The Union Quilters (32 page)

Never was their own farm in the valley as full of hope and promise as in springtime, and as she sat on the front porch one mild afternoon in May, putting the last stitches into Thomas’s quilt, watching the hired men in the fields and inhaling the rich scent of freshly tilled soil and the metallic scent of approaching rain, she wished with all her heart that although Thomas would not witness the sowing of the seed, he would be with her at harvest to enjoy the bounty of their farm, the comforts of their home, and the joys of their loving family.

Dorothea was so lost in wistful reverie that she did not notice the horseman coming up the road until he had nearly reached the barn. Then she saw he was a messenger, and her first thought was that there had been another grand escape from Libby Prison, and that this time Jonathan had joined in it. Then the messenger greeted her with respectful sorrow and handed her a telegram that told her of Thomas’s death on the battlefield at the Spotsylvania Court House, and then all hope was gone.

J
ust after sundown, when men of the 6th stirred with the relief that followed the lessening of the broiling heat, the Rebels fired a barrage of artillery upon their trenches. Abel and his companions crouched low in their trenches and kept their heads down, not daring to peer over the parapet as they waited it out. As twilight descended and the enemy mortar battery sent shells raining down above them, the pickets sent word down the line that the Rebs were preparing to charge. The lieutenant ordered them to make ready, so Abel checked his weapon and took his place on the line. When the command came, they opened fire, and the enemy breastworks erupted in a sheet of flame. Abel guessed the firing went on for a good half hour before it died down and all was quiet again. The Rebs never did make their charge; it was a false alarm triggered by movement along their picket pits as they reinforced their breastworks.

Abel had just settled down to an uncomfortable rest on the rough ground of the trench bottom when another order came down that the regiment would be shifted to the left and placed at an angle to the earthworks that held a six-piece battery. The new position placed them near the front, with a better position for defense and an excellent view of the pickets and Rebel line. Once in place, the men were given spades and empty sacks, which they filled with sand and clay as they dug out the trenches and placed upon the parapet about three inches apart. The carpenter in Abel always regretted that they were forbidden to reinforce the parapets with head logs, but he understood why. The Rebel artillery was so close that a well-placed shell could knock the logs free and send them tumbling down, crushing the men they were intended to protect.

As the men of the 6th strengthened their position, a company from the 30th USCT was sent to place abatis outside the breastworks. This was dangerous work, and the shroud of night offered little protection from Rebel fire. As Abel filled sandbags and hefted them up to the rim of the trench, he glimpsed the pickets laying down cover fire in the direction of the red flashes from the Confederate muskets. Meanwhile, the men assigned to construct the abatis each carried a tree, sharpened on the end and stripped of branches, to the outer line. Singly and in pairs, each stole over the breastworks, set his sharpened log in place, drove stakes across it to hold it fast, and darted back to the safety of the trenches, dodging minié balls and bullets all the while.

When the work was done, Abel, exhausted, settled down on the earth floor of the trench to try to grab a few hours of rest in the blessed cool of night. He fell asleep to the call of whip-poor-wills.

He woke a few hours past dawn to the smell of wood smoke and coffee boiling. “What I wouldn’t do for a fine breakfast,” grumbled Joshua, moving his tin cup closer to the hottest part of the fire. “Flapjacks and sausage, some of Margaret’s good bread and butter, and coffee without ashes floating on the top.”

“Ashes bring out the flavor of the coffee,” said Abel, sitting up and stretching. Somewhere on the other side of the trenches came the sound of rifle fire. He reached for his canteen and took a gulp, wincing at the stagnant taste, warm and disagreeable. He took a piece of hardtack pork from his haversack, stuck it on the end of a ramrod, and held it over the fire to toast it. While he waited, he boiled himself some coffee, but when he dug around in his haversack for the sugar he had tied up in a rag, he discovered that rain had soaked through the bag and dissolved it. The rest of his rations seemed none the worse, but he longed for fresh potatoes, fresh bread, fresh cheese and milk from his own herd.

As he ate, he heard the town clock in Petersburg strike the nine o’clock hour. Already that morning, Joshua told him, a number of men in the trenches to their right had been picked off.

“Lieutenant figures it’s a sharpshooter with a long-range rifle,” said Marcus, a Philadelphian not twenty years old. He jerked his head to the northeast, but wisely did not stand to point out the location. “There’s a chimney standing about a mile away. They think he’s up there.”

Abel remembered spotting the ruins of a grand house from their previous position the day before. “That’s where I’d’ve gone if I wanted to get a line on our fellows.”

