LITMIR.BIZ

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line was apparently gone; the sudden savage charge of twice our number was sweeping everything before it. As the fragments of our company retired up the slope of the field, a few, of whom I happened to be one came to a slightly sunken road, a mere farm track, but in it lay the Sixth Regiment of the old Vermont Brigade. As they saw us they called out, "Rally on us, boys!" and we gladly accepted the invitation. Several weeks before I had been on duty on the picket line: it was the reserve and we were allowed to kindle fires, and all night by the blazing logs I had talked to a young Vermonter, a plain Green Mountain farmer lad, and we had made a soldier's friendship. When I came to the sunken road the first man I saw in that prone line of men was my camp-fire friend. I called out to him and dropped by his side. Others of our men did likewise and we lengthened out their too short line by about a dozen files.

      It was apparently the last desperate hope of the corps. Our division commander, sitting on his horse and watching us is reported to have said to one of his aides, "If that line breaks, we're gone!"

      We lay at full length on the ground, silent save for the exhortation of the officers: "Hold your fire, boys!" "Keep quiet, there!" "Down with that rifle!" For we had reached the point where heed of consequences was gone and a cold recklessness had taken possession of us and it was hard to restrain the men.

      On came the Confederates, their "rebel yell" now sounding shrill and clear; and they were firing as they came with so deadly an aim that several of our officers who rose up slightly the better to control their men were hit and fell back dead or wounded.

      They crossed the ditch where our regiment had been and we could see each separate star and bar upon their red battle-flags and their slouch hats pulled down to shield their eyes from the setting sun, and then their very faces. I remember how I singled out one after another and admired certain big brown beards as they swarmed up the slope straight toward us.

      They were almost on us – some of the men said, not ten feet away, but perhaps imagination shortened the distance – when the Vermont colonel, who, as I remember wore a long, black rubber coat over his uniform and looked like a Methodist parson shouted out the command: "Rise! Fire!"

      Like spectres looming from the grave, the line of men stood up, and the Song shrieked out in one awful death-laden volley. The field before us was changed as though by some dire magic. A moment before it had been filled with a yelling, charging host; now it was suddenly cleared. As though an October gust had swept across that May evening, away down to the bottom of the field and beyond the ground was strewn with brown, prostrate forms; but they were not leaves, they were dead and wounded men!

      The little Vermont regiment had repulsed and shattered a charging Louisiana brigade. We followed up our volley with a counter-charge, our own regiment meanwhile had rallied and joined us, and when we came to the ditch where we had at first been posted dead men lay across and within it, and from their midst living men who had sought refuge from our fire arose, waving their hands in token of surrender: among these the colonel commanding the Confederate brigade.

      As he stood up a big, impetuous Scotch-Irishman confronted him with his bayonet, and the savage exclamation:

      "Give me yer soord or I'll r – run ye through!"

      The colonel was a stately Southern gentleman whose soldierly spirit was unbroken by misfortune.

      "No!" he sternly replied, looking disdainfully at the levelled steel. "I yield my sword to no private. Show me a commissioned officer!"

      It is hard to say how it might have ended, for Hodge was a dour man; but our lieutenant-colonel was fortunately close at hand. He ordered the soldier away and received the officer's surrender in a manner worthy of them both.

      The setting sun was throwing its parting gleams across that awful little field, the Song had sobbed itself into silence, the Sixth Corps was saved, and night's curtain fell upon the last scene in the drama of Chancellorsville.

      The Making of a Regiment

      The process by which men were made soldiers in our late war was one of the most remarkable things in that phenomenal conflict. Men who had no taste for military life, no desire for martial glory, and none save the most rudimentary military training were enlisted, uniformed, organised into regiments, officered often with those as ignorant of war as themselves, equipped, armed, and sent into the field within a few months, or even a few weeks, after being mustered into service. And these raw regiments were speedily moulded into well-disciplined and effective battalions, fit to be members of a famous army.

      All this is history more or less well known, but the way in which the result was accomplished is not so familiar, and perhaps the experience of one who was a member of one of these regiments may be worth telling.

      I remember – I was but a boy then – how, at the time of the news from Sumter and the President's first call for troops, the pastor of the village church spoke on a Sunday morning to a breathless congregation and closed with the trumpet call, "Who will go to the war?"

      Instantly in the gallery one man stood up. He was a veteran who had served in the regular army in Mexico. There were others, but I mention him because he was typical. Into the earliest formed regiments went the few like the soldier of Mexico who had seen actual warfare, also the pick of the members of the city militia organisations; and into these first regiments went the enthusiasm of the nation's first burst of patriotism. Then, too, the delays of the first year of the war gave opportunity for drill and discipline of the regulation sort, often under officers of West Point training. These oldest regiments were, therefore, the flower of the army, and in a peculiar way the model and foundation of it. But after Gettysburg – indeed, before that memorable battle – they had become terribly reduced in number, and actually formed but a fraction of the mighty host.

      The history of the later regiments was different. Enthusiasm, though it did not die, cooled. Something else took its place, something more truly characteristic of the great crisis. I do not know how to give it a name. It was a spirit that entered into the nation, a solemn and compelling impulse that seized upon men whether they would or no. Many attempted to resist, but successful resistance was blasting to peace of mind. The voice of this spirit asked insistently, "Why do you not go to the war?" And it was not easy for an able-bodied man to prove his right to stay at home. It was in obedience to this impulse that men went into regiments formed during the year of 1862. The day for illusions was passing; the grim character of the struggle was becoming too evident. "Going to the war" meant no possibility of holiday excursion, for the stress of the crisis hastened new regiments to the front with small delay; the calls for troops were urgent, and they summoned to serious work. It was by one of these calls that we were mustered, and it was marvellous how quickly ten full companies were enlisted in the county. Local pride had its influence; the county contained one large manufacturing town and several important villages. Town vied with country, and each village with every other, in completing its quota of men. There were other influences. "A draft" was beginning to be talked of, and there were some who said, "I would rather volunteer now than be drafted a few months later." Then, too, for the first time, a bounty was promised. It was small in comparison with the sums afterwards offered, but sufficient to turn the scale with waverers. And yet the chief impulse was that imperious spirit of the hour which had begotten the feeling in every man's breast that until he had offered himself to his country he owed an unpaid debt; and when a regiment was actually in process of organisation in your own neighbourhood, this was brought home with redoubled force; when friends and neighbours to whom perhaps the sacrifice was greater than it possibly could be to yourself came forward, very shame made it difficult to hold back. Men really too old for service forgot a few years of their life and persuaded the mustering officer to wink at the deception. Boys, whose too glaring minority had alone prevented them thus far, yet in whose ardent hearts the spirit of the hour burned the more hotly by delay, sprang to the opportunity. In our own company there were a few men over forty-five years of age, and a much larger number of whom it would be a stretch of truth to say they were eighteen. It was pretty much the same throughout the ten companies. There were labouring men and mechanics, manufacturers and their employees, storekeepers and clerks, a few farmers, and a few students. There were young men from the best families in the county and some ne'er-do-wells, but the mass of the company and of the regiment was composed of plain, intelligent men, workers in the industries of a busy community. As

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