"Oh, Augusta, if I could only sit down and relate to you the sights that I have seen of the field of battle. It is enough to break the stoutest heart to hear the cries and groans of the wounded and dying."
Private John Lewis - May 1863
Died March 11, 1864 - South Carolina
Contents
Part Three
Pistol of Captain William Lacey, Co. D
The Seventeenth at Chancellorsville - Part 3
Private William Warren of Company C had been out on picket all day, having been ordered to advance as far out as possible at 8AM as
"...the enemy was but a little away from us. [we] could see the rebs manuevering and hear field pieces..."
At 3PM his company was relieved and replaced by Company I and Company G. Warren returned to the line of the Seventeenth along the Turnpike, where he remembered that they stacked their arms and began to cook their meat ration. Just as they started, Warren heard one volley, followed closely by another. 2nd Lieutenant Alfred Peck of Company D, also cooking his meal at the Talley garden, remembered it as two shells being fired. Warren recalled that he was:
"...not surprised, it was evident an attack was imminent. [the enemy] approached on the right flank in columns six or eight deep, firing and yelling. [We] could not return fire due to the pickets retreating. George Wood said 'Pshaw, it's nothing. I'm going to have my dinner.'"
Upon hearing the firing, Colonel Noble rode his horse to the garden of the Talley house. Colonel Noble saw his two picket companies dashing in ahead of the Confederate attack. His picket companies were squarely between the regiment and the Confederate line of attack.
Private James McGuire of Company I, only minutes earlier boiling coffee on the picket line, recalled that as he ran back to the lines of the Seventeenth he saw:
..."Colonel Noble on the works waving his hand back and forth to break right and left to give the regiment a chance to fire..."
In the garden of the Talley house, Lt. Colonel Charles Walter (commanding the right wing of the regiment) had ordered his men to lie down behind the modest breastworks they had created behind the garden fence. Walter told the men to stand their ground and not fire until he gave the order. Sergeant Rufus Buttery of Company A, in a letter to his wife, wrote:
"As the rebels came out of the woods they had to come over a level clear lot, and as that traitor flag came out of the woods. a thrill ran through my veins, and I waited for the bearer of it to get near enough for my shot to reach him, about that time we had the order to fire. I drew as close a sight on him as I knew how, and that rebel fell with many others..."
Private William W. Paynton, also of Company A, remembered it many years later, when he wrote:
"As the enemy advanced in solid column, a color bearer was seen to run out several yards in front of his regiment, and staking his flagstaff, await the coming of his regiment...repeating the act, until...he was seen to fall, shot by one of his two companies at their first volley. On they came, their muskets discharged from the waist, and their bullets fairly riddled the boards of the fence."
As regiment after regiment began to give way under the overwhelming Confederate forces, the situation for the Seventeenth was becoming critical. Still holding his position in the Talley garden, Lt. Peck saw a signal officer rip the signal flags down, mount his horse and ride quickly away, as did several other couriers and staff officers at the Talley house. To the rear of the right wing, the left wing under Major Brady was having problems of their own.
Private Silliman, part of the left wing supporting the remaining 4 guns of Dieckman's Battery, also recalled seeing the exodus from the Talley house as the attack began. After Major Brady told the men to squat down until further orders
"...some of our gunners tried to get their guns into position to sweep the rebels, but were unable to. the rebels had excellent range of the road but most of their missles passed over our heads as we lay close. some of them killed a battery horse..."
Unable to bring their guns to bear on the advancing Confederates without firing into the retreating soldiers of von Gilsa's retreating troops, the artillery men harnessed their horses and awaited orders. Silliman wrote:
"...presently out two picket guns came dashing in and being unable to get in position limbered up and started off."
The sudden withdrawal of the battery seemed to present Major Brady with a difficult problem. Private Silliman continued:
The Major was some excited, said he did not know what to do as he had no orders. we had been placed there to support the batteries but they had left us. the rebels were on our flank so we could neither change front our return their fire."
