Day 66. May 5, 1862.
66
entire night there was one long, loud, and continued rumbling of heavily laden wagons….
May 5 entry
Ephraim had two entries for May 5, and this is the first instance in his diary a double-entry occurred (the second instance is May 15). The following two entries he wrote for the 5th are in separate areas of the diary:
Monday 5
Quite frosty this morning. We got orders this morning to pack up the medicines and be ready to move at 10oclock. The Artillary and wagons was going all night. They were falling back to some other place or move on some other point. The road was crowded all day with Infantry Cavalry Artillary & Waggons for 20 hours. I never saw such a crowed. We was camped within 7 miles of Harrisonburg on the north side. We are now South 6 miles of New Market with Artillary on the Right and Left of the Pike. Our cannon have the Hills and their Battaries planted and our Brigade is to support the left. There are a grate many soldiers here. The 7 29 Ohio & 7 Indiana & 110th Penn V. are in the 3 Brigade. I heard today that Yorktown was taken. We came back 5 miles from where we had camped and we have fine camping ground. The roads was very dusty. I saw Gen Shields. He is a very plain man in his Dress & talk. He was with our Regiment awhile and told us that he could hold this position with 30,000 against 100,000 Soldiers. Our cannon can command the valley from one mountain to the other by occupying another hill
Note: This second entry was likely written after his first May 5 entry, because the sun had gone down. He had, prior to this entry, begun every other entry with a weather update. As well, the only other instance where he wrote two entries for one day occurs May 15, and the pattern repeats, with the second May 15 entry not addressing the weather.
May 5 Monday 1862
We left camp. Came on out on the road. 4 battaries passed us. Long train of wagons and the 4 & 8 Ohio Regts 14 Indiana Regt 7 & 13 Indiana 7 & 29 Ohio. I never saw such a train of wa gons and soldiers as I have
Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 56
“After the rain-drenched Battle of Williamsburg on May 5, 1862, Confederates retreating toward Richmond and Federals pursuing them both struggled along roads so choked with mud that mules sank entirely from view in the gumbo.
P. 58.
Average temperature estimated at 65.3.”
Note: Journal of the Shenandoah Valley During the Civil War Era: A Publication of Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute Volume IV 2021 Jonathan Noyalas Footnote 27 in piece by Cheyenne Nimes titled “May Peace Soon be Restored: The 1862 Diary of Ephraim Burket, 110th Pennsylvania” P. 50
“On this date, Jackson Hicks, a laborer before the conflict, deserted from the regiment. Sergeant Thomas Bentley deserted from the regiment. Descriptive List of Deserters, Pennsylvania State University, July 30, 2020, digital.libraries.psu.edu/digital/collections/digitalbks2/id/90735.”
Note: Ephraim writes in both his May 5 entries about the sizable crowd of men moving; something huge is clearly about to happen. Brand brings to light how exactly that looked:
Army Life According to Arbaw: Civil War Letters of William A. Brand 66th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Edited by Daniel A. Masters P. 60
“Just at dark there was a general stir amongst the military and it was evident from transpiring events and the unusual commotion that the “wind was raising” and we would have a breeze. Cavalry were running hither and thither at full speed with yellow envelopes stuck under the waist belt imitating the bearers of dispatches. Long trains of ambulances were moving leisurely northward and the baggage and storage trains commenced their retrograde movement. During the entire night there was one long, loud, and continued rumbling of heavily laden wagons, all moving northward. Troops were ordered to sleep on their arms. At 9 o’clock an order came to our regiment to harness up our horses and hold ourselves in readiness to march at a moment’s notice. Messengers were continually flying into camp with orders and at 3 o’clock Monday morning May 5th, we were ordered to strike tents, pack up, and be ready to move at 6 o’clock.”
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era James McPherson P. 427
“On May 5 a strong Confederate rear guard commanded by James Longstreet fought a delayed action near the old colonial capital of Williamsburg. At the cost of 1,700 casualties the rebels inflicted 2,200 and delayed the Union pursuit long enough to enable the rest of the army to get away with its artillery and wagons.”
