Life of Wm. Tecumseh Sherman.: Late Retired General. U. S. A.Johnson, Willis Fletcher
History
Life of Wm. Tecumseh Sherman.: Late Retired General. U. S. A.
Johnson, Willis Fletcher
Sherman, William T. (William Tecumseh), 1820-1891
"The Twenty-ninth and Thirty-second Missouri Regiments have the honor
of being first to plant foot on the summit. They were closely followed,
however, by the whole of General Osterhaus's Command, and General
Geary's Division shares with this the honors of an achievement which
was beyond the hopes of one party or the fears of the other. So far
as I could learn, there was not a single regiment or even a single
individual that shrank for a moment from the appalling looking service.
An incident will serve to illustrate the common feeling. When the
order to charge up the mountain in the face of the Rebel works was
received, Colonel Peckham of the Twenty-ninth Missouri, an officer who
was himself wounded and who lost over sixty per cent. of his regiment
in the memorable charge upon the enemy's works in the Chickasaw Bayou
fight, in December last, and who was again wounded on the 19th of
May following, in the abortive charge made by his division (Blair's)
upon the enemy's works in the rear of Vicksburg, was fully impressed
with the idea that he was now in the way of another such slaughter.
He turned to one of his men in whose fate he felt a deep personal
interest, and pulling from his pocket a watch presented him by another
regiment in which he had at one time served, told the man to fall back
to the camp and take this watch and a message to his wife in case he
should be killed. The brave fellow demurred to the order, saying he
preferred staying with the regiment. 'I tell you,' said the Colonel,
'your going with the regiment will be but a useless sacrifice of one
more life.' 'I will not leave the regiment,' was the reply, 'unless you
make the order a peremptory one, and I beg you not to disgrace me in
that way.' The Colonel yielded the point. His fears for the man proved
groundless, but when I met him the next day, he could not shake hands
with me. He had a severe wound in the right shoulder, received making
his way on foot up the mountain at the head of his command."
That night old Lookout was ablaze with the camp fires of the Union
army. But while Hooker was warring amid the clouds, his fellow-generals
were busy elsewhere. "Sherman," writes the correspondent, "has, on the
end of Mission Ridge, got his forces in position. His line of battle
is very extended. It is grand as well as formidable. Advancing a heavy
line of skirmishers, he moves over the low ground to the base of the
ridge, where the Rebels but a very short time before were massed in
force. They withdrew, offering but comparatively slight resistance
when Sherman commenced moving. Indeed the firing was mainly by the
skirmishers. Rising the crest of the ridge, Sherman takes possession of
the termini of the two railroads of so much importance to Bragg--that
running to Knoxville (over which Longstreet departed to East
Tennessee), and that running to Atlanta, over which Bragg receives his
supplies. It being near dark, Sherman halts on the ground he has won.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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