On the Road to Atlanta: A bad day at Pickett’s Mill

While editing and indexing volume II of The Atlanta Campaign this week, I revisited this passage about the Federal experience at Pickett’s Mill:

Private Francis Kiene in Company I of the 49th Ohio noted that “after about half an hours fighting we got orders to advance, we had not gone fare before a rebel battery got enfilading fire along our whole line though they shot a little high . . . Canister rattled through the woods like has I head never bore seen . . . but we steadily advanced. [A]fter gitting down in a deep gully we had to charge up a steap hill . . . the boys hollowed and cheered as we went up. [H]ere the musket balls of the rebels began to play marching music for us.” Kiene charged nearly up to the “light works of sticks and logs and what every they could find,” but as he did so, “when I looked around not a man was on his feet near me.” Immediately, Kiene went scrambling back down the slope: “Not till now had I noticed the fear full carnage, the dead lay in heaps and those who were not hurt clung so close to the ground that a person could hardly distinguish the living from the dead.” Shortly thereafter Kiene was struck by a musket ball which “passed through my left elbow joint. . . . I immediately started for the rear.”[1]

The Texans observed these repeated waves of oncoming Federals with a mixture of awe and horror. Sergeant Asa Anderson of Company F in the 7th Texas, only recently returned to his company after recovering from a wound suffered at Raymond, Mississippi the previous year, remembered that “we killed and wounded more of them than we had in our lines. They seemed to be drunk, and line after line would charge us and be cut down. They . . . endeavored to plant their colors right in our lines, and when the flag would go down another man would raise it again. Many of their men rushed into our lines and were clubbed and bayonetted to death.” The heroism of these flagbearers drew admiration even from General Johnston, who heard the tale when he visited Cleburne’s lines the next day: “When the leading Federal troops paused . . . a color-bearer came on and planted his colors eight or ten feet in front of his regiment but was killed in the act. A soldier who sprang forward to hold up or bear off the colors was shot dead as he seized the staff. Two others who followed successively fell like him, until finally another Yankee rescued the noble emblem.”[2]

Private William Oliphant recalled this incident or something very similar, concluding with a bit of momentary mercy. Oliphant, a member of the 6th Texas, was on Granbury’s right, facing the 32nd Indiana as it charged up through the 124th Ohio. “In the last charge an Indiana regiment came up . . . in splendid style,” recollected Oliphant, until “within but a few feet of our bayonets they seemed to wither away. . . . The color bearer of the regiment fell with his colors. [I]nstantly another seized the flag and held it aloft.” At least six more Federals were killed trying to recover that flag, until, as the 32nd finally fell back down the slope, they left it behind, “a prize within our grasp. I could have reached it with a single bound, but thought as it was already ours, I would wait.” Just then, “one of the brave fellows turned . . . threw down his gun, came back and picked it up. He straightened himself up to his full height, gritted his teeth, and flapped his flag in our faces.” Instead of “riddl[ing him] with bullets, one of our boys cried out, ‘don’t shoot, he’s too brave.’” The 32nd reclaimed their flag.[3]

[1]Kiene, Journal of Francis A. Kiene, 229.

[2]Mamie Yeary, Reminiscences of the Boys in Gray 1861-1865. 2 vols. (Dallas, TX: 1876), I: 17-18; Johnston, “Opposing Sherman’s Advance,” 269.

[3]James M. McCaffrey, ed. Only A Private, A Texan Remembers the Civil War. The Memoirs of William J. Oliphant (Houston, TX: 2004), 65.