Chapter 4: More From Before -- a Shopping Excursion

I had confiscated the document tube, along with some other useful paraphernalia, from a hapless Confederate sergeant early one morning in May of eighteen sixty-four, near the town of Resaca, in northwestern Georgia.

At the time, we were with General Sherman as he was taking the Union Army from Chattanooga to Atlanta. But them gray-coated boys weren’t havin’ it. After we’d pushed Joe Johnston and his Rebs out of Dalton, Georgia, they made a stand at Resaca.

I had joined up with my brothers, who were in an artillery unit attached to the Fourteenth Ohio Infantry Regiment. Amos and Caleb had fought with the Fourteenth through Tennessee and I caught up with them at Chattanooga in February of eighteen sixty-four, one month after my eighteenth birthday. I hadn’t seen them for three years because I had been in New York with Uncle Sammie when they enlisted.

It had been a tradition in our family, at least for me and my brothers, to spend our sixteenth year (after our fifteenth birthday) with Uncle Sammie, near Oneida Lake in northwestern New York State. Uncle Sammie taught us the old ways of living off, and with, the land: knowing edible, medicinal, and poisonous plants, hunting with both arrow and musket, preserving meat from game animals, fishing with both line and trap; trapping fur animals, and skinning them and curing the skins to make clothing and moccasins; tracking and obscuring your own trace, and moving about unseen and unheard. I learned quickly and was actually pretty good at the skills he taught. In fact, with Pa’s permission, I also spent most of my seventeenth year with Uncle Sammie. I really enjoyed life in the woods and Uncle Sammie was a font of information, experience, and advice.

I’d have been happy to stay longer, but my brothers had joined a volunteer infantry unit that had formed up at Toledo, a town at the mouth of the Maumee River on Lake Erie, about fifty miles northeast of Defiance. So Pa needed my help on the farm.

Except for my brothers’ involvement, I had little interest in the War. Uncle Sammie had called it “another white man’s excuse to kill those who have a different vision.” I could see his point, the futility in killing men to preserve man’s freedom.

After I got back to the farm, though, I came across a printed copy of President Lincoln’s speech at the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield cemetery. I almost couldn’t breathe by the time I read the last line. I realized what the difference was in Uncle Sammie’s vision and President Lincoln’s vision. Uncle Sammie saw the path for himself and his family, and for his clan. President Lincoln had a vision for all people everywhere. He saw that what was at stake was a chance for everyone to be self-governing, if only we could prove that it worked.

I still had a hard time reconciling the notion of killing for freedom, but I also appreciated the desperate struggle that was being waged against forces that wanted to put an end to the real freedoms of self-governance. So, when I turned eighteen, I explained to Pa that I would join my brothers. He understood and gave me his sad blessing. Meanwhile, Steffen Hildebrand, my oldest sister’s new husband, would help Pa until our enlistments were up. Steffen was deaf in one ear from a childhood infection, thus unsuitable for military service. In return for his help, my brothers and I would help Steffen and Miriam set up their own farm following our discharge.

After I joined the infantry regiment, my brothers immediately recommended me to my sergeant as a good candidate for the scout-sharpshooter platoon. They knew how good a shot I was before I went to stay with Uncle Sammie, and I had demonstrated my improvement at our first opportunity after I’d arrived in Tennessee. I’d also brought a bow and a supply of arrows I’d made, which earned some hoots from the other soldiers, but a display of my dexterity with the bow shut most of them up. It earned me the nickname Seneca, though, and I was mostly known by that for the eleven years that I was in the army.

In any event, I was, in due course, assigned to the scout-sharpshooter platoon.

That spring and summer, we were part of a major campaign under General William Tecumseh Sherman to capture Atlanta and destroy all materiel and any facilities, structures, or resources that would be valuable to the rebel army.

We’d only been at it a few weeks when my brother Caleb found me in my bivouac one evening to tell me that our brother, Amos, had been wounded by a Confederate sharpshooter. Amos, now a corporal, was gun captain of the twenty-four pounder his detachment was assigned and Caleb suspected Amos had been targeted by the rebel sharpshooter because of that.

