Karl Bacon (4 page)

What a marvelous woman, truly a gift from God above. Two evenings before her tears had been abundant, but when her weeping ceased, Jessie Anne steeled herself, and from that point forward, stood resolute with me. What had formerly been my decision was now our decision.

We kissed tenderly and returned to the comfort of our bed. I squeezed my eyes shut, covered my face with my hands, and prayed desperately to my Father in Heaven for the wisdom of Solomon, the courage of David, and the strength of Samson. Above all, I prayed for peace of mind and spirit. Then, exhausted, I slept.

Every purpose is established by counsel:
and with good advice make war.
PROVERBS 20:18

A
RE THINGS ALL RIGHT AT HOME?”
I
HAD HALF EXPECTED
John’s question since I had said hardly a word since meeting him at Doc Innes’s office. The physical examinations were hastily done and cursory at best, and John and I were pronounced fit for duty. Now we sat on opposite sides of the aisle aboard the 8:28 train for Waterbury.

“It’s been very hard for Jessie Anne, but she now accepts what must be. No, John, that’s not quite right. She has more than accepted it; her resolve and encouragement amaze me. It’s just that now I’m feeling the weight of what we’re about to do.”

John nodded. “Abby had known I was thinking about it for some time, so she was not completely surprised when I told her. She has accepted it as well, but reluctantly.”

The train stopped in Union City. One or two passengers got off, several more got on. John moved across the aisle and sat beside me to make room. “There is still time to change your mind,” he said quietly, so no one else would hear.

“As I’ve said, I must go. You’ve heard me say it more than
once, I can either tolerate the sin of slavery or do my best to abolish it.”

“Yes, I’ve heard you. I was just making sure you hadn’t changed your mind. But do you think you can kill a man?”

“How can I answer that, John? Maybe we’ll never see the Rebels. Maybe the war will end soon and we’ll never have to fight. What a question. I can tell you this — I’m no cold-blooded killer. But how can we know for sure until we have to do it?”

At the office of the Justice of the Peace, there was a sign in front: Recruiting Office Here. The sign touted the reputation of Colonel Morris, listed available enlistment bounties, and promised the recruit Opportunities for Travel and Possible Promotion.

A sergeant was seated at a large table in the front corner of the office. The justice sat at a desk in another office off to the right.

“Good morning. Please be seated. I’m Sergeant Hawley of the Fourteenth Connecticut Volunteers. What are your names?”

“Hello, sir. I’m Michael Palmer,” I said.

“I’m John Robinson, sir.”

“Are you both enlisting?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Save the ‘sirs’ for the officers. Call me Sergeant. How old are you?”

“Thirty-three, Sergeant, thirty-four on the thirteenth of August,” I said.

“I’m thirty-six, Sergeant,” John said.

Hawley nodded and gave a slight grunt. “You boys certainly won’t need your parents to sign for you. Are you from Waterbury too?”

“No, Sergeant,” John replied, “we’re from Naugatuck.”

Sergeant Hawley told us about the bounties being offered
to new recruits. While the Federal and state bounties were only about thirty dollars each, the town of Naugatuck offered an additional bounty of three hundred dollars. That money would surely benefit our families.

“Do you have a doctor’s certificate?” Hawley asked.

John and I gave him the papers from Doc Innes, and then we filled out and signed three copies of the yellow enlistment form. The first two copies were for the army; the third was for our wives to take to Naugatuck officials to register for the bounty payments. Then the sergeant summoned the justice. The justice told us to raise our right hands and repeat the oath of enlistment after him: “I, Michael Gabriel Palmer, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States. I, Michael Gabriel Palmer, do solemnly swear to bear true allegiance to the United States of America and to serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and to observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States of America, and the orders of the officers appointed over me.”

On Sunday the tenth, I went to church as usual with my family. It was well known that John and I were leaving for the army the next day, and Reverend Preston preached an especially fine sermon that Sunday for our benefit. He preached on a text from Romans 8: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

John’s family sat two pews in front. His big arms were wrapped around his two sons, William to the right and Jonathan to the left. Abby hugged their daughter, Eliza, close while she dabbed regularly at her eyes with a white kerchief. To the side
were my parents, with heads lowered, shedding their tears as privately as they could in that public setting. It seemed that only Jessie Anne remained stolid, staring with fixed gaze at what I could not tell. She was determined to do her weeping in private, “For the sake of the children,” she said.

Reverend Preston closed his sermon with words I have never forgotten. “Death is but our entrance into glory, so fix your eyes on that glory and do not waver. Do not fear the death of your mortal body, for whether the days that remain for you on this earth be many or few, your body must die anyway. Fear the devil and flee from his ways, because if you give him a foothold, he is able to kill both your body and your soul. May God in His mercy give you courage and strength, and may He keep you safe from all harm, so that you may return to your families, and to this church, in the due course of His Providence. Go with God and with our blessing. Amen.”

