, had
there, and made a jest of the scantiness of the supply. One tall, lean mountaineer, Jim Thomas by name, who received a slight wound every time he was under fire and was never sufficiently hurt to quit duty, was standing upon a bank of earth, slowly munching a bit of his last cracker, and watching the effect of some artillery fire which was in progress at the time, when a bullet carried away his cap and cut a strip of hair from his head, leaving the scalp for a space as bald as if it had been shaved with a razor. He sat down at once to nurse a sharp headache, and then discovered that the cracker he had held in his hand was gone, leaving a mere fragment in his grasp. At first he was in doubt whether he might not have eaten it unconsciously, but he quickly discovered that it had been knocked out of his hand and crashed to bits by a bullet, whereupon as he sat there in an exposed place, where the fire was unobstructed, he lamented his loss in soliloquy. “ If I had eaten that cracker half an hour ago, it would have been safe,” he said. “ I should have had none left for next time, but I have none left as it is. That shows how foolish it is to save anything. Whew! how my head aches! I wish it was from over-eating, but even the doctor could n’t lay it to that just now. The next time I stand up to watch the firing, I’ll put my cracker—if I have any—in a safe place down by the breastwork, where it won’t get wounded, poor thing! By the way, here’s a little piece left, and that ’ll get shot while I sit here talking.” And with that he jumped down into the ditch, carefully placed the mouthful of hardtack at the foot of the works, and resumed his interested observation of the artillery duel.
Trifling of that kind was constant among the men throughout that terrible campaign from the Wilderness to Petersburg, and while it yielded nothing worth recording as wit or humor, it has always seemed to me the most remarkable and most significant fact in the history of the time. It revealed a capacity for cheerful endurance which alone made the campaign possible on the Confederate side. With mercenary troops or regulars the resistance that Lee was able to offer to Grant’s tremendous pressure would have been im-