"A bayonet appeared from my right..."

Sunday, May 15, 1864, Spotsylvania

Everyone is dead. It seems to be so although from where I sit, I can see many soldiers moving around but I cannot say that any of them are alive. I doubt my own condition. If I were truly dead, I would be spared any more of the inhuman H--- that I have witnessed of late.

It began this Monday past. We were ordered to this place called Spotsylvania. Our own General Hill, being sick, was not in command. General Early commanded our corps. We did not exactly know where we were marching to. We did know that we were heading generally south and east. We were all glad to leave the Wilderness. My trousers, like so many other soldier's trousers and jackets for that matter, resembled rags. I had performed some repairs with what little spare fabric I had. Both legs were shredded. I felt like a London ragamuffin.

It was early when we reached this place. Much of Lee's army had arrived before us. The brigade was ordered to the right and a bit behind Ewell's corps. We spent the rest of Monday thinking we might be put in but it was not to be. We heard firing from in front of us and to both left and right but saw very little. We spent the night under arms.

The next day, the tenth, as the light got higher in the sky, we could better see where we were and what our situation was. We were quite close to a triangle pointed towards the Yankee lines.We then realized why we heard firing from three sides. There were Yankees on three sides of this area. This angle, which I have since heard called the muleshoe was strongly fortified. The earthworks were high and protected in front with the most ugly abatis. We were confident that any Yankees coming from that direction would be warmly met.

At about five and one half of the clock, it started. Stonewall's attack at Chancellorsville started about this same time and it was a fantastic victory. Had the Yankees learned a lesson from our Jackson? We waited to be put in but we were not needed. At times, through the smoke, we could make out some flags of Pennsylvania regiments. We have gotten good at telling the Yankees from their flags.

That night, off in the distance, we could hear our bands and their bands playing off and on. I think it was one of ours that started it off with, "Nearer My God to Thee".This compliment was returned with the, "Dead March". Our own, "Bonnie Blue Flag", followed. This raised a number of cheers from both sides, more ours than theirs. The Yankees came back with, "The Star-spangled Banner". Although the hour was very late, I think every Yankee woke up to add his voice to the resounding cheer. Not to be outdone, we responded with, Home, Sweet Home" Now that raised the loudest cheers from both sides. Amidst the cheering could be heard the moans of the wounded, stranded beyond help in between the lines. Again, we slept under arms.

The eleventh, was not much of a day. The brigade was still formed up a bit to the left rear of the angle. We stayed vigilant lest the Yankees try us again. All day long, we could see and hear the earthworks being strengthened. Water was running short. Our rations were scant and without variety. We considered ourselves lucky to have anything to eat. Ever since the death of Junior, the Dandy Eights mess has been reduced to six. We Eights who are left have been unable to talk about increasing our numbers.

Now, this entry arrives at Thursday and a worse day I have never spent. I should have been killed a dozen times but the Maker  decided otherwise. My turn will come another day. It was an early hour when the Yankees came. It looked as they were going to hit us in much the same place as they did on Wednesday. We heard the firing a distance to our left. We wondered if it would be our time.

And then it was. The firing became much more intense as did the yelling. The regiment was brought into line and dressed. We waited very long, it seemed. Repeatedly, we checked our cartridge boxes to comfort ourselves that we had enough ammunition. And we checked them again. Two of us who had a musket but no bayonet called to others in our rear in the name of God to give them a bayonet.

It was the ninth hour of the day, according to Jeffie Turner, who looked at his watch. General McGowan code by. "General Lee needs us, boys. The Yankees have broken through. General Lee needs us to save the day. On, South Carolina, on!" Lieutenant Williamson called for us to face left and go at the double-quick. We went and I will admit to checking my cartridge box more than once along the way. Their artillery found the range on us but we kept going.

The Yankees had broken through at the angle. There were more Yankees that I've ever seen. They resembled thousands of blue flies and we were just so much carrion. The fighting was bad and it got much worse rapidly. They poured over our works, driving everything away like chaff. I would swear that when we hit them, both sides groaned with pain. We did not fire but a few rounds into their faces. In a very short time, we fought with bayonets, claws and gunbutts. Hand-to-hand it became, not so much man-to-man as beast-to-beast.

It was the Excelsior Brigade that we were up against. It took a great deal of shooting back and forth but we finally drove them out. A gap in their lines appeared and for a moment, we thought that we could press on and and turn a flank. That thought vanished rapidly as those New Yorkers were soon replaced by more and more Yankees. Some of them dug themselves in just a few yards from our own works. They would have to be pried out. They brought up artillery to blast us out of our works at point blank range. I had never heard of artillery charging breastworks. We shot down their gunners as fast as we could until there were too few to work the guns.

We fought over a position to the immediate left of the apex of the angle. This we learned later. All we knew at the time was that every d--- Yankee in Yankeedom was here, right where we were standing. They would grab one of ours and drag him over the works to their side to capture him or kill him. We did the same to them. After but a few minutes, I don't think that I saw a bayonet that did not have blood on it.

At one point, after discharging my musket at some part of this blue mass, a Yankee came over the works straight at me with musket and bayonet. I was in a bad way and could not get at him or out of his way. As he made his thrust at my breast, I made rapid peace with the Maker. A bayonet appeared from my right and skewered him. I never saw who saved my life. The Yankee fell dead on top of me and pinned me under him. It was difficult to get up as others kept stepping on this dead Yankee.