That Sunday night, after our family returned as usual from the evening service, we quietly said our good-byes. My parents were there too, as were Jessie Anne’s. Each of my loved ones, from the oldest to the youngest, even little Edward, offered a prayer for my safe return or read a passage from Scripture. Then we sang a hymn. Afterward, a number of needed and cherished gifts were presented to me. Sarah gave me two quill pens and a small bottle of dried ink, Edward a packet of paper and envelopes for writing letters, and Jessie Anne the first of my journals and a small sewing and shaving kit wrapped in a piece of plaid cloth. My mother gave me a small canvas satchel, and my father presented me with a hunting knife and a small Bible covered in black leather with a strap to keep it closed. I opened to the front leaves that are common to many Bibles for the purpose of writing inscriptions and for recording family historical information.
Michael G. Palmer
14
^th
Conn. Vol. Rgt. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path — Ps. 119:105
was written in my father’s hand.

I looked at my father. His eyes were bright and moist. “Don’t worry about the store,” he said. “Mama says it’s good for me to be active again, and Jessie Anne has learned to manage things quite well. We’ll do just fine—just come home safe, Son.”

I mixed a small amount of the ink powder with water and turned to the next plate. Taking up one of my new quills, I wrote the following:

I blew on the page to dry the ink, and then Jessie Anne gave me one last gift, a precious photograph of a mother and two children. Edward was perched on Jessie Anne’s knee while Sarah stood by her mother’s right shoulder. Without my knowledge, they had gone to the photographer’s shop the week previous to sit for the camera. Jessie Anne and the children were all finely attired as if going to church. How was such a secret kept? I placed the photograph inside the front cover of the Bible and latched it closed.

Finally, we all hugged and kissed each other and sang another hymn. There were tears of sadness for our coming separation, but also smiles and laughter as we shared fond memories of days long ago.

But it was not so much “Farewell” as it was “Until we meet again.”

A sound of battle is in the land,
and of great destruction.
JEREMIAH 50:22

H
AD I THE OCCASION TO VISIT THE LAND ALONG THE
A
NTIE
-tam at any other time, I would have been very much attracted by the simplicity and beauty of the place. From South Mountain at the south and east, the land rolled gently in a procession of low hills and shallow valleys to the Potomac River at the north and west. It was an abundant and fertile land, well watered by meandering, gently flowing streams, a land that for two hundred years or more had been cultivated by generation after generation of simple hardworking folk with their hands always at the plow or in the earth, laboring to reap a bountiful harvest.

It was a land of fields—fields of tall, green corn planted in regular straight rows, fields of vegetables, fields of golden wheat or sweet alfalfa, and fields of emerald grass dotted all over with wildflowers for the grazing of dairy cattle. It was a land of orchards, apple, crab apple, pear, and peach, the fruit even then hanging heavily on the bough, ready for harvest. It was a land where the oak and the maple and the beech lined the banks of the
streams and where tracts of deep woods formed natural boundaries between one farm and the next. It was a land of homesteads, of barns and springhouses and root cellars and sturdy, well-kept, and whitewashed farmhouses, all connected one to another, and to the markets in town, by a series of well-worn country lanes cut deeply into the earth by countless wagons heaped high with produce. It was a land that sang the blessings of God’s Providence, a land that yielded an abundance of the fine life-sustaining things given from His hand, a land ripe for harvest.

Yet on that day, September 17
^th
, 1862, the produce would not come to harvest. The crops would be cut down before their time as would many of the men now occupying the land. Earth and field, livestock and humankind would know devastation and corruption beyond all imagining.

At about nine o’clock that Wednesday morning, when the men of the Fourteenth Connecticut marched into a forested area known as the East Woods, that corruption was well under way. Just beyond the woods lay the Miller cornfield, where General Hooker’s men had fought for about three hours already that morning. The fighting had been sustained and brutal, going back and forth across that field as first one side, then the other, gained the upper hand. Hundreds of men lost their lives, and thousands more, those fortunate enough to have been preserved, huddled in the East Woods in small squads, the broken remnants of the brigades and regiments that had carried out the earlier assaults. But even the woods were being devastated by solid shot and exploding shell as Confederate artillery attempted to inflict as much damage as possible upon the men seeking shelter under the canopy.

The walking wounded streamed back through our lines, and I read our future in their eyes. The time had come. This was what I had enlisted for, what Jessie Anne had seen through her tears, and what I perhaps had not seen clearly enough. I had
been in the army just five weeks, I had fired my rifle only a few times, and I had not yet seen the enemy face-to-face on the field of battle. Sarge was right. Tighter than my own skin was the fear that enveloped me.

