The Battle of White Sulphur Springs (15 page)

Two soldiers of the 22
^nd
Virginia distinguished themselves during this phase of the battle. Albert Singleton of Company H and another soldier identified only as “Huffman” were on the 22
^nd
Virginia's skirmish line, behind trees. Singleton occasionally stepped out from behind the trees and drew enemy fire. Huffman, who was a crack shot, darted out from behind his tree and picked off the Yankee horse soldiers who had fired at Singleton. When a friend asked Singleton why he took such a risk, Singleton responded, “The Yankees couldn't shoot.”
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While this heavy firing continued, the fearless New York general reconnoitered his entire position, going from the hills on the left to the right, looking for a place to probe Patton's line for weaknesses to exploit.
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The day's drama was about to reach its climax.

5

Costly Climax on August 26

About four o'clock on the warm, sunny afternoon of August 26, 1863, Union commander Brigadier General William Woods Averell decided to make an all-out effort to dislodge Patton's Confederates from their strong position blocking the New Yorker's route of march to his target in Lewisburg. He sent for Captain John Bird's squadron of about one hundred troopers of the 14
^th
Pennsylvania Cavalry, which had not been dismounted during the earlier fighting, and ordered them to make a mounted charge against the Southern barricade. Averell sent instructions to his commanders along the line that he was about to unleash a cavalry charge on the enemy's center and ordered them to act in concert with that mounted attack. Captain Bird ordered his men to draw sabers, put their spurs to their horses and charge.
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The Pennsylvanians thundered toward Edgar's position behind the barricade, their sabers glinting in the afternoon sunlight, making what Edgar described as a “furious charge.”
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The sight impressed the other Union horse soldiers. The regimental historian of the 2
^nd
West Virginia declared:

This brave body of men made one of the most daring charges of the war, not only facing a murderous storm of leaden hail from the front but also, to their surprise, received an enfilading fire along their flank from a large body of infantry concealed in a cornfield to the left of the road. On they dashed, regardless of death and danger, and reached the breastworks of felled trees and fence rails thrown across the road
.
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Seeing the mounted charge bearing down on them, about three hundred Confederates abandoned the barricade, running for their lives. Schoonmaker's troopers opened on the fleeing Southerners, inflicting heavy casualties on them. Reserves came up to shove back the mounted Yankees, and Patton's men soon regained control of the barricade.
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Bird was badly wounded during the attack and was captured.
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Patton claimed that the Pennsylvanians were “driven back in utter confusion and rout, many of their horses coming into our lines.”
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Lieutenant Colonel Edgar later claimed that “not more than five of the enemy” returned in their saddles.
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The rest of the 14
^th
Pennsylvania Cavalry then received orders to make a mounted attack in the wake of Bird's repulse. The Pennsylvanians charged “through a ravine in the face of a galling front fire, almost up to the enemy's fortifications, exposed to a withering enfilade fire, but the Pennsylvanians—‘the charging regiment'—rode on, and on, into the very jaws of death with artillery and infantry pouring deadly missiles into its ranks—till it reached the enemy's breastworks, and got tangled up with the abatis the enemy had placed in front of their fortifications where many of our boys were killed, wounded, or captured,” the regimental historian of the 14
^th
Pennsylvania Cavalry colorfully reported.
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After firing a volley, and without time to reload, Patton's infantrymen clubbed their muskets to knock the Northern horse soldiers from their mounts and then pulled the dazed cavalrymen over the barricade and made them prisoners.
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Colonel James M. Schoonmaker had his horse shot out from under him and fell beside a dead Union officer. Major General Sam Jones recognized Schoonmaker's horse, saddle and bridle after the battle and reported the colonel's death to Richmond in his after-action report of the battle. However, Schoonmaker was unhurt; he immediately mounted the dead officer's horse and safely led his men back from the barricade. Lieutenant Jacob Shoop of Company M was badly wounded in the thigh during the charge.
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Private Adolphus Meeker had enlisted in Company L of the 14
^th
Pennsylvania Cavalry on September 20, 1862, at the tender age of fifteen. He was the youngest of five brothers to serve in the Union army during the Civil War. He had served with the regiment since its early days, and he was in the saddle when the Pennsylvanians made their mounted charge that afternoon. Meeker was killed that afternoon at the age of seventeen while making the brave charge against the barricade. Another of his brothers died in July 1864 at the notorious Confederate prisoner-of-war camp at Andersonville.
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Sergeant John Stevens of Chapman's Battery had a clear view of the dramatic charge. Stevens was filling several canteens for the battery's wounded men when he spotted the charging Pennsylvanians. “I saw the company being formed on the pike by fours, and start with a whoop down the road, with drawn sabers, coming in a lope, four in a breast,” he wrote.