I suspected Caleb was right, because that was exactly the type of shooting I was doing, trying to hit rebel officers or artillery crews in particular, especially those men in leadership jobs.

Two other artillerymen in their battery had already been killed since we started for Atlanta. Fortunately for Amos, the bullet aimed at him had ricocheted off a cannon barrel that had just fired and recoiled. The sharpshooter’s bullet had only clipped off the end of his little finger -- the little finger of the hand with which he’d been shading his eyes, studying the effect of his gun’s projectile.

I got permission from my sergeant to observe the sharpshooter attacks on our artillery battery the next day. I brought my Spencer repeating rifle that I had been issued, along with a supply of cartridges. I also brought along a telescoping spyglass I’d borrowed from Sergeant Lange, who ran the scout platoon. I figured to spot the sharpshooter and then give him a taste of his own medicine.

The artillery battery had changed position overnight and was now set up on the back side of a hill, just close enough to the hilltop that only the end of the barrels were visible from the enemy side. The men had dug into the hillside enough to level up the guns. With Amos on a week’s convalescent leave, Caleb had been given temporary command of the gun to which my brothers were assigned.

Amos had been dismissed from the field hospital but told not to use his hand for a week, until the wound had healed some. At loose ends for the duration, he said he wanted to see what I could do about the sharpshooter, so he joined me in an as-yet unripe berry patch partway down the flank of the hill, maybe four hundred feet from the battery. Amos knew the same concealment tricks I’d learned, so we both lay prone, hidden, though not protected from enemy fire. Even so, with the position of the Reb infantry, we could only be reached by artillery fire or a sharpshooter, so I wasn’t worried about the enemy’s occasional musket fire.

I got out the spyglass and I told Amos “To start with, I want to pick out the likely places for him to set up.”

“You think it’ll be the same Reb?”

“Most likely. Uncle Sammie says that people like to follow a pattern, just like a fox will follow the same path covering his territory every night. So I’m betting this Reb will look for your battery because he’s getting to know your habits.”

Then I asked, “Did you fall down when you were hit.”

Amos gave me a sour look. “No. I pulled down my trousers and showed him my ass.” His tone dripped with resentment as he added, “Of course I fell down, you dolt. It startled the hell out of me and I dropped without giving it a thought.”

“Of course, big brother. What I meant was, if you fell down right away, it’s likely he thought he killed you. It would increase the likelihood he’ll be back.”

Mollified, he asked, “Do you have a habit like that?”

“I have a habit of trying to never do the same thing twice. Hell, every now and again, I’ll shoot picketed horses, or the staffs of battle flags, or stacked muskets. One time I shot at muskets as they were about to be fired. That really had them confused.”

Just then there was a painful cry from up by the battery, which hadn’t yet been directed to fire. After a minute, Caleb called toward us, “Looks like Tom’s gonna lose that -- hellfire!” Caleb went silent.

Amos backed out of our blind to see if Caleb had been hurt. He returned a couple minutes later and crawled into the thicket next to me.

“Caleb’s fine, save for needing a new cap and some clean britches. That Reb rifleman seems to have it in for us Beckers. Caleb said Tom Aaronson got hit just below the shoulder. His arm was just hanging by some skin, so...”

I was moving my spyglass between a couple likely hides. I said, “I didn’t hear any rifle reports that sounded close enough, nor see his smoke. I can’t spot him.”

“Where’re you lookin’?”

“Across the way, in the creek bottom. There are a few thickets that would be ideal.” The battery overlooked a shallow valley, about a mile-and-a-half wide. The Rebs were on the opposite ridge.

There was a sharp clang from up by the battery. Caleb called to us, “He’s telling us to keep our heads down.”

I was getting frustrated. “I don’t see any powder smoke.”

Amos pointed. “What about over there?”

