University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.
CAPTAIN COLBURNE MARCHES AND FIGHTS WITH CREDIT.

The consideration of Mr. Colburne's letter induces me
to take up once more the thread of that young warrior's
history. In the early part of this month of May, 1863, we
find him with his company, regiment and brigade, encamped
on the bank of the Red River, just outside of the
once flourishing little city of Alexandria, Louisiana. Under
the protection of a clapboard shanty, five feet broad
and ten feet high, which three or four of his men have
voluntarily built for him, he is lying at full length, smoking
his short wooden pipe with a sense of luxury; for since
he left his tent at Brashear City, four weeks previous, this
is the first shelter which he has had to protect him from
the rain, except one or two ticklish mansions of rails, piled
up by Henry of the “obstropolous” laughter. The brigade
encampment, a mushroom city which has sprung up
in a day, presenting every imaginable variety of temporary
cabin, reaches half a mile up and down the river, under
the shade of a long stretch of ashes and beeches. Hundreds

of soldiers are bathing in the reddish-ochre current,
regardless of the possibility that the thick woods of the
opposite bank may conceal Rebel marksmen.

Colburne has eaten his dinner of fried pork and hard-tack,
has washed off the grime of a three days' march, has
finished his pipe, and is now dropping gently into a soldier's
child-like yet light slumber. He does not mind the
babble of voices about him, but if you should say “Fall
in!” he would be on his feet in an instant. He is a handsome
model of a warrior as he lies there, though rougher
and plainer in dress than a painter would be apt to make
him. He is dark-red with sunburn; gaunt with bad
food, irregular food, fasting and severe marching; gaunt
and wiry, but all the hardier and stronger for it, like a
wolf. His coarse fatigue uniform is dirty with sleeping on
the ground, and with marching through mud and clouds
of dust. It has been soaked over and over again with
rain or perspiration, and then powdered thickly with the
fine-grained, unctuous soil of Louisiana, until it is almost
stiff enough to stand alone. He cannot wash it, because
it is the only suit he has brought with him, and because
moreover he never knows but that he may be ordered to
fall in and march at five minutes' notice.

Yet his body and even his mind are in the soundest and
most enviable health. His constant labors and hardships,
and his occasional perils have preserved him from that enfeebling
melancholy which often infects sensitive spirits
upon whom has beaten a storm of trouble. Always in the
open air, never poisoned by the neighborhood of four
walls and a roof, he never catches cold, and rarely fails to
have more appetite than food. He has borne as well as
the hardiest mason or farmer those terrific forced marches
which have brought the army from Camp Beasland to
Alexandria on a hot scent after the flying and scattering
rebels. His feet have been as sore as any man's; they
have been blistered from toe to heel, and swollen beyond
their natural size; but he has never yet laid down by the

roadside nor crawled into an army wagon, saying that he
could march no further. He is loyal and manly in his
endurance, and is justly proud of it. In one of his letters
he says, “I was fully repaid for yesterday's stretch of
thirty-five miles by overhearing one of my Irishmen say,
while washing his bloody feet, `Be —! but he's a hardy
man, the Captin!'—To which another responded, `An' he
had his hands full to kape the byes' courage up; along in
the afthernoon, he was a jokin' an' scoldin' an' encouragin'
for ten miles together. Be —! an' when he gives out, it
'ull be for good rayson.”'

From Alexandria, Banks suddenly shifted his army to
the junction of the Red River with the Mississippi, and
from thence by transport to a point north of Port Hudson,
thus cutting it off from communication with the Confederacy.
In this movement Weitzel took command of the
Reserve Brigade and covered the rear of the column. By
night it made prodigious marches, and by day lay in
threatening line of battle. The Rebel Cavalry, timid and
puzzled, followed at a safe distance without attacking.
Now came the delicious sail from Simmsport to Bayou
Sara, during which Colburne could lounge at ease on the
deck with a sense of luxury in the mere consciousness that
he was not marching, and repose his mind, his eyes, his
very muscles, by gazing on the fresh green bluffs which
faced each other across the river. To a native of hilly
New England, who had passed above a year on the flats
of Louisiana, it was delightful to look once more upon a
rolling country.