The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville Shelby Foote P. 285 (Note: writing of May 5th)
“There was much to do done between now and sunrise: especially by Jackson, to whom Lee had left the choice of a route, the composition of the force to be employed, and the decision as to when and in what manner the flank attack would be delivered. But what both men needed for the present, at the close of a strenuous day and on the eve of what promised to be an even more strenuous morrow, was a few hours’ sleep: again especially Jackson, who had demonstrated on several occasions– the Seven Days for one– that without at least a minimum of profound rest he would be reduced to a state of somnambulism. They lay down where they were, in separate quarters of the grove, spreading their saddle blankets on the pine needles for a bed and using their saddles for a pillow. Both were soon asleep, but Lee was wakened presently by an officer he had sent to look into conditions on the turnpike to the north. “Ah, Captain, you have returned, have you?” he said, and he sat up slowly. “Come here and tell me what you have learned on the right.” It was the same young man from Jackson’s staff who had wakened him two mornings ago to tell him Hooker was crossing; J.P. Smith was his name, a divinity student before the war. He hesitated, in awe of the general whose massive features and gray beard looked so imposing in the moonlight, but as he leaned forward the seated man put an arm about his shoulder and drew him down by his side while he finished his report. Lee thanked him and then, still retaining his grip, began to chide him by saying that he regretted that Smith and the other “young men about General Jackson” had not done a better job today of locating and silencing an enemy battery that had held up the advance. Young men nowadays, he declared in the accents of Nestor, were a far remove from the young men of his youth. The captain, seeing, as he later said, that the general “was jesting and disposed to rally me,” broke away from the hold Lee tried to retain on his shoulder. As he moved off through the moonlit pines he could hear the Virginian laughing heartily there in the Wilderness where many men now sleeping would be laid in their graves tomorrow and the next day and the next, blue and gray alike, as a result of instructions he had given just before he himself lay down, in apparently excellent spirits, to rest for what he knew was coming with the dawn.
When Lee woke he saw the gaunt figure of Jackson bending over a small fire a courier had built. Rising, he joined him and the two sat on a couple hardtack boxes the Federals had left behind the day before. It was already past 4 o’clock, the hour set for the column to move out, but Jackson explained that he was awaiting the return of his staff chaplain, who once had had a church hereabouts and was familiar with the region. For this reason he had sent him, together with a skilled cartographer, to explore the roads leading west from Catharine Furnace and then north to the plank road, up which he expected to make his strike. The two sat talking, warming their hands at the meager fire, until the glimmer of dawn showed the staff officers returning from their scout. Major Jedediah Hotchkiss, the cartographer, approached the generals and spread his map on another hardtack box which he placed between them. It was obvious from his manner, before he said a word, that he had found the route he had been seeking, and as he spoke he traced it on the map…”
The dead of both sides, stiffened by now in agonized postures, and the wounded, many of them with their hurts yet untended, seemed to outnumber the unhit survivors, and while this was true in the case of a dozen regiments under Longstreet– who afterwards computed his losses at 44 percent– it was of course an exaggeration in the main, proceeding from shock at the grisly scene. The fact was that the two armies had suffered a combined total of nearly 35,000 casualties, and most of them were Bragg’s. Though the Federals had some 2500 more men killed and missing than the Confederates (6414, as compared to 3780) the latter had about 5000 more wounded (9756 in blue, 14,674 in gray) so that the butcher’s bill, North and South, came to 16,170 and 18,454 respectively. The combined total of 34,624 was exceeded only by the three-day slaughter at Gettysburg and by the week-long series of five battles known collectively as the Seven Days, in both of which considerably larger numbers of troops had been engaged. In all the other battles of the war so far– including Chancellorsville,* which lasted one day longer and also involved about 50,000 more troops– the losses had been less than at Chickamauga, where they were greater by about 10,000 than at Shiloh, Second Manassas, or Murfreesboro, the three next bloodiest two-day confrontations. These statistics could not yet be broken down in any such manner, being as yet unknown, but they were suggested plainly enough by a tour of the field and a talk with unit commanders along the way. Nine Confederate generals had been killed or wounded, as compared to only one in the Federal ranks, and the loss of artillery horses, as a result of fighting at such close quarters, had been so heavy as to cripple that vital arm. “In one place down in the woods,” a soldier wrote of a walk he took that morning, “I counted sixteen big artillery horses lying in one heap. A little way off was another heap of twelve more. And that was the way it was all through there.” Without horses, Bragg could not haul his guns, and without guns he did not believe that his men could force Rossville Gap or assault the prepared defenses between there and Chattanooga. “How can I?” he replied to urgings that he press northward without delay. “Here is two-fifths of my army left on the field, and my artillery is without horses.” He still felt that way about it, some weeks later, when he touched on the matter in his official report of the campaign. “Any immediate pursuit by our infantry and artillery would have been fruitless,” he declared, “as it was not deemed practicable with our weak and exhausted force to assail the enemy, now more than double our numbers, behind his entrenchments.”
One who did not feel that way about it, then or later, was Bedford Forrest. Early that morning, pressing forward on his own with 400 troopers, the Tennessean charged an outpost detachment of Federals who fired one volley and fled so rapidly that their lookouts had no time to descend from an observation platform they had constructed in the top of a tree on the crest of Missionary Ridge. Forrest’s horse had been struck, a large artery severed in its neck, but the general staunched the spurt of blood by thrusting a finger into the bullet hole and thus gave chase. Pulling rein at last beneath the improvised tower atop the ridge, he withdrew his finger and dismounted before the animal collapsed, then summoned his prisoners down from their high perch, questioned them sharply, and climbed up to see for himself what he could see.”
