Forty-eighth Regiment New Your Volunteers - Civil War

Fort Pulaski is situated on Cockspur Island, a marshy island about a mile in length and half a mile wide, at the mouth of the Savannah River and at the head of Tybee Roads. It was a brick works of five faces, including the gorge, casemated on all sides with walls 7 1/2 feet thick and rising 25 feet above high-water. It mounted one tier of guns in embrasure and one en barbette. The gorge was covered by earthenwork "demilune" of bold relief; both the main work and the demilune were surrounded and divided by a moat, 48 feet in width around the main work, 32 feet around the demilune. Two drawbridges over the moats and a low sally-port formed the communication with the exterior. A full armament for the work was 140 guns. When we entered it June 1, 1862, everything was in great confusion: the breach made by Gillmore's guns yawned it its side, and the masonry everywhere was broken. For many a weary week the daily details for fatigue-duty worked away at repairing the fort. The brick walls rose again at the breach, the terre-plein was leveled to make a drill-ground; the companies were quartered in the casemates, the men erecting bunks for themselves by the side of the cannon. The rebuilding of the fort was a long and tedious task, onerous and distasteful to soldiers; nevertheless it was at last completed, and Fort Pulaski was put in better shape than it had been for years. The guns were remounted, both in casemates and on the parapet; one company of the Third Rhode Island Artillery under Captain Gould, a detachment of Serrell's Engineers, and the Forty-eighth Regiment compromised the entire garrison.
Our men were drilled at the guns, and became at last efficient as artillerists as well as in the drill of infantry. The officers' casemates of course were better than those of the enlisted men, but even there there was a great scarcity of furniture. A steam-condenser was procured, and the water for the garrison was condensed from the moat. The old boilers were still (1884), rusted and useless, and the great moats are filled with mud and grown up with rushes. A signal station was erected on the parapet, and we were in communication by signal with Braddock's Point; later a submarine telegraph-cable was laid to the fort. Two or three times a week a little steamer made the trip to Hilton Head, bringing mails and stores with regularity. No sutler was allowed in the fort, and many of the boys turned tradesmen. Who will not recall Jackson as he used to pass through the casemates calling out "Borden's condensed milk"? The regiment was drilled to the greatest efficiency. Guns were polished in those days, and scales must shine and gloves work on parade; and the writer does not remember to have seen even a crack regiment of militia or any other body of soldiers whose evolutions surpassed those of the Forty-eighth when at drill in Fort Pulaski. But our quarters on the island were circumscribed. The horses of the field-officers were of little use; occasionally they were exercised from the north to the south dock and around the little dikes on the island. We were a thousand men, living in narrow quarters. Under that confinement Colonel Perry pined; more and more he ceased to take exercise, and sometimes for days would not even appear upon parade.

On the 16th and 17th of June a terrible storm broke on the coast. In the height of it a sutler's schooner came ashore on Cockspur Island. She was laden with stores, and with many cases of liquors and barrels of wine and beer. The crew was rescued with difficulty by some of our boys; but when the liquor came ashore at the breaking-up of wreck the opportunity for a great spree was more than the men could withstand, and many of "Perry's Saints" "fell from grace." Colonel Perry was greatly mortified at their behavior, and who will not recall the way in which he walked through our quarters in the casemates that day? He was held in such respect that there was no private soldier, however intoxicated, who was able to recognize him, who did not rise up to salute him, and all disorder ceased everywhere he around the casements at his approach. Two days afterward, early in the afternoon of June 18, 1862, while in his quarters, he was stricken with apoplexy, and, without speaking a word, died. A great sadness fell upon the regiment, who mourned him as if he had been their father. He had taken great care of "his boys," and they had formed a great love for him. Often in the early morning he was found going around among the cooks, tasting the coffee, and ascertaining for himself the quality of the rations that were to be distributed to the men. His death was a calamity to his regiment as it was an affliction to his friends and a loss to his country. High hopes had been entertained of him; he possessed such fine qualities of mind, that many who were partial to him anticipated a great career for him in the army. His majestic bearing, his noble face, who can ever forget? But he never had "a fair field" in the war. It was his misfortune, 1st, to lack the political acquaintance and influence which was necessary to gain position at the outbreak of the rebellion; 2nd, to be assigned to a department, where nothing of moment was done; and 3rd, to have engendered the envy of his immediate military superiors. He was a man of nobler bearings and finer attainments than any of them. His clerical profession also was against him for it was reckoned, however untruthfully, that "parsons" were not the men to fight. We buried him outside the fort, the regiment firing a salute over his grave. But his remains were afterward removed to Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn, L.I., where a noble monument of granite has now been erected to his memory by the comrades of the James H. Perry Post, G. A. R., the survivors of his regiment, and a generous donation from the Hanson Place Methodist Episcopal Church of Brooklyn. Lieutenant-Colonel William B. Barton succeeded to the Colonelcy; Major Beard was promoted to be Lieutenant-Colonel, and Captain James M. Green, of Company F to Major. Captain Knowles of Company D, to whom we are indebted for the account of the work on Jones' Island, broken in health by exposure, resigned his commission in July, Lieutenant Paxson became Captain of the "Die-no-mores." On August 29th Captain Travis of Company C resigned. Other changes occurred among the officers of the regiment at this time, which can be ascertained by referring to the rolls of the companies in this volume. So the long hot summer passed; yet it was often cool in the casemates, especially at night. But the mosquitos and sand-flies were the greatest nuisance. Life in the garrison was a monotonous routine, the events of the day being repeated the next day and every day, and the diaries which we have examined contain little of interest except in what was personal to the writers.