It was through an atmosphere of scalding heat and stifling
dust that the brigade marched up the bluffs of Bayou
Sara and over the rounded eminences which stretched on
to Port Hudson. The perspiration which drenched the
ragged uniforms and the pulverous soil which powdered
them rapidily mixed into a muddy plaster; and the same
plaster grimed the men's faces out of almost all semblance
to humanity, except where the dust clung dry and gray

to hair, beard, eyebrows and eyelashes. So dense was the
distressing cloud that it was impossible at times to see the
length of a company. It seemed as if the men would go
rabid with thirst, and drive the officers mad with their
pleadings to leave the ranks for water, a privilege not allowable
to any great extent in an enemy's country. A
lovely crystal streamlet, running knee-deep over clean yellow
sand, a charming contrast to black or brown bayous
with muddy and treacherous banks, was forded by the
feverish ranks with shouts and laughter of child-like enjoyment.
But it was through volumes of burning yet lazy
dust, soiling and darkening the glory of sunset, that the
brigade reached its appointed bivouac in a large clearing,
only two miles from the rebel stronghold, though hidden
from it by a dense forest of oaks, beeches and magnolias.

It is too early to tell, it is even too early to know, the
whole truth concerning the siege of Port Hudson. To an
honest man, anxious that the world shall not be humbugged,
it is a mournful reflection that perhaps the whole
truth never will be known to any one who will dare or
care to tell it. We gained a victory there; we took an
important step towards the end of the Rebellion; but at
what cost, through what means, and by whose merit? It
was a capital idea, whosesoever it was, to clean out Taylor's
Texans and Louisianians from the Teche country before
we undertook the siege of Gardner's Arkansians, Alabamians,
and Mississippians at Port Hudson. But for somebody's
blunder at that well-named locality, Irish Bend, the
plan would have succeeded better than it did, and Taylor
would not have been able to reorganize, take Brashear
City, threaten New Orleans, and come near driving Banks
from his main enterprise. As it was we opened the siege
with fair prospects of success, and no disturbing force in
the rear. The garrison, lately fifteen or twenty thousand
strong, had been reduced to six thousand, in order to reinforce
Vicksburg; and Joe Johnston had already directed
Gardner to destroy his fortifications and transfer all his

men to the great scene of contest on the central Mississippi.
Banks arrived from Simmsport just in time to prevent
the execution of this order. A smart skirmish was fought,
in which we lost more men than the enemy, but forced
Gardner to retire within his works, and accept the eventualities
of an investment.

At five o'clock on the morning of the 27th of May, Colburne
was awakened by an order to fall in. Whether it
signified an advance on our part, or a sally by the enemy,
he did not know nor ask, but with a soldier's indifference
proceeded to form his company, and, that done, ate his
breakfast of raw pork and hard biscuit. He would have
been glad to have Henry boil him a cup of coffee; but that
idle freedman was “having a good time,” probably sleeping,
in some unknown refuge. For two hours the ranks
sat on the ground, musket in hand; then Colburne saw
the foremost line, a quarter of a mile in front, advance
into the forest. One of Weitzel's aids now dashed up to
Carter, and immediately his staff-officers galloped away to
the different commanders of regiments. An admonishing
murmur of “Fall in, men!”—“Attention, men!” from the
captains ran along the line of the Tenth, and the soldiers
rose in their places to meet the grand, the awful possibility
of battle. It was a long row of stern faces, bronzed
with sunburn, sallow in many cases with malaria, grave
with the serious emotions of the hour, but hardened by the
habit of danger, and set as firm as flints toward the enemy.
The old innocence of the peaceable New England
farmer and mechanic had disappeared from these war-seared
visages, and had been succeeded by an expression
of hardened combativeness, not a little brutal, much like
the look of a lazy bull-dog. Colburne smiled with pleasure
and pride as he glanced along the line of his company,
and noted this change in its physiognomy. For the purpose
for which they were drawn up there they were better
men than when he first knew them, and as good men
as the sun ever shone upon.

