- Joined
- Feb 27, 2017
- Location
- Ohio
My objective in this thread is to follow the experiences of the men of George H. Gordons brigade as they went into action in the Cornfield. I hope it also sheds some light on what combat the experience of combat in the Civil War was like, which is something I've always found interesting. This narrative will follow the experiences of a handful of men from Gordon's brigade, mainly from the 27th Indiana, but also the 3rd Wisconsin and 2nd Massachusetts. As it is quite long, the post will be broken into several parts which I will post over the next several days.
My "next project" will be to try to find some good Confederate accounts of the same action -- but so far I am not having much success there.
PART 1
The men of George H. Gordon's 12th Corps brigade prepared themselves for the fight they all knew was coming, each man in his own way. “Ready for the fray! is the word,” W. F. Goodhue of the 3rd Wisconsin wrote later. “All non-combatants and everything of hindrance is at once discarded. It is a moment of intense anxiety among our boys who await the command to battle; to look into their faces tells a story of their own.”
Some men tried to eat. “While we wait, many of the men pour water out of their canteens into their little tin pails, and make themselves a cup of coffee, over the small fires we have been permitted to kindle since daybreak,” Corporal Edmund Randolph Brown of the 27th Indiana remembered. “With this black coffee and the crackers and raw pork in their haversacks, they eat a soldier’s luncheon…. Few, if any, can forget that this may be the last food they will taste in this world…. In fact, for that reason, some of the more excitable ones can’t eat a mouthful.”
Men prepared for the coming fight in other ways as well. “Valuables and keepsakes are handed to members of the ambulance corps and others, whose duties do not require them to be greatly exposed,” Brown noted. “Directions are given and requests are made, concerning business matters at home, the care of those dear and dependent, messages to friends, and, in some instances, the final disposition one’s own mortal remains. Some threw away decks of cards or other ‘evil’ items.”
Others wrote to loved ones at home. One of those who did so was Lieutenant Colonel Wilder Dwight of the 2nd Massachusetts, who wrote a few lines while he waited:
Dear Mother,
It is a misty moisty morning. We are engaging the enemy and are drawn up in support of Hooker who is now banging away most briskly. I write in the saddle to send you my love and to say that I am very well so far --
The sounds of battle continued unabated as Dwight wrote. Brown recalled that the "roar of cannon is incessant and the discharge of musketry is far more than a continuous rattle. The progress of a devastating cyclone, with its lashing and snapping of trees, its creaking and grating of buildings rent asunder and toppling over, its screaming and shrieking of men and animals, in mortal terror and agony, and a thousand other ear-splitting, blood-curdling sounds, all added to the rush and roar of the wind, the darkening of the clouds, the binding of the dust and the rumble and peal of the thunder, is the only other human experience that the writer would venture to compare with a battle, such as we were waiting to enter that morning.”
"There are unmistakable signs of disaster at the front,"
John R. Rankin of the 27th Indiana wrote. “The staff officers who ride near us have anxiety and alarm depicted in their faces." After a while, Rankin saw a staff officer riding toward them as fast as he could. The orders they have been waiting for have finally been given. General Gordon passed the orders on to his colonels. The men reformed their ranks and Colonel Silas Cosgrove called out, “Column! Forward, guide right, march!”