I cowered behind a tree for protection. Shells burst in the trees overhead, pelting the men below with hot metal fragments and splinters of wood. Several men fell to the ground with bright red gashes on heads or shoulders or limbs, the regiment’s first battlefield casualties. A man could be killed just as readily with shards of wood as with hot iron or lead.

General French rode furiously through the woods. “On your feet! Line of battle!” he screamed.

Colonel Perkins ran up and down our line. “Fourteenth, form up! Line of battle! Fix bayonets!”

The men came cautiously out from cover. Three thousand bayonets clanked home upon three thousand rifle barrels. The three regiments of the Second Brigade formed in lines that were nearly straight, in spite of the many trees. The brigade pivoted southward, the 108
^th
New York in the front line, the 130
^th
Pennsylvania in the middle, and the Fourteenth Connecticut at the rear.

Sergeant Needham’s voice rang out. “When it gets hot, lads, I’ll be right behind you. Just listen to me. Think about your loading and firing, loading and firing. Don’t let fear master you. Just load, aim, and fire, men, and you’ll do bloody fine.”

The band struck up a chorus of “Yankee Doodle,” and the Second Brigade began to march southward out of the East Woods. The 108
^th
New York cleared the tree line and filed off to the left, the 130
^th
Pennsylvania continued straight on, filling the center of the line, and the Fourteenth executed a precise right sidestepping movement that brought us up on the right of the Pennsylvania boys. We must have been a beautiful sight, three thousand men, all newly uniformed in dark blue coats and
light blue trousers, our lines smartly dressed and our regimental ensigns flying high.

It seemed a hundred heavy guns opened up at once, trying to blast us off the face of the earth. Every tendon, every sinew was taut. There arose deep within me, from my bones and from my bowels, a yearning to turn around and go back to the woods, to endure the shelling there rather than advance across that field. Was this the time? Was my death at hand? Would the next few minutes or hours leave Jessie Anne a widow and my children orphans? I strained within myself to attend to my marching all the more, because the marching forced me to concentrate on the commands of the screaming officers, rather than on the danger flying all around me.

“Steady, men, steady,” Sarge said, his voice high-pitched and piercing.

General Weber’s brigade was a hundred yards or so to our front. A fine sight they were too, as they advanced in nearly perfect order. We followed Weber’s men down into a glen past one farm, then a second, and on up through a cornfield toward the Rebel line at a sunken country lane. A shell exploded in Weber’s ranks, then another and another. One man was struck directly; he simply was no more. A few men were thrown a dozen or more feet into the air like little blue rag dolls only to flop back to the ground and lie motionless. Several more fell kicking and writhing in obvious pain. Still others, less seriously struck, hopped about on one foot or the other, or clutched an arm or put a hand to a bleeding face. Weber’s men closed ranks and continued onward in a slow, deadly advance.

Shot and shell screamed all around us. With each burst, heads ducked and bobbed, some even dove to the ground. Again my heart fainted within me, and I yearned to turn aside to the farm buildings for shelter.

“Steady, men, steady. It’ll not be long now.”

Sarge remained stolid and upright as he led the company forward, and I resolved to do the same. His lips quivered slightly, with fear I thought at first, but the movement was too rhythmical. Sarge had said he was always afraid when the shooting started, but I was sure he would never quiver with fear. I believe he was praying, for what I know not, but at such a time as was upon us, there was no shortage of things to pray for.

The slope up to the enemy line at the sunken road was bisected by a second wagon lane. The 130
^th
Pennsylvania and the Fourteenth Connecticut advanced along the western side of this lane while the 108
^th
New York advanced along the eastern side, but the New York regiment slowed its pace and halted just below the crest of the hill, safely out of sight of the enemy, and they did not move until the fighting was done.

The Pennsylvania and Connecticut boys continued up the slope and entered a cornfield. Much of the corn had been broken down by Weber’s men, some of whom lay dead or dying among the stalks. We stepped around them or over them and pressed onward. Wounded men staggered back through our line, at times being aided by one or two “concerned” friends. There was a low fence at the end of the cornfield, which marked its boundary with a mown hayfield. Across this grassy field we saw what we were up against.

The land before us sloped downward for about a hundred yards, ending at a sunken lane with a strongly fortified fence. Sunlight gleamed off hundreds of Confederate bayonets, but little else could be seen of them as they lay in wait to kill as many of us as they could. Their officers walked back and forth behind the lines of riflemen, looking in our direction and barking orders.

The First Delaware, in front of the Fourteenth, and the Fifth Maryland, in front of the 130
^th
Pennsylvania, began to advance into the hayfield toward the sunken road. They marched in
perfect step, shoulder to shoulder, down the gentle slope, drawing ever nearer to the Rebel guns. Their colors flew high in the breeze, leading the straight line of blue toward the enemy. Sixty yards … fifty yards … forty yards. The line stopped about twenty-five yards from the sunken road.

A Confederate officer brandished his saber high in the air. “Fire!”