He had just finished breakfast when two Indians from the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters came through the trench from the rear, each carrying a Sharps NM 1859 breechloader with a telescopic sight. Abel let out a low, admiring whistle as the hawk-nosed, darkeyed men passed, working their way forward to the front picket pits. His fingers itched to hold such a marvel of engineering. The long, heavy, eight-square barreled rifles were said to allow a man to fire ten shots a minute without changing position. He had seen some in action and he believed it.

He wished he could join the sharpshooters, not only for the chance to see how he fared with a telescopic sight but also to fend off the boredom. The previous night’s movement and fortifying had provided a break in the monotony of the trenches, but now it seemed they were obliged to settle in to the tedium of waiting and keeping low and dodging the occasional shell. Gone was the excitement of their earlier triumph in mid-June, when the 6th, joined by the 4th, 5th, and 22nd United States Colored Troops, had attacked the Confederate earthworks south of the City Point Railroad, routing the defenders, overtaking their position, and pushing them as far back as the Jordan Point Road. Within two hours of fighting, the XVIII Corps had crushed more than three miles of Petersburg’s eastern shield. Exultant in victory, they had spent the night in the Rebel fortifications, relieved the next morning by soldiers from General Birney’s division. It was the first time the colored soldiers of the Army of the James had hailed the Army of the Potomac, and as the veterans of the Wilderness campaign relieved them, Abel sensed their grudging respect. Many white men had expected colored troops to cower in fear the first time a Johnnie shot at them. Until they saw for themselves how courageously colored men could fight, they couldn’t believe it.

Why the Union forces had not pushed forward and attempted to overtake Petersburg then, when it seemed they had the advantage, Abel did not know. Instead they had settled into the trenches for a siege. General Grant’s ultimate target was surely the Confederate capital, but Petersburg lay just south of Richmond on the Appomattox River. Not only was it an important supply center for General Lee’s army and the city of Richmond, it also offered navigable access to the James River and was the junction for five railroads. Because of its strategic importance, Abel did not suppose General Grant would order the siege lifted until the city fell, although it seemed to him little ground had been gained or lost since that day in mid-June.

The trenches where the 6th now found themselves were stronger and better than most Abel had seen, especially with the improvements they had made the night before. Thanks to the new sandbags they had set in place, the parapets rose eight feet above the bottom of the trench, called the traverse, which was wide enough for four men to walk abreast. Along the outside wall, a bench of clay had been constructed for the men to stand upon when they fired at the Confederate works about one hundred yards away. All along the parapet, forked stakes were stuck firmly into the ground to serve as rests for the barrels of their rifles and muskets, allowing them to sight their guns just right for sweeping the top of the Rebel defenses. Holes for sleeping, about eight feet wide and five feet deep, lay behind the traverse, and cook holes lay farther back still. All these holes and trenches stretching back to the rear were connected by alleys, some covered and some not. Anytime the men dug out more, they threw the earth up the side facing the enemy, increasing their fortifications.

By midday the sun was blistering hot. One of the 6th spread a piece of shelter tent overhead to provide a bit of shade, but it also blocked the cooling breeze, so Abel wasn’t sure if much advantage had been gained. He found time to write a letter to Constance, though he doubted he’d be able to mail it until the regiment was sent back to the rear. As suppertime approached, Joshua spoke dreamily about Margaret’s roast chicken and creamed peas and apple pie until Abel’s growling stomach drove him to ask his brother to quiet down or talk about something else. Joshua obliged, and as the sun began to set, smoke rose from the cook holes, and Abel contemplated another meal of hardtack. He had a small sack of beans in his ration, but no way to cook them. A decent meal would have to wait until the 6th was rotated to the rear.

Twilight deepened, and all around him Abel could hear his fellows taking deep breaths and sighing with relief as the heat relented a trifle. Suddenly, Abel heard the crack of a rifle, followed by a faint cheer from the picket pits ahead.

“What happened?” he asked. Marcus risked a peek over the parapet but quickly ducked back down, shaking his head. It wasn’t until later that they learned that throughout the long, oppressively hot day, the Indian sharpshooters had stood in the picket pits with their rifles trained on the distant chimney. All day they had watched without firing a single shot. Then, as darkness descended, one of the Indians fired, and several pickets reported seeing a man plummet to the ground. The Rebel sharpshooter had been entirely concealed from view at the top of the chimney, but with the coming of night he had begun to descend. Though he had exposed only a small part of his body during the climb, that had been enough for the Indian, who immediately picked him off.