At last the Lieutenant-Colonel's voice rang out, “Battalion,
forward. Guide right. March!”

To keep the ranks closed and aligned in any tolerable
fighting shape while struggling through that mile of tangled
forest and broken ground, was a task of terrible difficulty.
Plunging through thickets, leaping over fallen
trees, a continuous foliage overhead, and the fallen leaves
of many seasons under foot, the air full of the damp,
mouldering smell of virgin forest, the brigade moved forward
with no sound but that of its own tramplings. It is
peculiar of the American attack that it is almost always
made in line, and always without music. The men expected
to meet the enemy at every hillock, but they advanced
rapidly, and laughed at each other's slippings and
tumbles. Every body was breathless with climbing over
obstacles or running around them. The officers were beginning
to swear at the broken ranks and unsteady pace.
The Lieutenant-Colonel, perceiving that the regiment was
diverging from its comrades, and fearing the consequences
of a gap in case the enemy should suddenly open fire, rode
repeatedly up and down the line, yelling, “Guide right!
Close up to the right!” Suddenly, to the amazement of
every one, the brigade came upon bivouacs of Union regiments
quietly engaged in distributing rations and preparing
breakfast.

“What are you doing up here?” asked a Major of Colburne.

“We are going to attack. Don't you take part in it?”

“I suppose so. I don't know. We have received no
orders.”

Through this scene of tardiness, the result perhaps of
one of those blunders which are known in military as well
as in all other human operations, Weitzel's division steadily
advanced, much wondering if it was to storm Port Hudson
alone. The ground soon proved so difficult that the Tenth,
unable to move in line of battle, filed into a faintly marked
forest road and pushed forward by the flank in the ordinary

column of march. The battle had already commenced,
although Colburne could see nothing of it, and could hear
nothing but a dull pum-pum-pum of cannon. He passed
rude rifle-pits made of earth and large branches, which had
been carried only a few minutes previous by the confused
rush of the leading brigade. Away to the right, but not
near enough to be heard above the roar of artillery, there
was a wild, scattering musketry of broken lines, fighting
and scrambling along as they best could over thicketed
knolls, and through rugged gullies, on the track of the retiring
Alabamians and Arkansans. It was the blindest
and most perplexing forest labyrinth conceivable; it was
impossible to tell whither you were going, or whether you
would stumble on friends or enemies; the regiments were
split into little squads from which all order had disappeared,
but which nevertheless advanced.

The Tenth was still marching through the woods by the
flank, unable to see either fortifications or enemy, when it
came under the fire of artillery, and encountered the retiring
stream of wounded. At this moment, and for two
hours afterward, the uproar of heavy guns, bursting shells,
falling trees and flying splinters was astonishing, stunning,
horrible, doubled as it was by the sonorous echoes
of the forest. Magnolias, oaks and beeches eighteen
inches or two feet in diameter, were cut asunder with a
deafening scream of shot and of splitting fibres, the tops
falling after a pause of majestic deliberation, not sidewise,
but stem downwards, like a descending parachute, and
striking the earth with a dull shuddering thunder. They
seemed to give up their life with a roar of animate anguish,
as if they were savage beasts, or as if they were inhabited
by Afreets and Demons.

The unusually horrible clamor and the many-sided nature
of the danger had an evident effect on the soldiers,
hardened as they were to scenes of ordinary battle. Grim
faces turned in every direction with hasty stares of alarm,
looking aloft and on every side, as well as to the front, for