As if triggered by a single hand, a sheet of lead and flame leaped toward the men in blue. A second distinct sound, almost in the same instant, carried up that slope to my ears, the dull thud of hundreds of Rebel bullets simultaneously striking home in Federal flesh. Red blood misted the air. Almost all the color-bearers were shot down, the colors fell to the earth, and nearly half of the men went down as well. Some were blown over backward by the force of the volley, dead before they hit the ground. Others spun around, their arms flailing in a kind of grotesque pirouette, then pitching face downward into the dirt, never to move again. Many more were left writhing in agony in the red Maryland earth, staining it redder still with their life’s blood.

I looked at the men on either side of me. John Robinson was just to my left, Jim Adams and Harry Whitting to the right. Fear was etched on the faces of my brothers, as I knew it was on mine. Wide eyes blinked again and again, breathing was quick and shallow, sweat dripped from chins and cap brims.

“Steady, men, steady,” Sarge called out.

Battle smoke drifted up the slope toward us. Gray, shadowy figures appeared moving toward us. Men began to fire sporadically through the smoke. I fingered the trigger of my Springfield; it bucked painfully against my shoulder.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Captain Carpenter screamed. “The Delaware boys are falling back! Cease fire!” The order was repeated up and down the line until the firing ceased. As the
shadowy figures neared, it became clear to all that they wore dark blue coats and light blue trousers.

“Run for your lives, boys! It’s murder out there!” the survivors cried as they raced through our line. Some of our boys heeded that advice and started for the rear with them. I reloaded my rifle and huddled close to the ground.

“Fourteenth! On your feet!” Colonel Perkins shouted. Then he gave the order I had both wished for and dreaded: “Men of the Fourteenth Connecticut, to the front!”

A great cheer went up as our regimental colors were raised in the center of the line. The Stars and Stripes, with the words “14
^th
Regt Conn Vols”
embroidered in gold across the middle red stripe, and the field of blue adorned with a bald eagle with wings spread wide surrounded by thirty-three stars, flew proudly next to our regimental flag. This flag was of deepest royal blue, fringed all around with gold tassels, and again, our majestic national bird was embroidered with wings spread, this time atop the state seal of Connecticut with its trinity of twisted grapevines, and with the name of our regiment proudly stitched beneath the seal. Some of the fleeing Delaware and Maryland boys about-faced and fell into line under our colors.

“Forward, march!” We jumped over the low fence in front and began to advance in line abreast with the 130
^th
Pennsylvania down the slope toward the enemy, elbow to elbow, each man feeling the presence of the man on either side. As soon as we started to advance, the Rebels increased the urgency of their fire. Bullets flew all about. Several struck the earth in front of me, throwing up small plumes of dirt. One spent ball struck my left foot a glancing blow, surprising me more than hurting me. Another passed cleanly between my legs, causing a slight abrasion on my trouser leg. Still another plucked at my cartridge case. Others were not as fortunate. Up and down our line, men
fell as they were struck and either died where they fell, or tried to hobble off to the rear.

About seventy-five yards from the sunken road, Colonel Perkins ordered us to stop. We fired a powerful volley into the line of smoke that marked the sunken road.

“Lie down!” echoed up and down the line. “Fire at will!” Companies A and B began to deliver a rapid fire with their Sharps breech-loading rifles. The rest of us with Springfields tried frantically to reload.

“Settle down, boys,” Sarge’s shrill voice cried out. “Just do your work. Load, aim, and fire. Load, aim, and fire. On my command.” Sarge scurried up and down our line at a low crouch, calling out the reload commands loud enough for all in our company to hear. Then we aimed as a single man and fired, again at his command. We did it again, and again, and again, until we were caught up in our deadly work to the exclusion of all else.

“Company C, fire at will,” Sarge ordered after a few minutes. I didn’t need to hear Sarge calling the cadence anymore, for my body was going through the drill without thought, almost as if it was a natural thing for me. Sarge kept moving up and down the line, crouching low and encouraging all of the riflemen in his charge. Once again, Sarge had been right. I was afraid but not overly so, just load, aim, and fire; just load, aim, and fire. I was aware of nothing but working my Springfield.

After several more shots, a bullet whizzed passed my left ear, so close that I felt the air part with its passage. My stomach turned and bile rose in my throat at the closeness of it. I froze. Listen for Sarge, I thought, just listen for his voice and obey. I tried and tried to listen for those familiar words of encouragement and instruction amid the din of battle, but he had fallen silent. I looked up and down the line. Here and there a dead man lay motionless; gaps in the line evidenced the many wounded
that were even now seeking safety, but there was no sign of Sarge. Then I looked directly behind me, and there he was, flat on his back, face to the sky, about five yards away. I crawled over to him and saw the red-black bullet hole in his left temple. His clear gray eyes stared sightlessly at the hot sun above, the fire forever gone.