Captain Parlin in the Civil War, Chapter 5

                                                 Chapter 5                                                                                                                                                                                       Back to the front; the aftermath of the Battle of the Crater; 
                Casualties in the war; Lincoln visits the troops; slavery in the                      new territories       

 
                                    To arms! to arms! ye brave!
                                    The avenging sword unsheathe! 
                                    March on! March on! all hearts resolved 
                                    On victory or death!
                                                       The Marseillaise

    It took two-and-a-half months in Natick for the Captain to recover from his neck wound.  On his return August 30th, he found his regiment facing the dug-in rebels at the "mine" at Petersburg, a location on the Dimmock Line where Union troops from Pennsylvania with experience in coal mining conceived and executed an ingenious plan.  They tunneled underground 500 feet to the heavily fortified Confederate lines, tunneled left and right for 75 feet parallel to those lines, filled the tunnels with 8000 lbs of gunpowder in 320-pound barrels and detonated them.  At 4:45 AM on July 30, 1864, the largest quantity of gunpowder ever detonated in the Western Hemisphere was put to fuse.  The explosion launched  men, horses, sandbags, rifles and artillery to 200 feet in the air.  278 Confederate soldiers were killed instantly.  The engagement that followed is known as the Battle of the Crater. Union troops stormed the ravaged line but were quickly mired down in the vast crater created by the blast.  The plan would have worked but for faulty execution by the Union command and possibly because no one could imagine what a battlefield might look like after such a massive explosion.   Poor leadership caused the slaughter of Union troops by enraged Southerners who quickly re-grouped and  trapped thousands of bluecoats in the crater.  Rebel sharpshooters easily picked off the bluecoats from their positions on three sides of the crater, which was 190 feet long, 60 feet wide and 30 feet deep.  Nor did the rebels give quarter to troops who were in the act of surrendering.  Atrocities were not uncommon.  
    The 1st Regiment of the USCT was held in reserve during the battle, but was stationed to hold the line after it occurred lest the rebels counterattacked.  Union troops suffered 3800 casualties at the Crater with 500 killed.  Because of the initial explosion, the number of Confederates killed was high at 371, but their casualties overall were 60% less than those suffered by the Federals.

Here is what the captain found when he returned:  
      