destruction. Pallid stragglers who had dropped out of
the leading brigade drifted by the Tenth, dodging from
trunk to trunk in an instinctive search for cover, although
it was visible that the forest was no protection, but rather
an additional peril. Every regiment has its two or
three cowards, or perhaps its half-dozen, weakly-nerved
creatures, whom nothing can make fight, and who never
do fight. One abject hound, a corporal with his disgraced
stripes upon his arm, came by with a ghastly
backward glare of horror, his face colorless, his eyes projecting,
and his chin shaking. Colburne cursed him for
a poltroon, struck him with the flat of his sabre, and
dragged him into the ranks of his own regiment; but
the miserable creature was too thoroughly unmanned by
the great horror of death to be moved to any show of
resentment or even of courage by the indignity; he only
gave an idiotic stare with outstretched neck toward
the front, then turned with a nervous jerk, like that of a
scared beast, and rushed rearward. Further on, six men
were standing in single file behind a large beech, holding
each other by the shoulders, when with a stunning crash
the entire top of the tree flew off and came down among
them butt foremost, sending out a cloud of dust and splinters.
Colburne smiled grimly to see the paralyzed terror
of their upward stare, and the frantic flight which barely
saved them from being crushed jelly. A man who keeps
the ranks hates a skulker, and wishes that he may be
killed, the same as any other enemy.

“But in truth,” says the Captain, in one of his letters,
“the sights and sounds of this battle-reaped forest were
enough to shake the firmest nerves. Never before had I
been so tried as I was during that hour in this wilderness
of death. It was not the slaughter which unmanned me,
for our regiment did not lose very heavily; it was the stupendous
clamor of the cannonade and of the crashing trees
which seemed to overwhelm me by its mere physical
power; and it made me unable to bear spectacles which I

had witnessed in other engagements with perfect composure.
When one of our men was borne by me with half
his foot torn off by a round shot, the splintered bones projecting
clean and white from the ragged raw flesh, I grew
so sick that perhaps I might have fainted if a brother officer
had not given me a sip of whiskey from his canteen.
It was the only occasion in my fighting experience when
I have had to resort to that support. I had scarcely recovered
myself when I saw a broad flow of blood stream
down the face of a color-corporal who stood within arm's-length
of me. I thought he was surely a dead man; but it
was only one of the wonderful escapes of battle. The bullet
had skirted his cap where the fore-piece joins the cloth,
forcing the edge of the leather through the skin, and making
a clean cut to the bone from temple to temple. He
went to the rear blinded and with a smart headache, but
not seriously injured. That we were not slaughtered by
the wholesale is wonderful, for we were closed up in a
compact mass, and the shot came with stunning rapidity.
A shell burst in the centre of my company, tearing one
man's heel to the bone, but doing no other damage. The
wounded man, a good soldier though as quiet and gentle
as a bashful girl, touched his hat to me, showed his bleeding
foot, and asked leave to go to the rear, which I of
course granted. While he was speaking, another shell
burst about six feet from the first, doing no harm at all,
although so near to Van Zandt as to dazzle and deafen
him.”

Presently a section of Bainbridge's regular battery came
up, winding slowly through the forest, the guns thumping
over roots and fallen limbs, the men sitting superbly
erect on their horses, and the color-sergeant holding his
battle-flag as proudly as a knight-errant ever bore his pennon.
In a minute the two brass Napoleons opened with a
sonorous spang, which drew a spontaneous cheer from
the delighted infantry. The edge of the wood was now
reached, and Colburne could see the enemy's position. In

front of him lay a broad and curving valley, irregular in
surface, and seamed in some places by rugged gorges, the
whole made more difficult of passage by a multitude of
felled trees, the leafless trunks and branches of which
were tangled into an inextricable chevaux de frise. On the
other side of this valley rose a bluff or table-land, partially
covered with forest, but showing on its cleared spaces the
tents and cabins of the Rebel encampments. Along the
edge of the bluff, following its sinuosities, and at this distance
looking like mere natural banks of yellow earth, ran
the fortifications of Port Hudson. Colburne could see
Paine's brigade of Weitzel's division descending into the
valley, forcing its bloody way through a roaring cannonade
and a continuous screech of musketry.

An order came to the commander of the Tenth to deploy
two companies as skirmishers in the hollow in front of
Bainbridge, and push to the left with the remainder of
the regiment, throwing out other skirmishers and silencing
the Rebel artillery. One of the two detached companies
was Colburne's, and he took command of both as senior
officer. At the moment that he filed his men out of the
line a murmur ran through the regiment that the Lieutenant-Colonel
was killed or badly wounded. Then came an
inquiry as to the whereabouts of the Major.

