Chapter 100

CHAPTER C

We continued our march on the following day in the best of spirits, as we now began to realize that we were in reality marching home, and that soon we would be able to throw aside the trappings and accouterments which we had worn during the past three years, and exchange them for the more congenial habiliments of the civilian.

We could readily trace. the various localities in which the rebel army had at different periods during the last few months of the war been encamped by the debris which presented to the well trained eye of the old soldier, the ruins of a deserted camp.

During-our march we frequently met with returned ex-confederate soldiers who would come out along the road side to see us pass, when oftentimes a very interesting conversation would be carried on between the men and the ex-confederates.

As we approached the country in which much of the heavy fighting during the time in which General Grant had charge of the army, was done, we commenced to meet with long lines of breastworks and fortifications, showing the kind of impediments and obstacles which the Union troops were compelled to surmount before the rebel army was willing and ready to lay down its arms and admit the supremacy of the Union army.

At noon on the 14^th of May, we halted for dinner on the part of the Wilderness battle-field where General Hancock’s Corps had done its most desperate fighting. And the traces of the fierceness of the contest were plainly visible.  From where we sat and eat our diner, we counted fifty-four graves, while grinning skulls and other bones were scattered about in great profusion, the men being occasionally compelled to clean away the bones of human beings, before they could build fires to cook their coffee, or find a suitable place to dispose of the same.

We noticed the stump of a large oak tree, measuring 22 1/2 inches in diameter which had stood in an exposed position between the two lines, and which had been literally shot off by minnie balls.  This fact fully attests the severity of the musketry.

We spent several hours in viewing the battle-field and seeing a large number of valuable relics, which if we could have been able to get them home wo’d have been very desirable mementos of the late unpleasantness.

In conservation with a gentleman who resided in that vicin­ity we were informed by him that a number of hogs belonging to a neighboring planter were left run in the woods and that they grew fat upon the bodies of the dead, as they not devoured those that were unburied, but also rooted those that were buried in shallow graves, without distinction as to their being rebels or unionists.

The following day, May 15^th, was very interesting, yet the events of the day were withal sad and impressive, and were indelibly stamped upon the minds of those members of old Comp­any G, who were present upon the occasion, we refer to our march over the ill-fated battle-field of CHANCELLORSVILLE.

We were marching along leisurely little imagining that we were approaching the field where we had first unfurled the colors of the 147^th Regiment and baptized it in the blood of many of its brave defenders.

At about 2 o’clock the head of our column came to a halt on a gentle eminence, when before us lay the ground upon which we had met the enemy for the first time, and where after a heroic struggle for three days, we were compelled to furl our colors and to retreat from the field, leaving the enemy the victors.

After we moved forward and descended to the foot of the rise, we came to a small run, where some one of the members of the company remarked:

“I have been here already.”

This announcement was greeted with a laugh of derision.  The boys thought the speaker must be dreaming; quite a number of boys affirming that we had certainly never been in this section of the old Dominion before.

In the meantime we were moving forward, and one after another of the boys began to admit that they certainly must have been here, for they recognized familiar objects, whilst others held as firmly as ever, that the knowing ones were mistaken, as we certainly never were here.

The controversy was waxing warm, when suddenly in our front we caught sight of a line of breastworks, ant to our great sur­prise, the truth suddenly burst upon us that it was the battle­field of Chancellorsville, and all were ready to admit that we had been “here before.”

One cause which prevented us from recognizing the place sooner that we did, was owing to the fact that we approached it from the Richmond side, whilst the other time we had advanced from the opposite direction, and the only time that we had come in this way, was when we had gone out on a little reconnoitering expedition on the first day of battle, when in the language of the company’s poetic sons:

After we had dined,

We went out the Rebels to find,

And came in with them on behind,

At Chancellorsville.

The poem at the time it was written created considerable merriment.  We do not know whether the author has tried his hand at poetry since that time or not.

As we reached the breastworks we had all doubts removed as to the identity of the place.  The ruins of the Chancellorsville House were before us and as we stood in the line of works and faced towards Fredericksburg, the panorama which had been so indelibly stamped upon our minds, by the terrible ordeal of a three days battle, burst fully upon our bewildered view, and we no longer had any doubts.

We halted here for several hours, and we at once hastened to view the battlefield.  We had no trouble finding the position we held, many of the boys finding the very place they had occupied during the engagement.

Quite a number of skeletons, were found lying around on the ground.  They had been sodded.  That is, buried where they had fallen by having the earth heaped over them, and the exposure to the weather had washed the earth from them and their bones were left bleaching in the sun, and were white and glistening on the surface, while the sides exposed to the earth were covered with a greenish mold.

Noticing General Geary and a group of men congregated at in the rear of where our regiment was stationed, we approached the crowd, and found them busily engaged in removing the bones of a man, supposed to be those of the brave Major Chapman of the old 28^th Regiment belonging to our Brigade and Division, and who fell while gallantly leading his regiment against the enemy, and whose body was interred by the men of his regiment.

Under the bones, the print of a horse’s hoof was as plain to be seen as if it had been just made.  General Geary looked at it, and pronounced it to have been made by his war charger, old Charlie.

A number of the boys picked up bones, and other relics from the battle-field, and carried them along with them as mementos of the ill-fated battle.

After a halt of several hours, we fell in and marched a short distance, encamped for the night.