I saw some smoke, but ... I peered through the telescope until I found the dissipating cloud of gray smoke on the hillside facing us. “What?, I exclaimed to Amos, “By those loblollies? That’s gotta be at least eight, maybe even nine hundred yards. Our Spencers are a fine long gun, but we can’t be accurate much beyond five hundred yards. He can’t be --”

Just then there was a flash in a brush thicket at the base of the loblolly pine copse we’d been observing. A second later we heard the muted clang of a small projectile hitting a cannon barrel, followed immediately by the faint crack of a rifle being fired. Meanwhile, a fresh plume of gun smoke floated off amid the distant pine boles.

“Sonuvabitch,” I said, under my breath.

Captain Eddy waved us over when Amos and I came up the hill to the battery. He was standing behind the battery, well below the enemy’s line of sight.

Captain Martin Eddy wore a standard-issue enlisted man’s uniform and the standard dark blue kepi or slouch hat. He wore no rank insignia, nor was his uniform cleaner or better fitted than the other artillerymen. Anyone who saluted him or stood at attention in his presence was given latrine duty.

The purpose of his charade was to keep from attracting any special attention from sharpshooters who often preyed on artillerymen, especially officers and squad leaders. Eddy was a smart man and an above average artillery officer. He’d studied the science of big guns at the West Point army academy. He was committed to his work and he called himself “a dedicated student of the ballistic curve.” Plus he was a fair and thoughtful officer, strict about gunnery but realistic about everything else.

The Captain was holding something between his fingers, looking at it closely. “Come look at this, Seneca,” he said.

When we walked up he held out his hand and said to me, “Here, take this. What do you make of it?”

I reached out my open hand and he dropped what appeared to be a misshapen rifle slug, perhaps forty-five caliber, flattened on one side, but with its original shape readily apparent. It was longer than I’d come to expect and with a peculiar pattern visible on its base. I said, “What is this made of? It’s too light to be lead. And what are these angular cuts?”

He said, “I found that in the barrel of the number two gun. Our Reb sharpshooter is getting clever. One or two of those, unnoticed in a barrel, and we might even put a crack in one when we fire, if not worse, especially if his shot manages to wedge itself next to the ball.” He lifted it from my hand and held it in the sunlight. “That slug’s likely made of a lead alloy, because the rifle that shot it requires a harder bullet than pure lead. It needs to retain its shape and doesn’t need to expand to grab the rifling.

“In fact, the long gun that shot it isn’t even technically a rifle, because it doesn’t have any rifling. See, here on the base. It’s hexagonal, that means six-sides. The barrel through which it was fired was machined internally with a precisely matching six sides, but in a spiral turn that imparts spin even more effectively than normal rifling. That spin, the precise fit in the barrel, and the length of the slug allows this bullet to carry further and truer than any of our rifle or musket balls before the ballistic curve brings it to the ground.”

He looked up at me from where he held the bullet. “Rumor has it that Union Army Major General John Sedgwick was killed by one of these a few days ago over in Virginia, where he was campaigning with General Grant.”

“A Major General?” I said, awestruck. As far as I knew, Major General was the second highest rank in the army, right under Lieutenant General, like General Grant. You never saw men of that rank at the front lines. Then I asked how a Lieutenant General outranked a Major General. Eddy explained that the “Major” in the rank was shortened from a much older rank designation of “Sergeant Major General” with the enlisted rank of Sergeant designation setting the rank rather than the commissioned rank of Major. Thus Lieutenant General was the higher rank.

“What kind of rifle fired it?” Amos asked, as he peered at the hexagonal base of the small projectile in his uninjured left hand.

“It’s English, invented by a man named Whitworth, and so the rifle is named. The Confederates somehow got hold of a small number of them early in the war, I’ve heard it estimated as many as a couple hundred. They’ve been assigned to their best sharpshooters.”

I looked off to the south with a hungry expression.

Watching me, Captain Eddy chuckled. “But a Whitworth’s not all peaches and cream, Seneca. They’re a muzzle-loader, but the bullet has to follow the twists going in, and it’s a snug fit, so it doesn’t go in easy, like a round ball does or even a minie ball, both of which are a mite smaller than the barrel. And powder fouling quickly interferes with both loading and shooting this bullet, so the Whitworth has to be cleaned often. On top of that, the bullets are precision instruments of a special lead alloy that cost more to manufacture.”