    The First Regiment was formed on my return in front of the mine at Petersburg, living in bomb proofs or gopher holes underground.  
    It was almost sure death then to show your head over the breastworks.
    Some daring fellows claimed they had learned to dodge the bullets by watching for the smoke. 
    Later we were withdrawn to a rear line where came proof of the thickness of the negro skull.  One of my men came up with a minie between his thumb & finger & pointed to a breech on his forehead where he had “stopped dat ball”.  His negro skull had been too much for the minie.
    Then we were sent to Harrison Landing.  Then while out in command of the regiment I was on alternate days in charge of all the pickets, infantry & cavalry.
    One night word came in that there were 50 armed rebels in our front.  Then a sergeant sent back word that a whole regiment of rebels was there.  It was a thick bank of fog and two stray horses.
    That the men held their posts without fearing and cautiously sent back word of danger, showed the veteran soldier.
    We were relieved a short time later by a brigade of raw troops (white men) who filled the nights with their picket shots much to the amusement of our men.                                                                                                                              (The "minie" was a soft-lead, conical bullet with a hollow base invented by French Army Captain Claude-Étienne Minié.)                                                             By this time in his service, Captain Parlin was proud of his troops and how they had matured as a formidable fighting force.  The last anecdote shows his pride in how expert his men had become at the crucial job of picketing a perimeter. Their professionalism stood in contrast to that of the newly-arrived white troops who replaced them and fired at every noise they heard in the dark.
      If he was in charge of pickets at Harrison's Landing on the night of September 16th, he may have heard the ruckus at Ruffin's Farm on Coggin's Point directly across the James when in a daring raid Confederate troops overran the Union camp and stole 2500 head of cattle.  According to historian Robert Ackerman,  among the rebels it was said were "several certified Texas cattle thieves."  Ackerman also quotes President Lincoln, who, upon reading the report on the raid, said it was "the slickest piece of cattle stealing" he'd ever heard of. The rebels suffered ten killed and 47 wounded, but captured, in addition to the cattle, 300 prisoners and 11 wagons.     
     Writing about casualties in the Civil War is problematic.   The numbers are merely little black marks on a page that fail to do justice to the carnage.  To provide some perspective, in the fifteen days between June 15th and June 30th, 1864,  Captain Parlin's 1st Regiment USCT saw 17 men killed, 10 officers wounded, 104 men wounded and 25 men missing. No officers were killed. Nearly all these casualties occurred on June 15th.  
    At the same time, Captain Parlin's  3rd Division under General Hincks suffered four officers killed, 58 men killed, 27 officers wounded, 417 men wounded, no officers missing and 69 men missing.  
     Captain Parlin's XVIIIth Army Corps under General Smith suffered eight officers killed, 202 men killed, 66 officers wounded, 1,184 men wounded, 2 officers missing and 198 men missing.  
    Added to those casualties in the same two-week time period, the combined Armies of the Potomac and the James operating around Richmond and Petersburg suffered 111 officers killed, 1,902 men killed, 525 officers wounded, 9,410 men wounded, 168 officers missing, and 4,453 men missing. 
    All this followed General Grant's Overland Campaign which was fought between May 5th and June 15th.  Near continuous combat in that campaign was reported by historian Edgar Bonekemper to have resulted in 7,621 killed, 38,339 wounded, and 8,966 captured or missing.  That does not include Confederate casualties which were: 4,206 killed, 18,564 wounded, 9,861 missing.  These estimates are  higher than those of other researchers but well within the realm of possibility.  
     The numbers defy credulity.  All told, 1864 was by far the bloodiest year on American soil in the nation’s history.  The enormity and efficiency of the killing seems senseless but proves the courage and devotion to the cause on both sides.  In hindsight it seems senseless.  But few thought so at the time.  
    The reason for the startling numbers of losses was that antiquated infantry tactics had not caught up with advances in weapons technology.   Arms, ammunition and artillery were more powerful, accurate and mobile.  Rifles, owing to the rifling of barrels and the introduction of the Minie bullet, were more lethal than ever with both the Enfield and the Springfield rifle accurate up to 300 yard.  At one point in the war, some federal soldiers and cavalry were provided with Spencer .56 caliber carbines, the forerunner to the famous Winchester lever action rifles.  With these weapons a man could fire off a seven round magazine in 20 seconds, while the best an Enfield or Springfield muzzle-loader could do was three rounds a minute. Another repeater, the Henry, was also introduced at this time and although not mass produced, was in great demand and prized by those who could get them.  The Henry  and it's carbine version held sixteen .44 caliber cartridges.  One rebel described it as "that damned Yankee rifle that they load on Sunday and shoot all week!"
    Another technological invention that intensified the war was the widespread use of rail transportation by both sides.  This allowed for the conveyance of large numbers of troops, horses and artillery to distant locations at unprecedented speed.  Consequently  the battles tended to be more frequent, the size of the warring armies larger, and the suffering of soldiers on both sides greater.       
    As always, infantrymen suffered most from all this technological advancement and the casualty figures prove it.    
                                                                                                                                                                             * * *   