Private Warren recalled that Major Brady, standing with outspoken Captain James Moore of Warren's own Company C, told Moore that he could not give any orders, as the Colonel and Lt. Colonel at the Talley house had to give him orders. Private Warren watched as:
"...the left wing stood while the enemy came nearer...Captain Moore told Major Brady that if he wouldn't give any orders then he [Moore] would..."
Said Private Silliman:
"...they had nearly reached the house when he ordered us to make for the woods. his order was promptly obeyd though I believe there but few who started before the order was given. Many of us stuck to the major however as he made about as good time as any of us through the woods..."
Private Warren recalled that the left wing had made a brave stand before being ordered to fall back. Captain Charles Hobbie of Company B (who, according to Private Silliman, was "an excellent fighting man on the battlefield") was wounded twice--grazed by a bullet on the left temple and also his right ear--while taking aim at a Confederate color bearer before managing to retreat to a hospital.
Back in the garden, the right wing was unaware of the retreat of Major Brady's wing. After firing two volleys, it was apparent that the right wing was about to be overrun. Lt. Colonel Walter, lying to the rear of Company E behind the garden fence stood and gave the order to retreat to Captain Douglas Fowler of Company A. 2nd Lieutenant John Craw heard Lt. Colonel Walter start to say "Company A" when Walter raised his hand to his head and fall to the ground. Walter was killed instantly, shot through the left eye. Walter was killed so suddenly that Sergeant Lorenzo Ells of Company A, upon seeing him lying on the garden path with his head on his arms, told him that all the men had left. Sergeant Ells recalled that he didn't realize he was dead, as he had just given the order a moment before.
Despite the order to retreat, some men had gotten so caught up in the fight that they never heard the order given. Wrote Sergeant Buttery:
"After fighting some time, I looked around to see how things were going on, and to my surprise, there were only three or four of us in the garden. I had heard no order to fall back, all I heard was one of the men said "We will have to fall back," and I told him that we could hold our ground."
Sergeant Buttery fired one more shot, then ran towards the Turnpike, where he was captured by a Confederate officer. Sergeant Buttery wrote years later that when he at last ran, he had seen Private Charles Pendleton still at the fence, firing at the Confederate troops, possibly the last soldier of the Seventeenth to remain at his post. Pendleton was wounded and captured in the garden shortly after.
For the soldiers who did hear the order to retreat, the decision to stay and fight or retreat was sometimes difficult. Private Hiram Bishop, also of Company A and one of the "three or four" remaining in the garden, thought:
"...to stay was death, to go the same..."
Private Bishop decided that he would run for it, but was captured near the corner of the Talley house. He managed to escape, and ran through the woods. As he did so, an artillery shell hit a nearby tree, and Private Bishop was wounded by a large tree limb that fell on him as a result.
Only 20 minutes after Private George Wood of Company C had told Private William Warren the artillery fire was "nothing", the entire division of General Devens was in shambles and in full retreat. George Wood would spend the next two weeks as a Confederate prisoner.
Major General Howard, seeing the men of Devens' division running towards the Wilderness Church, wrote:
"I could see numbers of our men--not the few stragglers that always fly like chaff at the first breeze, but scores of them--rushing into the opening some with arms and some without, running or falling before they got behind the cover of Devens' reserves, and before General Schurz's waiting masses could deploy or charge...
"...the masses of the right brigade struck the second line of Devens before McLean's front had given way; and, more quickly than it could be told, with all the fury of the wildest hailstorm, everything, every sort of organization that lay in the path of the mad current of panic-stricken men had to give way and be broken into fragments."
General Howard stood among the panic stricken troops of Devens division. Holding a flag dropped retreating troops, he tried with all his might to head off the flight, and rally his troops. Some of those troops did indeed heed General Howard's pleas, falling into the lines now being held by the troops of General Schurz's 3rd Division.