I looked at him and grinned. “Hell, Sir, if you could only shoot a rifle like that once a day it’d be worth taking it flowers and buying it a wedding ring.”

He laughed. “Maybe, but I don’t know where you’re going to get one.”

I looked off south, again, and I thought to myself, I know where I can get one.

I took nothing with me but my bow, unstrung, the quiver of arrows -- tied in a bundle to keep them quiet -- my belt knife, two coils of clean cotton cordage, one inside each of two canteens I carried. Those were the smaller, pancake-shaped canteens and they’d be strapped to my back, under my blouse. The cotton cordage was to help keep the water from sloshing around so noisily, and I could always suck the water from the cotton rope if it came to that.

I made sure to be wearing my uniform blouse, so I wouldn’t be shot as a spy if I was captured, but I had on buckskin leggings and calf-high moccasins. I left the rest of my belongings with Amos and Caleb. I’d told Sergeant Lange I was spending the night with my brothers.

There’d been a battle that day, and we’d advanced on the Rebs. But then they counter-attacked and pushed us back to where we’d started. We heard that our generals were going to try something different tomorrow. Let’s hope it was a better plan.

I set out as soon as it was dark. The distance wasn’t that far, maybe two miles by the route I’d chosen, but doing it quietly and undetected took time.

I’d darkened my face and hands with burnt cork, and I wore a dark bandanna over my hair. With a “Good luck” from my brothers, I eased out so even our sentries and forward pickets didn’t see me. On the off chance I’d be spotted, I did make sure to know the night’s password.

My plan was to go to the spot where the sharpshooter had ensconced himself and await his arrival in the morning. Likely he’d have a helper with him. Most sharpshooters like to have someone to watch their back and to help them judge windage and distance. But as I had been trained by Uncle Sammie, I usually worked alone.

Where the Reb rifleman had set up was out in front of their entrenched and barricaded lines, below a point where the Rebel line protruded a bit on a shoulder ridge. The shooter’s blind was easily in range of the muskets from their barricaded line, so I’d have to watch out for that as I approached. Moreover, I knew I could expect to find Confederate pickets even further in advance of that point, as we similarly deployed our own pickets.

One can move quietly through heavy vegetation, but it’s nearly impossible to move silently. Actually, a dense forest has less underbrush and is often not as challenging than would be an open meadow, with its tangle of grasses, tall and low brush, woody plants, clinging, thorny vines, and the noisy dry detritus from the prior growing season.

What you must do is to move cautiously, and to move when the breezes stir the leaves and plants, in order to disguise what sound you do make, as well as to blend your movement with the moving brush to help to disguise your presence. The problem is that winds tend to moderate after sunset, gradually diminishing as the night wears on. Now not always, and not necessarily completely, but that seems to be how things work most of the time. Uncle Sammie was of the opinion that the sun actually stirred up the wind, which is why it usually picked up in the daytime. I had a friend, when we were just youngsters, who thought that running horses caused the wind. Another young schoolmate thought that the waving trees caused the wind. If pressed, I think I’d lean toward Uncle Sammie’s theory.

This night, though, came with a continuous if variable wind that, to me, suggested a change in the weather; I wouldn’t have been surprised to smell rain on the breeze at any time. The moon was just past its last quarter and would be rising late, just before sunup, and there appeared to be an increasing cloudiness. It was near ideal traveling weather, if you were hoping to move about unnoticed, and I took full advantage.

I stuck to shadowed areas and avoided positioning myself with a background, such as dried grass or leafage, that were lighter in color than my uniform blouse. I also stopped often in a crouch to observe my surroundings, looking for others or determining if I’d possibly been observed.

I carried my bow, unstrung, in my right hand, like a staff. While I did not use it as such, I did take advantage of it to test or probe the undergrowth where I intended to place my foot, or to push aside vines or small branches that I might otherwise brush against.