     While Captain Parlin recuperated back in Natick, he missed the chance to witness an historical and moving occasion with his regiment outside of Petersburg.  On the first full day of summer, six days after the June 15th assault on Petersburg, President Lincoln took a ferry down the Potomac and up the James to confer with Grant, who welcomed the President and asked if he would like to visit the troops.  If he did, Grant would furnish him a horse.  According to Grant's aide, Horace Porter, in his memoir Campaigning with Grant, Lincoln replied that  “ I fully intended to go out and look at the brave fellows who have fought their way down to Petersburg . . .”  Later that morning, Lincoln mounted a large bay horse named “Cincinnati” and rode out with Grant, whose mount was sardonically named “Jeff Davis.”  
    After they reviewed several divisions, Grant asked Lincoln if he would like to ride on and "see the colored troops, who behaved so handsomely in Smith's attack on the works in front of Petersburg last week.”  The President enthusiastically agreed and added: “I was opposed on nearly every side when I first favored the raising of colored regiments; but they have proved their efficiency, and I am glad they have kept pace with the white troops in the recent assaults.” (While technically true, Lincoln's statement is not fully accurate.  He had been under mounting pressure from abolitionists and black activists like Frederick Douglass since the beginning of the war to allow the enlistment of black men in the Union Army.  He finally did so in late 1862.)  
    Porter's description of Lincoln's emotional reception by Captain Parlin's regiment and other troops in the USCT is worth quoting:   

    The camp of the colored troops of the Eighteenth Corp was soon reached, and a scene now occurred which defies description.  They beheld for the first time the liberator of their race—the man who by a stroke of the pen had struck the shackles from the limbs of their fellow-bondmen and proclaimed liberty to the enslaved.  Always impressionable, the enthusiasm of the blacks now knew no limits.  They cheered, laughed, cried, sang hymns of praise, and shouted in their negro dialect, “God bress Massa Linkum!”  “De Lord save Fader Abraham!”  De day ob jubilee am come, shuah.”  They crowded around him and fondled his horse;  some of them kissed his hands, while others ran off crying in triumph to their comrades that they had touched his clothes.  The President rode with bared head; the tears started to his eyes, and his voice was so broken by emotion that he could scarcely articulate the words of thanks and congratulation which he tried to speak to the humble and devoted men through whose ranks he rode.  The scene was affecting in the extreme, and no one could have witnessed it unmoved.    

    Although the description of the colored troops is less than flattering and some would say demeaning, the scene  reminds us of the war's ultimate objective and why the cost, extreme effort, deprivation, sacrifice and slaughter were endured.  Too often the war is viewed in such strategic detail that the meaning of what it was meant to accomplish is forgotten.  The war  would have eventually been fought in one form or another as long as slavery thrived.  It commenced in the early 1860s, had been fought sporadically in the territories for more than a decade, but was inevitable because the problem it addressed was too integral to the nation's economy, its proponents too proud and unrelenting for it to have been resolved any other way.  The enormity of the  problem of slavery was beyond the power of moral and political persuasion to resolve.  
    It occurred in the 1860s because of another war: The Mexican War.  That war,  which ended with the capitulation of Mexico in 1848,  resulted in the acquisition from Mexico of 915,000 square miles of territory (including Texas) at a cost of less than $20,000,000 as specified in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Most of that money in the form of vast tracts of land was applied to discharge Mexican debts to the United States.  The treaty also ended the American presence in Mexico's heartland, which had been devastated by American military might.                            Had the “Slave Power,” as Senator Henry Wilson called it, been confined in its original territory, the war over slavery might have been delayed for decades, perhaps to be ended by a slave rebellion.  Instead the slave states insisted their slave owners had an equal right to expand into new  territories of  the West.  Slave owners who  wanted to re-locate to California insisted they should be able to take their slaves with them.  It was a right they felt was granted them under the Constitution- the right to freely use their property.   The question of the legality of slavery in the new territories set off an unceasing, explosive and occasionally violent debate in Congress and across the nation and its territories that after thirteen years ended with the firing on Fort Sumter and, finally, the surrender at Appomattox.  Widespread and murderous violence broke out in the new territories over the issue long before war was formally declared.  Lincoln, whose views on slavery and emancipation were mixed, believed expansion of slavery would destroy the nation.  In the first months of his presidency, as southern states began to secede, he was adamant.  As compromise with the South was sought in negotiations,  Lincoln declared expansion of slavery not negotiable.  “On the territorial issue, I am inflexible,” he said.   And to his agents involved in the negotiations he insisted, “On that point hold firm, as with a chain of steel.”