The Captured Scout of the Army of the James: A Sketch of the Life of Sergeant Henry H. Manning, of the Twenty-fourth Mass. RegimentTrumbull, H. Clay (Henry Clay)
History
The Captured Scout of the Army of the James: A Sketch of the Life of Sergeant Henry H. Manning, of the Twenty-fourth Mass. Regiment
Trumbull, H. Clay (Henry Clay)
Manning, Henry Hatch, 1844-1868; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Personal narratives
From Seabrook to James Island, the Twenty-fourth moved, in July, 1863,
under Gen. Terry, in co-operation with Gen. Gillmore's advance on Morris
Island. Stricken down with sunstroke there, his whole system prostrate
under repeated attacks of fever and chills, fastened on him in the
malarial regions of his recent service, Manning lay sick in the rude
regimental hospital on the morning of July 16, when the enemy in force
made a sudden attack on the Union lines. The shock of this battle was
bravely met by Col. Shaw's Fifty-fourth Massachusetts regiment, then
first in action. The hospital of the Twenty-fourth was found to be in
the focus of the enemy's sharpest fire, and a hurried move was ordered
down the island. As the poor invalids, with failing limbs, dragged their
tedious way to the beach, shell after shell from the enemy's guns came
shrieking past, or bursting among them. One such seemed to explode in
Manning's very face, and he fell, with the half conviction that it had
killed him. As he rose again to his feet, another burst above him, and a
ragged fragment of the hot iron tore down along his very side, laying
open his clothing, and bruising and lacerating his arm. But this injury
probably saved him from a severer; for, checked by it a moment, he saw
yet another shell explode directly before him, in the group he had
fallen behind, killing and wounding not a few of that number. Sorry
comfort, this, for sick soldiers! Yet such was but an incident in the
trying army service of our Union soldiers, in the prolonged war with
rebellion.
CHARLESTON SIEGE-WORK.--SHARPSHOOTING.
Immediately after the fight at James Island, the Twenty-fourth passed
over to Morris Island, to have a part in the operations against
Charleston from that point, commencing with that terrible assault on
Fort Wagner in which Col. Shaw lost his life,--when Gen. Stevenson's
brigade (including the Twenty-fourth) was in reserve, holding the front
after the sad repulse. There, Manning was again stricken down with
sunstroke. Later, he was assigned to a company of sharpshooters in
active service at the extreme front. He then had narrow escapes daily.
On one occasion, as he and a comrade were alternating in rifle firing
through a loop-hole, he had thrown himself down to rest under his rubber
blanket, raised for a shade, when a bullet wounded his comrade in the
face; as he sprang up to aid him, a huge fragment of a mortar shell came
tearing down through the air, and crushed the rubber blanket into the
ground on the very spot where Manning had lain. Those were toilsome days
on Morris Island, in the slow dragging siege; men who were there will
not soon forget its shifting sands, its blazing sunlight, its
unintermitted fire of artillery and musketry, its labors on traverse and
parallel and sap, its frequent struggles of sortie or assault, and its
atmosphere laden with disease:
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