“By Jove! it wouldn't be a dangerous job to hunt for
him,” chuckled Van Zandt.

“Why? Where is he?” asked Colburne.

“I don't believe, by Jove! that I could say within a
mile or two. I only know, by Jove! that he is non est
inventus. I saw him a quarter of an hour ago charging
for the rear with his usual impetuosity. I'll bet my everlasting
salvation that he's in the safest spot within ten
miles of this d—d unhealthy neighborhood.”

The senior captain took command of the regiment, and
led it to the left on a line parallel with the fortifications.
Colburne descended with his little detachment, numbering
about eighty muskets, into that Valley of the Shadow of

Death, climbing over or creeping under the fallen trunks
of the tangled labyrinth, and making straight for the bluff
on which thundered and smoked the rebel stronghold.
As his men advanced they deployed, spreading outwards
like the diverging blades of a fan until they covered a
front of nearly a quarter of a mile. Every stump, every
prostrate trunk, every knoll and gulley was a temporary
breastwork, from behind which they poured a slow but
fatal fire upon the rebel gunners, who could be plainly
seen upon the hostile parapet working their pieces. The
officers and sergeants moved up and down the line, each
behind his own platoon or section, steadily urging it forward.

“Move on, men. Move on, men,” Colburne repeated.
“Don't expose yourselves. Use the covers; use the
stumps. But keep moving on. Don't take root. Don't
stop till we reach the ditch.”

In spite of their intelligent prudence the men were falling
under the incessant flight of bullets. A loud scream
from a thicket a little to Colburne's right attracted his attention.

“Who is that?” he called.

“It is Allen!” replied a sergeant. “He is shot through
the body. Shall I send him to the rear?”

“Not now, wait till we are relieved. Prop him up and
leave him in the shade.”

He had in his mind this passage of the Army Regulations:
“Soldiers must not be permitted to leave the ranks
to strip or rob the dead, nor even to assist the wounded,
unless by express permission, which is only to be given
after the action is decided. The highest interest and most
pressing duty is to win the victory, by which only can a
proper care of the wounded be ensured.”

Turning to a soldier who had mounted a log and stood
up at the full height of his six feet to survey the fortifications,
Colburne shouted, “Jump down, you fool. You
will get yourself hit for nothing.”

“Captain, I can't see a chance for a shot,” replied the
fellow deliberately.

“Get down!” reiterated Colburne; but the man had
waited too long already. Throwing up both hands he fell
backward with an incoherent gurgle, pierced through the
lungs by a rifle-ball. Then a little Irish soldier burst out
swearing, and hastily pulled his trousers to glare at a bullet-hole
through the calf of his leg, with a comical expression
of mingled surprise alarm and wrath. And so it went
on: every few minutes there was an oath of rage or a
shriek of pain; and each outcry marked the loss of a man.
But all the while the line of skirmishers advanced.

The sickishness which troubled Colburne in the cannon-smitten
forest had gone, and was succeeded by the fierce
excitement of close battle, where the combatants grow
angry and savage at sight of each other's faces. He was
throbbing with elation and confidence, for he had cleaned
off the gunners from the two pieces in his front. He felt
as if he could take Port Hudson with his detachment
alone. The contest was raging in a clamorous rattle of
musketry on the right, where Paine's brigade, and four
regiments of the Reserve Brigade, all broken into detachments
by gullies, hillocks, thickets and fallen trees, were
struggling to turn and force the fortifications. On his left
other companies of the Tenth were slowly moving forward,
deployed and firing as skirmishers. In his front the Rebel
musketry gradually slackened, and only now and then
could he see a broad-brimmed hat show above the earth-works
and hear the hoarse whistle of a Minie-ball as it passed
him. The garrison on this side was clearly both few in
number and disheartened. It seemed to him likely, yes
even certain, that Port Hudson would be carried by storm
that morning. At the same time, half mad as he was with
the glorious intoxication of successful battle, he knew that
it would be utter folly to push his unsupported detachment
into the works, and that such a movement would
probably end in slaughter or capture. Fifteen or twenty,

he did not know precisely how many, of his soldiers had
been hit, and the survivors were getting short of cartridges.

“Steady, men!” he shouted. “Halt! Take cover and
hold your position. Don't waste your powder. Fire slow
and aim sure.”

The orders were echoed from man to man along the extended,
straggling line, and each one disappeared behind
the nearest thicket, stump or fallen tree. Colburne had
already sent three corporals to the regiment to recount his
success and beg for more men; but neither had the messengers
reappeared nor reinforcements arrived to support
his proposed assault.

“Those fellows must have got themselves shot,” he said
to Van Zandt. “I'll go myself. Keep the line where it
is, and save the cartridges.”

Taking a single soldier with him, he hurried rearward
by the clearest course that he could find through the prostrate
forest, without minding the few bullets that whizzed
by him. Suddenly he halted, powerless, as if struck by
paralysis, conscious of a general nervous shock, and a sharp
pain in his left arm. His first impulse,—a very hurried
impulse,—was to take the arm with his right hand and
twist it to see if the bone was broken. Next he looked
about him for some shelter from the scorching and crazing
sunshine. He espied a green bush, and almost immediately
lost sight of it, for the shock made him faint although the
pain was but momentary.

“Are you hurt, Captain?” asked the soldier.

“Take me to that bush,” said Colburne, pointing—for
he knew where the cover was, although he could not see it.

The soldier put an arm round his waist, led him to the
bush, and laid him down.

“Shall I go for help, Captain?”

“No. Don't weaken the company. All right. No
bones broken. Go on in a minute.”

The man tied his handkerchief about the ragged and

bloody hole in the coat-sleeve; then sat down and reloaded
his musket, occasionally casting a glance at the pale face
of the Captain. In two or three minutes Colburne's color
came back, and he felt as well as ever. He rose carefully
to his feet, looked about him as if to see where he was,
and again set off for the regiment, followed by his silent
companion. The bullets still whizzed about them, but did
no harm. After a slow walk of ten minutes, during which
Colburne once stopped to sling his arm in a handkerchief,
he emerged from a winding gully to find himself within a
few yards of Bainbridge's battery. Behind the guns was
a colonel calmly sitting his horse and watching the battle.

“What is the matter?” asked the Colonel.

“A flesh wound,” said Colburne. “Colonel, there is a
noble chance ahead of you. Do you see that angle? My
men are at the base of it, and some of them in the ditch.
They have driven the artillerymen from the guns, and
forced the infantry to lie low. For God's sake send in
your regiment. We can certainly carry the place.”

“The entire brigade that I command is engaged,” replied
the Colonel. “Don't you see them on the right of
your position?”

“Is there no other force about here?” asked Colburne,
sitting down as he felt the dizziness coming over him again.

“None that I know of. This is such an infernal country
for movements that we are all dislocated. Nobody knows
where anything is.—But you had better go to the rear,
Captain. You look used up.”

Colburne was so tired, so weak with the loss of blood,
so worn out by the heat of the sun, and the excitement of
fighting that he could not help feeling discouraged at the
thought of struggling back to the position of his company.
He stretched himself under a tree to rest, and in ten minutes
was fast asleep. When he awoke—he never knew how
long afterwards—he could not at first tell what he remembered
from what he had dreamed, and only satisfied
himself that he had been hit by looking at his bloody and

bandaged arm. An artilleryman brought him to his full
consciousness by shouting excitedly, “There, by God!
they are trying a charge. The infantry are trying a
charge.”

Colburne rose up, saw a regiment struggling across the
valley, and heard its long-drawn charging yell.

“I must go back,” he exclaimed. “My men ought to
go in and support those fellows.” Turning to the soldier
who attended him he added, “Run! Tell Van Zandt to
forward.”

The soldier ran, and Colburne after him. But he had
not gone twenty paces before he fell straight forward on
his face, without a word, and lay perfectly still.