Conversations with Shelby Foote Edited by William C. Carter Interview with Ken Burns P. 272
“Burns: The really strange one was Stonewall Jackson.
Foote: He had this strange combination of religious fanaticism and a glory in battle. He loved battle. His eyes would light up. They called him “Old Blue Light” because of the way his eyes would light up in battle. He was totally fearless, and had no thought whatsoever of danger at any time when the battle was on. And he could define what he wanted to do. He said, ‘Once you get them running, you stay right on top of them, and that way a small force can defeat a large one every time.” He knew perfectly well that a reputation for victory would roll and build. It was just everything about him. He was not a strict disciplinarian. He would shoot men, but he didn’t care how they were dressed, whether they saluted properly or any of that foolishness.
He had a strange quality of overlooking suffering. He had a young courier, and during one of the battles Jackson looked around for him and he wasn’t there. And he said, “Where is Lieutenant So-and-so?” And they said, ‘He was killed, General.” Jackson said, “Very commendable, very commendable,” and put him out of his mind. He would send men stumbling into battle where fury was and have no concern about casualties at the moment. He would march men until they were spitting cotton and white-faced and fell by the wayside. He wouldn’t even stop to glance at one of them, but kept going.”
Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command Douglas Southall Freeman Scribner, 1942 P. 307-308
“Jackson lived in simple quarters. His fare was plain. Corn bread, milk and butter sufficed him. Tobacco he never used. Whiskey he avoided because he thought he might come to like it. Although he was no more than 38 years of age, his men agreed that he was “set in his ways.” When he was attending to business in his tent, he was bolt upright on a stool and kept the toes of his boot directly in front of his legs as if that were a disciplinary exercise of mathematical precision. Sometimes he would talk freely, though never brilliantly, of general topics. Again he would remain almost wholly silent. One of his men wrote: “I… have seen couriers bring dispatches to him which he would read, write out something, hand it back to them and not open his mouth to speak during the time. I have seen some of his aides and staff officers ride up to him, when he was sitting on the ‘Old Sorrel’ viewing the country, and tell him something about the lines, or about something of importance, and he would calmly sit there for a few moments, then turn his horse and ride slowly away, his staff following, without his uttering a single word.” If he was to answer a military question in the field or at headquarters, he first half-shut his eyes; and when he indulged in a rare laugh, he threw back his head, opened widely his thin-lipped mouth and emitted little or no sound. His reticent conversation in camp was in his habitual soft and restrained voice. If he walked, it was with the long stride of the farmer who seeks to cover ground swiftly. When he rode, his stirrups were short and his seat, though secure, was awkward. In the saddle, he held his head high and his chin up, for full vision ahead, though he kept the brim of his weather-beaten cap down over his eyes. Always he wore the same ill-fitting, single-breasted Major’s uniform coat that had been a jest to his cadets at V.M.I. In the sun, his brown hair and beard, which showed some curl, took on a shade of auburn. His deep-blue eyes kept their direct gaze. In height he stood close to six feet and was strong and angular, without any surplus flesh. He was slightly deaf in one ear and for that reason sometimes could not determine the direction of artillery fire.”
A Confederate Girl’s Diary Sarah Morgan Dawson P. 22
(Writing from Baton Rouge May 5, 1862)
“Vile old Yankee boats, four in number, passed up this morning without stopping. After all our excitement, this “silent contempt” annihilated me! What in the world do they mean? The river was covered with burning cotton; perhaps they want to see where it came from.”
Kate Cumming, resident of Alabama, journal entry, May 5, 1865:
“As we neared Atlanta, the scene was one of desolation and ruin. As far as the eye could reach, pile after pile of blackened brick could be seen, where once had stood stately mansions. I had no idea that Atlanta was so large a place as it is. There being few or no buildings, trees, or any thing else left standing, we had a full view of its extent.” (Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference)
Note: Jackson tries to take Chancellorsville. Thought God’d get him a victory. Fail.
Note: One man straight-out deserts from Co. D today in Winchester, while several others of the 110th also quit today. Whether or not the record reflects they left on furlough, or their time of service has expired, it is clear early May was a difficult time for the 110th.
never saw such a train of wagons and soldiers as I have….
Jackson: They’re trying to get his lat & long & they can’t, they just can’t. He’s a reptilian shapeshifter cracking out of turn between the dimensions, lids closing then slightly opening as if watching a fly sunning on a rock. Then Jackson & Lee at night. Darking. A trance of a moon & the blank plain ordered for the night to remain in place. No one knows what shows up at this or any hour outside the body of them passing through.
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