When I did manage to roll him off of me, I saw that my musket had broken its stock. No matter as the Yankee had one he was not using. I turned it towards the enemy just in time to run through another Yankee bent on murdering me. He did not die but fought me even with my bayonet in his breast and I could not remove it. I pulled the trigger, praying that my piece was loaded. Down he went like a sack of potatoes, pulling my new musket from my hands as he did. There were plenty on the ground so I was not unarmed for long. Many times I heard the Yankees shout, "Remember Sedgewick". I suppose that general of theirs is killed.

I saw Duncan get dragged over the works and lost in the mass.All I could do was watch it happen. Poor Tom. Captain Stover was shot down. I heard someone yell, "Boys, I am killed". I could not tell if the voice was wearing blue or grey. We fought and we fought and we fought. They kept coming and we kept killing them, and they kept coming. There was no rest save for the dead.

Sometimes, we loaded our muskets and, without looking where we were shooting, poked them over our works and pulled the triggers with our thumbs. Anyone who stuck his head up above the works had his hair parted with a mini ball.

For several hours this continued. We would waver a bit and they would gain a little ground. Then we would recover and push them back. It got to where I could not take a step on the ground. The bodies were too thick not to step on. When we ran out of annumition, we took it from the dead. Twice I did this, each time lowering my guard to refill my box. I saw rocks, sticks and knives put to use. It stopped being war and turned to just plain killing.

It finally ended. We held our ground and prepared for another assault. The dead were scavenged for ammunition and water. There was a fair amount of the former and only a little of the latter. Some water had accumulated in pools. No matter what was in it, we drank it. I had to replace a bent ramrod.
That night, the dead and the living slept together. Quite late this night, those who could awaken were startled by a loud crash which we took to be another attack preceded by artillery. Nothing further happened so we gratefully returned to our slumber.

They did not come back the next day. Maybe we killed just too many of them. Today is, I think, Sunday the fifteenth. On Friday, the brigade was withdrawn from that angle. We are in new works somewhat in the rear. Jeffie Turner is dead. So is Belk. Richardson and Sistare are captured. Hagins, Plyer, Porter and Steele are wounded. I think Howell is dead but cannot say for certain. General Perrin who used to command this brigade, is dead. Duncan is missing, his fate unknown. We stuffed leaves in our noses because of the smell.

When I could take stock of myself, I found three holes in my jacket, one in my trousers and one in my slouch. As my trousers were so bad from the Wilderness, I exchanged them for Yankee ones. There were many to choose from and I got some good ones.

I have six rounds.


I Send You These Few Lines


About the Battle of Spotsylvania and the Mule Shoe/Bloody Angle in particular, Noah Andre Trudeau wrote in his book, "Bloody Roads South":

     Tactically the battle was over, but the fighting had slipped beyond tactics, beyond winning or        losing; it had slithered past whatever control rational men can have over something as irrational as organized slaughter. A pandora's box of hate and killing lust had been blown open, and seventeen more hours would go by before the exhausted men let it close again. Along those two hundred yards of mutually held trenches, men now killed each other with zealous abandon. In a war that had birthed its share of bloody angles, this day and the morning of the next at Spotsylvania would give birth to the bloodiest of them all.

On the day before McGowan's South Carolina brigade was committed, Union forces attacked the Mule Shoe. The effort nearly succeeded. Grant thought that if massive force could be brought to bear against the area, a large hole would be torn in the Confederate lines, allowing for the possibility to destroy Lee's army. It almost worked. The first attack involved just three Union brigades.  The second attack involved 11 brigades in the initial assault followed by 10 more. Some Union officers called for no more troops to be committed as the situation was crowded beyond control and it was too easy for the Confederates to hit something. These officers were just shoved out of the way by the masses.

The Sedgewick, mentioned by Tooms in this diary entry, is Major General John Sedgewick, commanding the Union VI Corps. The person generally credited with killing him is Ben Powell of the 12th South Carolina. When I came across that in my research for this entry, it threw me back. I looked him up to see if he might have been in Company I, the, "Lancaster Hornets", Tooms' company. He was. He was Benjamin M. Powell who enlisted in Company I of the 12th in April, 1861, in Ridgeville, South Carolina, which is not too far from Charleston. Like Tooms, Powell is not from the upcountry of the state as is most of the regiment.

The crash that woke everyone up was not artillery but a tree falling. It was an oak, 22 inches across, which was shot to pieces by small arms fire. Late that night, it fell over in the brigade's lines. A bullet-riddled piece of it is on display at the Smithsonian.

An abatis consists of sharpened sticks, some nearly the size of small trees, imbedded in the ground in front of an entrenched position with the points facing the enemy.

The account of the dueling bands is a true one as is the stuffing of leaves up the nose to quell the stench of rotting corpses.

All the casualties that Tooms mentioned, McGowan, Duncan, Turner and the rest, happened during the battle.

The battery of Union guns that advanced right up to the Confederate works was C, 5th U.S., a regular army battery. Two dozen cannoneers worked their pieces. Two survived.

The Excelsior Brigade that McGowan's brigade broke consisted of eight regiments, six from New York and one each from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. McGowan had five, all South Carolinian.

The Battle of Spotsylvania is now over. It is the worst fight Tooms and the rest of the 12th has been in during the war, much more so that Gettysburg. It is the only time that Tooms is certain that he has killed someone. Will this be the worst time for the regiment for the entire war? That's future history. For the moment, things are quiet. For the moment.