We made two expeditions that summer and fall to Bluffton, "on the main." a summer resort of the planters, from the sea-coast islands, destroying the salt-works in the neighborhood, and "confiscating" a piano and such furniture as could be brought away for the officers' quarters in the fort. The second expedition burned about two thirds of the town by the command of General Hunter, in retaliation for certain unwarlike depredations by the enemy. The spoliation of Bluffton formed the ground of an indignant protest by General Beauregard to General Gillmore a year later, and certain of us lived to be threatened with punishment for that deed, when we were in Beauregard's power as prisoners of war.

On October 18, 1862, on returning from an expedition up May River, we lost four wounded from the enemy's firing into us, and one of the wounded men, Corporal George Durand of Company B, died the following day. He was the first man of the regiment to fall at the hands of the enemy. On September 16, 1862, Major-General O. M. Mitchel arrived at Hilton Head, and assumed command of the Department of the South, relieving Major-General David Hunter. General Mitchel had been famed in civil life as an astronomer, and in military life in the West for "doing things." We now anticipated more active service under his command. He visited us at Fort Pulaski, and highly complimented our drill. He made us a brief address on the terre-plein, a report of which (found in The New South of September 20, 1862) is appended:

SOLDIERS OF THE FORTY-EIGHTH: It gives me great pleasure to meet you here inside this fortress: a fortress recovered by your own prowess from the enemy; a fortress you now hold; a fortress planned by the Government of the United States and built by it, but which had been seized by the rebels. Those rebels you have dispossessed; those rebels you have compelled to lower their flag before you, and those rebels you have been instrumental in defeating and capturing. I need not say to you - understanding the nature of this was and all its objects - what you are expected to do. You are too intelligent; you think too much; you are volunteers and as volunteers you understand your duty and the responsibilities devolved upon you. I am here a stranger to you; but I trust not entirely a stranger in name, although this probably is the first time you have had the opportunity of looking upon my face and form. I am here to say that we have an immense work to perform. I am just from the North, where, having conversed and associated with the thinking men of this country, I am satisfied that the work before us is the most stupendous, the most arduous, that has ever been attempted; and it is a work in which we never can be successful unless we enter upon it with a firm determination never to succumb. I believe that we are fighting a battle of Human Liberty, not for this country alone, but for the whole world. I believe that the despotisms of the Old World would say, if this Great Republic were rent in twain, that it was an absolute fallacy to believe that man can govern himself, and that the interests of the governing class and of the people were so radically diverse as to render all attempts at Republican government failures. If we permit the iron heel of the Southern aristocracy to crush us, I undertake to say before you all, that the last hope of Humanity will die out forever. All lovers of humanity are looking upon us with anxiety. Responsibilities are devolving upon us, greater than have ever before devolved upon any people on the earth. The responsibilities of the French Revolution were nothing compared to those under which we labor. That was a contest against oppression, an uprising of the people against tyranny. But this is a contest for human freedom - a contest for the absolute supremacy of the people; it is a contest in which is arrayed absolute liberty on the one hand, and on the other the most hateful and abominable aristocracy. And now the grand question is this: Are we to meet that success or not? We cannot meet with success unless the soldier enjoys the confidence of his officers, and the officers that of the soldier. Now, I am an old soldier - so old, that thirty years ago I was stationed in the regular army at St. Augustine; and although at that time I had not the slightest idea of reaching the official rank I now hold, yet I am now the commanding officer of this Department. I have been in the field, and I understand it perfectly. I have fought the enemy through four hundred miles of territory, and never knew what it was to be checked or turned back. [Loud cheers and cries of 'Good,' 'That's the talk,' etc.] I will tell you of another trait of my character. I am very restless. I don't know how to be still. If you were to