Roster and Statistical Record of Company D, of the Eleventh Regiment Maine Infantry Volunteers. Maxfield Albert
and we knew it.
Taking up a position behind the rails of a torn-down fence, the Eleventh lay listening to Jackson's cannon and watching Hazzard's battery as it swept the White Oak Swamp Bridge with a storm of grape and cannister that kept even Jackson at bay. The cannoneers fell one by one – were thinned out until the officers not yet killed or wounded dismounted and took their places at the guns. It was whispered that their ammunition was giving out – was most gone – a few rounds more and the last shell would be fired, and then Jackson and his 35,000 men would pour across the bridge and up the heights to learn what sort of stuff we were made of.
But this was not to be. Just as we were gathering ourselves together for the apparently fast coming struggle, there came a yell from the rear, a sound of desperately galloping horses, and with slashing whips Pettits' battery came tearing on at the top of their horses' speed, General Naglee leading them into position. Ours, as did all the regiments massed in the big field, rose and cheered Naglee and the artillerymen as they swept by. Inside of a minute from their first appearance, they were in position, unlimbered, and were sweeping the bridge with grape and cannister.
Away on the left, at Glendale, there was fighting, and hard fighting too. Our men were so hard pressed that Franklin felt obliged to return two brigades to Sedgwick that he had borrowed from him. And our old commander, Colonel Caldwell, who had been with us during the day (now a Brigadier-General and commanding a brigade in Richardson's division), marched away with his brigade too, and rendered effective service in beating the masses of the enemy off.
They attacked at several points in their efforts to break through the lines of our men covering the roads by which our supply, ammunition and artillery trains were retreating to Malvern Hill. Slocum, on the Charles City road, was attacked at half-past one o'clock, but held his position by a sweeping artillery fire. Then, McCall, at Glendale, a point half way to Malvern Hill, was heavily attacked. McCall and many of his men and guns were captured, but the strength of the rebel blow was exhausted in the necessary effort, so that Sumner, whose line had been in the rear of McCall's, letting the broken troops through, opened heavily with artillery and musketry, repulsing all the enemy's efforts to break his line. Later in the day an attempt was made on Porter, stationed at Malvern Hill. He, too, by the aid of the gunboats, maintained his position. As night fell, we prepared to retreat. The abandoned ponton train was set on fire, and by its flaring light we moved back, marching on and on until morning found us in position with our own division at Malvern Hill.
The line of battle stretched around Malvern Hill, which is a point on the James River of perhaps sixty feet in height with a broad cleared top. Our line of defence made a huge semicircle, the flanks on the river and under protection of the gunboats. Our own position was on the right flank, close to the river. But a third of the troops of our army were actually engaged in the battle of July 1st, 1862. It was an artillery battle; the hill was crowned with sixty pieces of artillery, planted to sweep all possible openings by which troops could advance. Magruder and D. H. Hill made determined efforts to withstand their fire but, when supplemented with a rolling infantry fire, no troops could stand it. Night fell with our position undisturbed at any point.
As for me, I slept through most of the uproar; slept the sleep of the thoroughly tired-out. And I understand that all that could of the army did so too, refreshing tired Nature against the hour of need; many of the troops actually engaged waking to do their brief part in repelling an assault, and that done, to lie down in their line of battle to fall asleep again.
When darkness set in the retreat was continued. Troops, batteries and trains moved towards Harrison's Landing all night. Morning broke, the heavens opened, and torrents of rain descended. Our division lay in a covering position to oppose any advance the enemy might make, but he had given up the chase. With our troops already on the James, under cover of our gunboats, he knew it was madness to pursue further. So, the sodden, tired men, the trains of wounded, batteries and wagons floundered unmolested through the mud into Harrison's Landing, and not till all were past us, the last straggling man and wagon, did we of the rear guard move into that haven of rest and safety for the beaten, battered, exhausted Army of the Potomac.
HARRISON'S LANDING
At Harrison's Landing our regiment was encamped on the left of the line, close to the river. There was but one alarm here, that of the morning of August 1, when the enemy ran some light guns to the opposite bank of the James and opened fire on the landing. For about thirty minutes there was a lively exchange of shot and shell between their battery and our gunboats, when the enemy fell back, and troubled us no more.
Here we remained until the middle of August, our life a monotony of picket duty in an open field, baking, sweltering under a hot sun, with only such shelter as kennels made of sticks and wheat straw afforded. In camp, a well shaded one fortunately, we lazily slept the time away, drilling occasionally, but not often, though when General Emory took command of our brigade here, General Naglee going north on leave, he established a series of brigade drills, the chief amusement in which, to the rank and file, was to see the commanders of the different regiments gallop up to the General after each awkward movement to receive the maledictory criticisms of that outraged old cavalry warrior on their evident ignorance of what to him was as familiar as winking. They passed his encomiums along to their line officers on returning to their regiments you may be sure, and the line officers took it out of their "non coms," who cursed the men for their stupidity, who damned the man who invented tactics and themselves for having been such fools as to enlist for soldiers with which officers could play shuttlecock and battledore.
Finally, the preparations for the evacuation of the Landing being completed, we of Keyes' Corps moved away from it the 16th of August. The 17th we crossed the Chickahominy near the mouth of the James, crossing on a ponton bridge of two thousand feet in length, reached Williamsburg the 18th, went into camp about where we did when there in May, marching to Yorktown the 20th.
YORKTOWN
All of the army but two divisions of our corps now took transports to go to the relief of Pope and Burnside, and to fight the battle of Antietam. Two divisions of our corps were left on the Peninsula; Couch's going with the main army. Our brigade took position at Yorktown, and proceeded to strengthen the defences of that place to enable it to resist any attack from the direction of Richmond. The work was soon completed, but we were not troubled by the enemy. Once a raid of Confederate cavalrymen on Williamsburg created a flurry of anticipation, but nothing came of it except an opportunity for General Emory to see the regiments promptly take their previously assigned positions. The General soon after this left us, General Naglee having returned, and it was known that though General Emory had taken command reluctantly, preferring his old command naturally, yet that he left us with characteristic and vigorous asseverations of regret at having to do so. Shortly before his leaving, the so-called "'62 men" joined us. Their recruits were rather looked down on at first by the "veterans" of one campaign, and for a time were kept in open-mouthed admiration by a few true, and many apocryphal, stories of the valor and endurance the story-tellers declared they themselves had so lately displayed. The men of '62 that D received were all good men and true, and added no little to the good fellowship of the company as well as to its strength. Many of them coming from seaboard towns, some of them seafaring men, they brought a new and rather desirable element, a jovial, adventurous one, into the ranks, until now almost entirely made up of plodding farmers.
Two expeditions were fitted out from Yorktown, in both of which D took a part, one to Matthews County and the other to Gloucester Court House. As Captain Maxfield, then a private of Company C, was an active participant in both these movements, and the compiler of these sketches was in neither, Captain Maxfield will tell of what befell the troops of these expeditions.
MATTHEWS COUNTY
Nov. 22, '62. Nine companies of the regiment left camp between 8 and 9 p.m., and embarking on the gunboats Mahaska and Putnam and the tugboat May Queen, proceeded down the York River and up the Chesapeake Bay. They entered the Mob Jack Bay about 8.30 a.m. on the 23d, and proceeded up the East River, where they landed in Matthews County, Va., at 11.30 a.m. The force was divided and sent to different plantations, where they destroyed large quantities of salt and salt works, or salt kettles. The male portion of the community were taken and held as prisoners while we remained. The writer was in the