I did almost blunder into one Union picket, but it turned out to be Leprechaun, as we called the short-of-stature Paddy O’Kelly, a corporal in the scout-sharpshooter platoon. A rather light platoon; there were only nineteen of us, including the two corporals. Most platoons were of thirty or more men.

When I realized someone was crawling in the brush on an intersecting course, I pulled out my knife and, ready to spring into action, spoke quietly the password challenge, “Identify Oak Tree.”

“Chicken soup,” came back, just as quiet, but I recognized Paddy’s lilting Irish accent.

“Leprechaun? What’re you doin’ out here?” I whispered.

“Seneca? I’d be askin’ the same o’ you, laddie.”

“I’m on a shopping excursion,” I whispered, after we drew close to one another. “So what are you up to?”

“Sarge sent me out when he couldn’t find you, you lummox,” he said, his musical brogue even carrying into his whispers. “The pickets they been reportin’ noises the last couple nights, they have. That ain’t been you out here, has it, boyo?”

“Nah, I’ve been stickin’ close to home.”

“So what you doin’ out here tonight, then?”

“I’ll show you tomorrow, or maybe the next day, if I get caught by daylight and have to go to ground.”

“An’ is Sarge knowin’ you be out here, Seneca, m’ lad?”

“Ah, you know, I think I forgot to mention it to him. If it comes up, just tell him I heard the same reports about noises and thought I’d take a look-see.”

Paddy gave me the stink eye. “You’re headed for the Reb lines, now, ain’t ya, laddie?”

“I am, an’ I want to be first in line when the store opens in the mornin’.”

“You carryin’ hardware? I’ve got the LeMat.” Our Sergeant, Oskar Lange, kept a supply of equipment, like the spyglass I’d borrowed and the LeMat pistol, which he’d assign for use on a mission when carrying a Spencer would be inconvenient.

The LeMat was a revolver with a nine-shot cylinder for forty-two-caliber cap and ball. The pistol also had a second, twenty gauge, smooth-bore barrel that could fire a slug or shot. We carried it secured in a soft leather holster in the small of our back, on a soft leather belt that wouldn’t make creaking noises. We’d tuck it under our blouse where it was less of a bother catching on things.

“Brought my bow and a bundle of arrows,” I said.

“You want the LeMat?”

“An’ mess up the drape a’ my uniform blouse? No thanks,” I whispered.

“You sure? It’s weighin’ me down, ‘tis, an’ I’m not bein’ sure I can carry it back.” The LeMat, at better than four pounds, was a heavy handgun, but not the burden Paddy claimed. He wanted me to have its protection.

“You brought it out here, you haul it back.”

Just then, toward the south, an odd noise of squeaks and squeals started up amid a rustling noise in the brush.

“What the hell?” Leprechaun rasped.

I chuckled. “Is that what the pickets described?”

“Pretty much.”

“Tell ‘em not to worry. What you’re hearin’ is a couple fox kits playin’ and wrasslin’. They’ve snuck out of the den while their mama’s off huntin’. They best hope a big ol’ hoot owl don’t see ‘em.”

We paused to listen for a few seconds and he finally nodded and whispered, “Sure an’ I can imagine that, but how did you know?”

“I’ve watched it a few times, when I was up by Oneida Lake, over in your neck of the woods.”

He scoffed, “An’ there be no woods -- neck, titties, ankles, or bushy elsewhere -- in Five Points.” Leprechaun was a city boy from New York, from Manhattan Island, who’d ended up with the Ohio Fourteenth after his old New York unit had been shot to hell. Leprechaun had taken to scout work like he’d been born in the woods of Vermont. “Wouldn’t mind seein’ some playful wee foxes, but this ain’t the time nor place, I be thinkin’.”

“Nope. We ain’t here as tourists, as the Sergeant likes to point out.” I looked up at the sky; still no moon. “Reckon I best be on my way.”

“An’ good luck on your shoppin’ excursion, boyo. Uh, if you don’t make it back, can I have your brogans?”