The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War by John Horn

Author:John Horn [Horn, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877), State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV), Military
ISBN: 9781611214376
Google: 7k8IEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2019-08-19T03:26:01+00:00

CHAPTER 13

The Wilderness

Lee’s army had exhausted the available rations near Orange Court House. He had to disperse his forces to subsist them. Anderson’s division withdrew to the southern part of Orange County. Preparations to move the camp of Mahone’s brigade began on January 2. One hundred men from the 12th walked about 10 miles down the Orange & Alexandria to Madison Run Station, halfway between Orange Court House and Gordonsville. Three-quarters of a mile from the station, the detail reached a bluff. The soldiers began clearing out an oak grove. They endured an unusually cold night, then continued clearing throughout the following day and January 4 as well. On that day the rest of the 12th’s men struck their tents at 9 a.m. These soldiers and the brigade’s remainder shuffled through a snow squall toward their new camp, arriving at dark. They spent the rest of the week building quarters. The usual ramshackle village arose. By Saturday the troops had finished their huts, moved into them and made them comfortable. The various activities of winter quarters resumed. Detachments from the regiment crushed stone to pave the road between Madison Run Station and Orange Court House.

Mahone grew increasingly active. “He directed his attention towards increasing the efficiency and strength of his brigade,” recalled Todd. “He made strenuous efforts to get back the absentees, detailed men, and skulkers.”1 Porte consolidated the regimental bands into a Brigade Drum and Fife Corps of twenty drummers and five fifers, which played reveille and tattoo for the brigade and practiced an hour a day in front of his headquarters. The consolidation freed many regimental musicians for other duties. Mahone also provided his men with shoes. His colonels detailed to brigade headquarters any shoemakers in their regiments. Porte sent to Richmond for the tools necessary to manufacture footwear. Swapping green hides for leather, he bartered with the residents of Orange and the neighboring counties. Soon he had a shoe factory operating.2

The two soldiers of the 16th Virginia reprieved on the day of Adams’ death came up again for execution on January 10.3 No reprieve or commutation came for them this time. “The execution took place on a bitter winter afternoon when the leaden skies were unrelieved by a ray of sunshine, while the sad winds moaned through the trees as if Nature seemed attuned to the melancholy work at hand,” remembered Todd.4 One of the condemned men met his fate well, kneeling unassisted at his stake and pulling the cap over his eyes while the firing squad’s captain blindfolded and bound the other. The onlooking soldiers brooded. “Thinking for instance that man was once somebody’s darling and how much care, attention, & cost it requires to raise a child to manhood,” Phillips recalled.5 The Virginians marched past the lifeless bodies. “All seemed sad for a moment, but the hearts of soldiers are so hardened, that before reaching the camp the merry laugh and joke could be heard as if nothing had happened,” recorded the Petersburg Riflemen’s Pvt. John R.

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