The lay of the land was such that I could not see our men, and the thought struck me that our men were retreating and gone and here I am looking right into the door of “Camp Chase.” I didn't know if I could have run if I had tried to. I always dreaded being captured, but I soon got relief. Edgar's men had built a high fence across the pike in front of them, and the head of the column of cavalry came right up to the fence, when Edgar's men fired on them, with a tremendous volley which gave me instant relief. Horses reared and fell, and such a mix-up I never saw before. The men that escaped wheeled and went back like they were racing, several horses going without riders
.
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Stevens and his comrades captured one of the Pennsylvanians. Stevens asked, “Why did you make that fool charge?” The Keystone Stater responded, “The General said to our Colonel, ‘Can't you take your men and go down there and take those fellows?' I thought the whole regiment was coming, but when I looked back I saw it was only one company.”
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The 14
^th
Pennsylvania Cavalry lost 103 men in the day's brutal fighting.
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Corporal Charles A. Mestrezat served in Company E of the 14
^th
Pennsylvania. “We had a very hard fight the 26
^th
of August,” he told his wife. “Many of our boys were killed & wounded. I, through God's kind providence escaped unhurt though much exposed. I feel truly thankful to God for his protection in the hour of danger; before I went into the fight I put my trust in him.” However, Mestrezat was captured during the charge on the barricade. “I have been very kindly treated as well as the rest of the prisoners. I could not be better treated anywhere than I am here. The citizens & soldiers do all they can for our wounded, in truth they are just as kind a people as can be found either inside or outside our lines.” Within a few days, he was confined on overcrowded Belle Isle in Richmond, a filthy and terrible prison camp. Mestrezat never returned from Belle Isle. He died there on March 7, 1864.
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Lieutenant Colonel Edgar of the 26
^th
Battalion of Virginia Infantry disputed the Federal claims that the charge of the 14
^th
Pennsylvania Cavalry reached the barricade. “The road along which the charge was made was blockaded within fifty yards of the stockade (or barricade) by the dead and wounded bodies of the men and horses of the splendid regiment, and not more than five of the troopers returned in their saddles,” he declared.
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Another officer of the 14
^th
Pennsylvania drew Averell's ire during this attack. Captain Robert Pollock of the 14
^th
Pennsylvania “failed to make his appearance within view of the enemy, and remained behind in a secluded place, with most of his company, where, I am informed, he was found asleep by the enemy after the command had been withdrawn.”
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Given that, Pollock probably deserved to be captured.

During this attack, the fearless Baron Paul von König, who had earned a well-deserved reputation as Averell's most daring scout, led a portion of the 14
^th
Pennsylvania's attack on the right. Baron von König was ordered to clear out of a white frame house Confederate sharpshooters who were sniping away at Morton's gunners and inflicting losses on them from the safety of the house. One of Morton's gunners set the house ablaze with an artillery shell, and von König led the dismounted Pennsylvania horse soldiers in an attack on the Confederates who had vacated the house.
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One of Patton's foot soldiers drew a bead on the mounted German officer with the long, flowing hair, and von König dropped from the saddle, killed instantly, shot in the back. He was buried beneath a tree below the road near the spot where he fell.
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Averell also ordered the officers commanding the regiments on the right to press forward at the same time as the mounted charge to try to push their way through to the Anthony's Creek road, which came in on the Confederate left. Lieutenant John Combs, the regimental adjutant of the 2
^nd
West Virginia, failed to find Colonel George R. Latham, the colonel of the 2
^nd
West Virginia, in time, so he delivered Averell's order to the portion of the regiment nearest to him. That meant that only part of the 2
^nd
West Virginia received the order to attack.
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In the meantime, Lieutenant Morton changed front and raked the Confederate line in the cornfield with canister from his four guns, “causing the enemy who were massed there, a greater loss in men than from any other source during the battle.”
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Major Patrick McNally, who commanded the right battalion of the 2
^nd
West Virginia, joined with Lieutenant Combs to lead the 2
^nd
West Virginia forward against the portion of the barricade held by the 22
^nd
Virginia. McNally, age thirty, was an Irish immigrant who had previously served in the U.S. Navy. He settled in Ironton, Ohio, and personally raised the first company that left Ironton for service in the Civil War, Company K of what became the 2
^nd
West Virginia.
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With only about one hundred men, the attack led by McNally—“foremost in the line, waving his sword and cheering his men”—and Combs advanced on the enemy barricade and drove its defenders away in what Patton described as a “determined charge” that was “handsomely repulsed.”
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Major Patrick McNally, 2
^nd
West Virginia Mounted Infantry, was mortally wounded during the afternoon attack on the barricade.
Frank S. Reader
, History of the Fifth West Virginia Cavalry.

“We advanced through the cornfield, meeting with a murderous fire from the enemy, safely posted behind their breastworks,” remembered a member of the 2
^nd
West Virginia. “We pressed onward, however, almost up to the fortifications, but were there met with such a withering fire that human endurance could stand it no longer, and we fell back a short distance, taking position in a gully or dry creek bed, where we were partially sheltered. In that severe charge some of our bravest officers and men fell.”
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The rest of the regiment failed to support McNally's attack, which was forced back by a vicious counterattack by the 22
^nd
Virginia and two companies of Derrick's Battalion, commanded by Major William Blessing, that came to the aid of the hard-pressed 22
^nd
Virginia.
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McNally grabbed hold of a Confederate at the barricade and captured him, but the Irish major was mortally wounded and taken prisoner by the Confederates.
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Six of Averell's men dashed forward to try to rescue McNally, but all were captured, ending any further attempts to rescue the fallen major, who was left to his unhappy fate.
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Patton later reported that his defenders killed and wounded many of the West Virginians within “15 paces of our lines.”
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Henry C. Carpenter, one of Patton's foot soldiers, had a clear view of McNally's wounding and capture. His poor spelling, grammar and punctuation are presented here just as he originally wrote his letter: