Rebels at the Gate: Lee and McClellan on the Front Line of a Nation Divided (39 page)

Once, thinking his men were too long in repairing a bridge, Milroy had plunged into waist-deep water to hoist some logs. As he worked, a teamster appeared and began to curse the men for their delay.

The general, shorn of his insignia, gazed up and said, “You look pretty stout; suppose you give us a lift.”

“See you damned first!” was the teamster's surly reply.

“Look here,” snapped Milroy, “if you give us any more of your abuse, I'll come up there and pummel your head with a stone.”

The teamster backed off, stopping to inquire of an acquaintance nearby, “Who is that gray-headed cuss back there at the bridge? He's mighty sassy.”

“Why,” exclaimed the man, “that's our Old Gray Eagle!”
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The Gray Eagle yearned for battle. Anxious to win distinction, he clashed with Colonel Johnson's outposts and probed his flanks. The crisp blue skies of early December begged for action. Milroy grew increasingly restless on his mountain perch. And then, by a miracle, his prayers were answered.

Five Confederate deserters appeared in Milroy's camp. They reported a weak and badly demoralized force at Camp Allegheny. Those defectors offered to serve as guides if Milroy attacked. They assured him that the Rebels were in no mood to fight. Laughed a Confederate in retrospect, it was the “biggest lie that ever tickled the ear of the devil.”
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Armed with this startling news, General Milroy resolved to strike. The Confederates on that mountain looked to be easy prey. Milroy would “clean out” their camp and earn his first victory. Not
prone to being superstitious, he picked the day of reckoning—Friday, the thirteenth of December.

Milroy had plenty of guides; a cunning local Unionist named John Slayton was already employed. Finding enough troops for an assault was another matter. Many Federal officers were on leave—so many soldiers were sick or absent from their regiments that the general was forced to solicit volunteers.
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By December 12, Milroy had gathered elements of the Ninth and Thirteenth Indiana, Twenty-fifth and Thirty-second Ohio Infantry regiments, the Second (U.S.) Virginia Infantry, and a detachment of Bracken's Indiana cavalry at Cheat Fort—almost nineteen hundred men in all. The column was hastily underway. Those Federals were so confident of victory that seventy-five members of Rigby's Indiana artillery went along without cannons, fully expecting to capture and work the Rebel guns!
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At the head of Milroy's advance that day was a slight, baby-faced youth named Joseph R.T. Gordon. Just seventeen years old, “Josie” was the son of Major Jonathan W. Gordon, caretaker of General Garnett's body at Corricks Ford. The little private had enlisted in the Ninth Indiana Infantry that summer—after his father's departure to join the Eleventh United States regulars.

Major Gordon was horrified to learn of his tender son's enlistment. He feared that Josie had “thrown away” his life. A stern letter was addressed to the boy. “You need not be afraid that I shall interfere with your choice,” wrote the Major. “I would…sooner die than you should do any unworthy act in your new vocation to bring reproach upon yourself or family. Remember your mother. Do not forget that you were among her last thoughts…. Write to me often, obey your officers, and die sooner than be a calf or a coward.”

Josie Gordon was so fragile in appearance that General Milroy took him in as an orderly. But the boy gravitated to danger, proving himself quick-witted and fearless. The amiable Josie soon became the “pet of the regiment.” He was “brave as a lion,” it was said, “and as gentle as a lamb.”

Young Gordon narrowly escaped death when hidden Confederates shot into Milroy's advance guard two miles west of old Camp Bartow. The main Federal column reached that point some hours after it was cleared. Curious soldiers peered at the yellow-clad faces of their dead. “How repulsive they looked,” recalled Ambrose Bierce, “with their blood-smears, their blank, staring eyes, their teeth uncovered by contraction of the lips! The frost had begun already to whiten their deranged clothing. We were as patriotic as ever, but we did not wish to be that way. For an hour afterward the injunction of silence in the ranks was needless.”
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That night, the Federals gathered near old Camp Bartow, kindling fires to ward off the cold. General Milroy summoned the officers to his campfire and unfolded a plan. Proposing to split his force in two, the general would send each column, about nine hundred strong, to pounce upon the Confederates from opposite flanks at dawn.

Colonel Gideon Moody, with his Ninth Indiana and the Second (U.S.) Virginia detachment, would march by the Green Bank road, climb Buffalo Ridge, and strike the left flank of Camp Allegheny. General Milroy's column, led by Colonel James Jones's Twenty-fifth Ohio and detachments of the Thirteenth Indiana and Thirty-second Ohio Regiments, would ascend the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike to storm the Confederate right. The attacks were to begin at daybreak on December 13.
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Colonel Moody's march began at 11 P.M. on December 12, under a brilliant star-lit sky. “How romantic it all was,” recalled Ambrose Bierce, “the glades suffused and interpenetrated with moonlight; the long valley of the Greenbrier stretching away…the river itself unseen under its ‘astral body’ of mist!”

General Milroy's column started up the frozen turnpike at midnight. Within a mile of the enemy camp, Confederate pickets opened fire. A wounded Federal, moaning piteously and covered with blood, was carried through the ranks. Trying to ignore the grim scene, Milroy's troops filed off at a sharp curve and began to scramble up the mountainside.
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The Confederates at Camp Allegheny were aroused. Drums beat the call to arms as Colonel Ed Johnson stormed from hut to hut. Clad in his nightclothes and slippers, the colonel was a sight to behold. He donned a teamster's overcoat but had not retrieved his sword. Grabbing a crooked piece of oak root, Johnson waved it menacingly at his men. There was no time for formalities—the Yankees had come calling! “I am of the opinion to this day,” John Robson of the Fifty-second Virginia later wrote, “that nobody had to waste time hunting up a fight around old Ed Johnson without getting as much as was good for them before night.”
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The colonel had only twelve hundred men to cover his mile-long defenses. Lt. Colonel George Hansbrough's Ninth Virginia battalion, Major Albert Reger's Virginia battalion, and the Thirty-first Virginia Infantry occupied the heights on his right, protected only by some felled timber at the edge of a large field. On the Confederate left flank, south of the turnpike, were crude earthworks. Behind them Johnson placed his own Twelfth Georgia, the Fifty-second Virginia Infantry, and Lieutenant C.E. Dabney's Pittsylvania Cavalry. Covering the road from those works were two four-gun batteries, Captain Pierce Anderson's trusty Lee Battery, and the new guns of Captain John Miller, a Presbyterian minister. Miller's Second Rockbridge Artillery had drilled for weeks on the mountain with a makeshift pair of wooden “cannons” until their guns arrived.
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On the right flank, Confederates braced against a piercing wind as the sky began to glow. From the dark woods came Federal troops, “six files deep at double quick.” Lt. Col. Hansbrough's battalion knelt in line at the brow of the mountain and gave them a volley of musketry. Hansbrough's men, badly outnumbered, scattered like a covey of “chased partridges.” The Thirty-first Virginia Infantry promptly came to their aid. Rallying, the Confederates broke into a charge.
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The battle was on. “The balls flew thick and fast—I really believe that one thousand passed around me, playing all sorts of music,” recalled a Confederate. “ We could scarcely see them for the
smoke,” wrote a Federal officer. “The fight here was almost hand to hand,” Lt. Col. Hansbrough declared. “The men fought on their own hook, each loading and firing as fast as possible.” Hansbrough fell wounded and was carried from the field. “The roar of the musketry was terrible,” wrote an Ohio captain, “and the shouts of the men was like the yelling of fiends.”
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Colonel Johnson brought up five companies of the Twelfth Georgia Infantry and pitched into the fray. Swinging his oak bludgeon, Johnson led a charge. “Give ‘em Hell boys,” he roared. “Give ‘em Hell.” Milroy's Federals melted to the rear. The din of battle overwhelmed sensibilities, shocked mortal flesh. “Stick to the timber, boys, and stand firm,” cried a Federal captain attempting to rally his men, “our side is making half that noise.”
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“Here began a most determined struggle,” recalled an Ohio Federal. “They to gain control of the timber, we to keep them out.” Bluecoats seized the upper hand. “We suffered much,” admitted James Hall, “the enemy having decidedly the advantage, being in the woods,—with us in the open field, and having the sun shining full in our faces.” Prostrate forms soon dotted the field. “I fought for more than an hour within a [rod] of two [of ] my cabbin mates who lay weltering in their blood,” related a member of the Thirty-first Virginia. “It being a very cold frosty morning a fog kept raising from their blood.”
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Members of the Yeager family were ushered from their home as bullets pattered on the roof like hail. The struggle became desperate. Confederates were driven to their cabins, only to be led back up the slope by the fiery Ed Johnson. “Our boys fought bravely repulsing the enemy three…times,” wrote a Federal, “running them at the point of the bayonet…but each time they rallied and drove our boys back.” Troops seasoned on the mountain crests now battled like veterans. The Western Virginians under Johnson's command fought with unusual tenacity, for the Federals stood between them and their homes.
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“[I]…had my gun shot & dented so that I could scarcely get a load down her & finally threw it down & picked up another,”
recalled a wounded Virginia Confederate. The battle lines mixed in such confusion that Southern artillerists found it difficult to engage without killing their own men. Muskets were discharged in the very faces of the foe. “I never witnessed harder fighting,” avowed Ed Johnson, that veteran of three wars.

The disappearance of skulkers and those aiding the wounded badly thinned Milroy's lines. Federal troops, now low on ammunition, dug frantically through the cartridge boxes of the fallen. Listening in vain for Colonel Moody's attack on the opposite flank, Milroy's remaining troops shot their last rounds and gathered up the wounded. Nearly three hours after the attack commenced, they retreated back down the mountainside.
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Just about then, Colonel Moody's column appeared on the Confederate left. Moody's lengthy and difficult circuit had upset the Federal timetable. Worse, his men had tarried at a local mill, guzzling hard apple cider and filling their canteens. Upon climbing the steep mountainside, they found scowling earthworks and acres of slashed timber, “impenetrable to a cat.” It did not look like the haunt of a demoralized foe.
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Turning from the wreck of Milroy's detachment on the right, Colonel Johnson now joined his men on the left. Captain Pierce Anderson's Lee Battery anchored the Confederate works on that flank. The venerable Anderson saw men in gray jackets clambering through the fallen timber. “Don't shoot,” they cried out. “We are your pickets coming in!” Anderson, on horseback a few paces in advance, called out for them to enter the works. He was instantly shot down. Deceiving Federal skirmishers had killed the grizzled veteran of fifty-eight battles!
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Colonel Moody's Federals—the Ninth Indiana and Second (U.S.) Virginia Regiments—charged up the slope, “whooping like devils.” As they closed, Confederates rose from the ditch and poured in a “murderous fire.” The charge stalled in a tangle of logs and brush fronting the enemy works. “It was a horrible sight indeed,” avowed one Federal. “The balls flew around thick as hail…. I felt that I would fall when we were advancing, for I did not
see how I could escape their balls….[H]ad we not fell down we would undoubtedly have been killed.”
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Federals nestled into the slashed timber. “We took cover in it and pot-shotted the fellows behind the parapet,” Ambrose Bierce recollected. By slinking through the fallen trees under fire, some drew within twenty yards of the Confederate works. Among them was little Josie Gordon, that darling of the Ninth Indiana Infantry. Tiring of the stalemate, he gathered a storming party, determined to renew the charge. Josie leaped upon a log, boldly exposed to the guns. Comrades watched in horror as the little hero fell, his tender voice still ringing through the timber for them to “Come on!”
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