confine me within a fortress, or upon one of these islands, I should feel as though I were in a penitentiary. I don't know what the object of the Government was in sending me here; but it is the duty of a good soldier to obey orders, without waiting for words of explanation, and as a good soldier I obeyed. I was told that I would receive instructions here - instructions which had been given my predecessor - and would answer for my guidance. I find that those instructions permit me to do pretty much as I please; and I shall endeavor to do the best that I can. I assure you of this: that I will omit no opportunity of giving you active employment. You shall have no time for sighing and lamenting over your inactivity if we can find anything to do. Be assured that if I can use you, no opportunity will escape for active duty if you are ready for the field. [Prolonged applause, with cries of 'We're ready,' etc.]
"Now a perfect confidence between the officers and their commanding-officer - between soldiers and their commanding-general - is necessary for success. I am delighted at the appearance of this regiment. I don't want any better-looking regiment. You all look like good soldiers - and a good soldier I love. I could get off my horse and take him to my arms. But a mean soldier I contemn and despise. Now, a good soldier knows his duty, and loves his duty, and performs his duty because it is his duty. He obeys an order because it is given to him. He treats his military superior with deference because it is his duty. He knows that as a good soldier he must show that military deference to every officer. If this military deference can be mingled with personal respect for your superiors, so much the better; but the two are not to be confounded, nor is one to be mistaken for the other. A good soldier, when he lies down at night, conscious of having performed his duty perfectly, don't care if he gets up alive or dead. [Cachinnations along the line.] I want you to understand that you have made a free-will offering of yourselves to your country and to the great cause of human liberty. Your lives are not your own. My life is not my own. A good soldier should ever be striving to better himself. A private should struggle for a place among the non-commissioned officers. Having attained this, he should never be satisfied till he is a lieutenant; and a lieutenant is good for nothing unless he strives to be a captain. Once made a captain, he should aim to command a regiment, and by faithful, earnest service to fit himself for the position of brigadier. Then let him press steadily forward, until the whole country shall take him up, and say, 'Make that man a major-general, and give him an army corps.' But let him stop there. We don't need a commander-in-chief.
"We want many armies. A grand, magnificent army is a glorious sight - the most glorious that the sun ever shone upon. Anybody can become a drilled soldier, and every officer can make drilled soldiers; but the next thing is to inspire them with a proper determination to die, if need be, in the performance of their duty. When this is done, an army corps is a soldier himself, instinct with life, and vigor, and determination. Then the commanding officer must have the wisdom, the discretion, and the force to compel victory to perch upon his banner. Your fortunes are to a certain extent in my keeping. Rest assured that day and night I shall think of you; day and night I shall care for you, and your interests shall be in my thoughts. Rest assured that I shall endeavor to see that you get from the Government all that it has promised to you, punctually and systematically. In return, I shall expect from you the most complete and perfect service, the most absolute devotion. When I order you to move, I shall expect you to go forward with spirit and alacrity. When I ask you to attack yonder battery, I shall expect you to march over to it, and to plant your bayonets beyond it, halting when word is given - not before. Now boys, we understand each other."

The report adds that --
"The General concluded his address amid the most enthusiastic cheers, after which the regiment was dismissed. Subsequently the casemates were visited, and an inspection was made of the quarters and of the well-ordered hospital under the charge of Dr. Mulford. With all that he saw the General expressed his gratification, and in private conversation complimented the Forty-eighth even more warmly than in his public speech. A dinner at the quarters of Colonel Barton, attended by sweet music from the regimental band, and a personal introduction to the officers of the regiment, were the final features of the visit of General Mitchel to Pulaski.

Chapter IV ...(Part 2)

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