Despite being badly broken up upon retreating from the Talley house, a portion of the Seventeenth managed to get together at the rear of the 119th New York along the Plank Road. Colonel Noble's horse was wounded by Confederate gunfire here. The popular Captain of Company A, Douglas Fowler, and Corporal C. Frederick Betts were an inspiring sight to the soldiers of the regiment. Corporal Betts stood waving the regimental colors in one hand and a pistol in the other, while Captain Fowler (so ill at the start of the campaign that he could not walk, but refusing to stay behind, he rode in an ambulance), sword waving over his head, cried "Rally around the flag, Seventeenth!".
The stand here was brief...Private Silliman wrote that:
"...we were again broken by one of our batteries driving through us, so the Major ordered us to occupy the rifle pits...our own men came rushing over the rifle pit onto our bayonetts and the rifle pit was so crowded that we could do nothing. the right of the rifle pit was first vacated and we left soon after."
When Schurz's line was overwhelmed as well by the tide of Confederate's, Colonel Noble was wounded in the arm. He dismounted, but was persuaded to remount his wounded horse and was led to the rear by a Corporal of Company "F" and a Sergeant from Company "E". Colonel Noble's wound was serious enough to send him home. His horse died later that day from its wounds.
The retreat from this line was less orderly. Private Warren recalled that as he approached the next line of breastworks (Buschbeck's) he was commanded by an unknown officer to stop. Warren did so, but looked out for the first chance to break away. Private Warren gave up on this idea when the officer threatened to shoot him if he did not stop. It was here that Private Warren watched a German officer from one of the regiment's shoot an artillery man who refused to stop running.
Private John Lewis, Company D, wrote his wife that:
"...the Rebels came down upon us with such great numbers that we broke and fell back on the line of the 12th Corps.
"As I was running, the Rebel balls came around me like hail stones and I thought I should have to be taken prisoner. I was completely exhausted from running so far so I got down behind a large pine tree to keep from getting shot. I had no sooner got behind the tree when a shell burst within six feet of me, plowing and rooting up the ground and cutting down the brush all around me..."
Private Lewis did not stop until he reached the lines of the 107th New York, a 12th Corps regiment. By 9 PM that portion of the XI Corps that could be was rallied and formed to the left and right of General Hiram Berry's divison of the III Corps. As artillery shells crashed about, the expected attack on the remnants of the XI Corps did not occur, and the weary, demoralized soldiers were withdrawn well to the rear of Chancellor House.
On the evening of May 2, 1863, as Union artillery shelled the Confederate positions, Captain Wilcoxson wrote his wife:
"While the thunderous diapason of the artillery rolled along the vibrating air, and the solid earth trembled with the oft-repeated concussion, I fell asleep; and, with the serenity inspired by a good position and heavy artillery, rested pleasantly till Sunday morning."
For the Seventeenth, their first combat was disastrous, the result of inexperience and bungled leadership at the brigade, divisional and corps level. The regiment lost it's Lieutenant Colonel, the well liked Charles Walter. Several members of the regiment, now prisoners of war, saw the body of the Lt. Colonel lying in the garden where he fell. Stripped of all except his underclothing, was buried by the Confederates on May 4 by an apple tree west of the garden.
For those who were captured, they would get to Richmond after all, but not in the manner that had seemed so likely a few short days before. After two weeks captivity, they would be paroled and exchanged in time for their next fight at a place called Gettysburg.
The soldiers of the Seventeenth had "seen the elephant". It left a lasting impression on them. Wrote Private Lewis:
"Oh, Augusta, if I could only sit down and relate to you the sights that I have seen of the field of battle. It is enough to break the stoutest heart to hear the cries and groans of the wounded and dying. There was a young man named Wm. Clark in our company that was wounded. As we were retreating, he was shot in the groin. The blood was flowing from him, covering the ground. He saw me as I was passing him and he called on me to help him. He said he was shot and could go no further. I took him and laid him over a little green mound, said goodbye and left him. I could not stay with him and would have been shot or taken prisoner. I had to leave, but I guess the poor fellow is dead and out of all misery..."