previous next

[435] could not run back to the time of its construction. The land is rugged, and is now covered mainly with stumps of pines, the trees having been cut down by the rebels to enable them to command the approaches this way to Yorktown.

The whole division in the afternoon moved on to this place, where the regiments and batteries are encamped. General Heintzelman and staff have also taken quarters here for the night, as, of course, General Porter and staff. Cockletown has four small, plain, wooden dwelling-houses, what was a blacksmith — shop, what might have been a store, but no sign of school-house or church. Some of the natives are still here. They are now strongly Union, and strong in their charges, fifty cents being the charge for a meal that would cost about one fourth this sum almost anywhere else. It has been a good day's march for the soldiers; but they have gone through it splendidly, and are feeling jolly enough to-night — a jollity that seems to increase as the advance into rebeldom increases.


in camp, two miles from Yorktown, April 5 P. M.
The ball has opened. We are near Yorktown, but not in it yet. The rebels have entered a vigorous protest against our occupation of this town of Revolutionary fame. The battle has begun. Dead and wounded Union soldiers are lying in the division hospital to-night. The list, happily, is small; that of the rebel killed and wounded is believed to be larger. There has been no general engagement thus far, only cannonading and firing of sharpshooters. I will recount the scenes of the day in their order.

At seven o'clock A. M., the divisions left Cockletown. The order of march was the same as on the previous day, excepting that the Fourth Michigan regiment, Col. Woodbury, led the infantry. Colonel Averill's cavalry and Berdan's sharpshooters kept the advance of the column. For about an hour in the march, a heavy rain fell; but the troops apparently did not heed it; neither did they seem to mind the bad and muddy road, extending about three miles through a region of swamp. In some places the mud was up to the men's knees. The artillery had hard work to move on. At intervals the roads were blocked, impeding the progress of the troops. About four miles advance and the marsh was passed, and the column came into good roads, in a cultivated and beautiful section of country. It was inspiriting to the troops.

Passing by Cheeseman and Goose Creeks and Grafton Chapel, our column came in sight of the earthworks of the enemy, and York River to the right and beyond. Gen. Heintzelman was present to direct arrangements. In the excitement soldiers forgot their weariness. It was believed a battle would soon be fought. Col. Averill's cavalry and the Berdan sharpshooters kept ahead, on the vigilant lookout for rebels and masked batteries. General Porter's brigade steadily advanced toward the earthworks, although there were no supporting troops behind for some distance, and wholly ignoring the thought of the force the enemy might bring against them.

The brigades were put in position. Captain Griffin's and Capt. Weeden's batteries took places on the brow of a hill in face of the rebel intrenchments. On the right, in a piece of woods, lay Gen. Morell's brigade, to support the batteries. Beyond the woods, in a peach-orchard, were the Berdan sharpshooters; they were eight hundred yards from the intrenchments. Our artillery was one thousand five hundred yards distant from the enemy. At ten o'clock the first shot was fired. It came from one of the rebel works to the right. The shot went over our field-pieces, and came near where Gens. Porter and Morell and other officers were standing. It struck heavily in the sand, but did not explode. A quick response followed from Captain Weeden's battery, which brought an immediate rejoinder. This second shot, a solid one, struck one of the gunners, named Reynolds, on the right leg below the thigh. The limb was amputated; but he died fifteen minutes after the operation.

A continuous firing was kept up an hour and a half; subsequently, intervals of from fifteen to twenty minutes occurred between the shots. The enemy fired mainly heavy guns, from twelve to twenty-four pounders.

Only four of the enemy's shells burst. Our boys did not seem to mind them much, but rather enjoyed the thing. One shot struck in the Ninth Massachusetts regiment, ricochetted and wounded two men of the Sixty-second Penn sylvania regiment.

There were a good many narrow escapes. A piece of a shell knocked off Major Coles's cap, of the Fourth Michigan regiment. He made it the subject of a joke, and said it was the result of capillary attraction. A small ball from an exploded shell fell inside the shirt-collar of another of the Fourth Michigan men. He coolly took it out and put it in his pocket. One shell went through a series of erratic bounds. Passing over Weeden's battery, it struck the ground, gave a bound, went under Capt. Weeden's horse, gave another bound, struck the earth a third time, started again in the direction of the upper air, and then exploded, hurting no one. A spoke from one of Capt. Griffin's battery wagons — the one, and only one, by the way, he brought away from Bull Run — was sent whizzing from its place by a shot. This was the only injury sustained by his battery, although in equally exposed position with Capt. Weeden's battery. Not an officer or man attached to either battery shrank from valorous performance of duty.

The regiments of Gen. Morell's brigade, although saluted occasionally by the dropping in of shells among them, showed no signs of fear. A shell passed over the Ninth Massachusetts regiment, and struck in the pioneer corps of the Sixty--second Pennsylvania regiment. It first tore away the haversack of Jacob Bell, of company D, then struck----Musser, of company I, tearing away his cartridge-box, causing it to explode. After this it hit Jacob Rombaugh, of


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Weeden (5)
David D. Porter (3)
Morell (3)
S. P. Heintzelman (2)
Thomas Griffin (2)
S. W. Averill (2)
Woodbury (1)
Jacob Rombaugh (1)
John Reynolds (1)
Penn (1)
Adam Musser (1)
Robert Coles (1)
Berdan (1)
Jacob Bell (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: