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Henry T. Johns was a private in Company C, 49th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. His letters to relatives and friends back in Pittsfield were printed in Life with the Forty-ninth Massachusetts Volunteers (Pittsfield, Mass., 1864), from which this account is taken (pp. 252-55).

At last we were ordered to fall in. The fascine-bearers [fascines were bundles of sticks used to fill the ditches in front of earthworks so attackers could cross] were in advance. General [Christopher C.] Augur said: "Now, boys, charge, and reserve your fire till you get into the fort; give them cold steel, and as you charge, cheer! Give them New England! A Connecticut regiment is inside, but they have exhausted their ammunition. In fifteen minutes you will be there. Press on, no matter who may fall. If ten men get over the walls the place is ours." We answered only by grasping tighter our guns.

Lieut.-Col. O'Brien appeared in a state of intense excitement: "Come on boys; we'll wash in the Mississippi to-night." We emerged from the woods, turning to the right up a main road. A small belt of timber to our left hid us from the foe. The artillery had ceased firing; all was quiet till we passed that small belt and came in full view of the rebels. Then bullets, grape, and canister hurtled through the air, and men began to fall, some crying, "I am hit!" and one, "Oh, God, I'm killed!" Advancing a few yards, we wheeled by the right flank and started across the fatal field. Then we could see our work.

Full two-thirds of a mile distant we saw the parapet lined with rebels, and great volumes and little jets of smoke, as muskets and cannon bade us defiance. For a few yards the field was smooth, but difficulties soon presented themselves. A deep ditch or ravine was passed, and we came to trees that had been felled in every direction. Over, under, around them we went. It was impossible to keep in line. The spaces between the trees were filled with twigs and branches, in many places knee-high. Foolishness to talk about cheering or the "double-quick." We had no strength for the former, aye, and no heart either. We had gone but a few rods [a rod is 16.5 feet] ere our Yankee common sense assured us we must fail.

You could not go faster than a slow walk. Get your feet into the brush and it was impossible to force them through, you had to stop and pull them back and start again. As best we could we pressed on; shells shrieked past or bursted in our midst, tearing ground and human bodies alike; grape and canister mowed down the branches, tore the leaves, or lodged in trees and living men. Solid shot sinking into the stumps with a thumping sound or thinning our ranks, minie balls 'zipping' past us or into us, made our progress slow indeed. As the storming party was less heavily loaded than the fascine-bearers, we would get ahead of them and had then to tarry until they got in advance. They were our bridge. If they failed or fell, we were helpless.

With anxiety and despairing sorrow we saw them fall, some from bullets and some from sheer exhaustion. Seeing Callender down, I said: "For God sake, up, my boy! We can do nothing without you." He cried, "Go on! go on! I'm wounded." Turning my eyes I saw Lieut. Siggins drop his sword and put his hands to his mouth, from which the blood was gushing in torrents. It was no time to help him, so on we pressed. Soon a bullet came tearing through the left sleeve of my blouse. I thought but little of it. My one thought was, will enough of the fascine-bearers be spared to bridge the ditch? Again we had got in advance of them. They looked more like loaded mules than men.

Nearly all of them were behind. They could not keep up. As I watched I could see one after another drop, and round me voices moaned out, "O, God! O, God!" and bleeding men dragged themselves to the safe side of the felled trees. Some, too badly wounded, lay where they fell, all exposed to the deadly rain. I saw no more of the fascine-bearers, but, the white flag of Massachusetts passing by, I followed. It was the State colors of the Forty-eighth Massachusetts. Soon the standard-bearer was killed; an officer grasped the colors and waved them aloft. In less than half a minute his blood had dyed the white silk of the banner. We had then got within forty rods of the parapet. Save a few scattered soldiers, we were alone. Officers we saw none, so down we lay. Five of us together, and were congratulating each other on our safety. One poor fellow had just put down his canteen, from which he had been drinking, when a bullet passed through it into his leg. He sought the protection of the nearest log. In less than five minutes I was the only unwounded one of the party, and a bullet had rent my blouse right over the heart.

-- Pvt. Henry T. Johns
49th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment

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John William DeForest of Seymour, Connecticut, was a writer before the Civil War began. He joined the Union army and became captain of Company I, 12th Connecticut Infantry Regiment. The letters he wrote to his wife were published as A Volunteer's Adventures: A Union Captain's Record of the Civil War The following description of siege life is taken from that book.

Now came forty days and nights in the wilderness of death. Before we left that diminutive gully fifty or sixty men of the regiment had stained it with their blood, and several of the trees, which filled it with shade, had been cut asunder by cannon shot, while others were dying under the scars of innumerable bullets. The nuisance of trench duty does not consist in the overwhelming amount of danger at any particular moment, but in the fact that danger is perpetually present. The spring is always bent; the nerves never have a chance to recuperate; the elasticity of courage is slowly worn out. Every morning I was awakened by the popping of rifles and the whistling of balls; hardly a day passed that I did not hear the loud exclamations of the wounded, or see corpses borne to the rear; and the gamut of my good-night lullaby varied all the way from Minie rifles to sixty-eight pounders (a type of artillery gun).

In one respect our gully was detestable. Well covered in front, it was open at one end, and this end was exposed to the enemy. I often wished that I could turn the wretched hole around. From a distance of nearly half a mile the Rebel sharpshooters drew a bead on us with a precision which deserved the highest commendation of their officers, but which made us curse the day they were born. One incident proves, I think, that they were able to hit an object farther off than they could distinguish its nature. A rubber blanket, hung over the stump of a sapling five feet high, which stood in the centre of our bivouac [military encampment], was pierced by a bullet from this quarter. A minute later a second bullet passed directly over the object and lodged in a tree behind it. I ordered the blanket to be taken down, and then the firing ceased. Evidently the invisible marksman, eight hundred yards away, had mistaken it for a Yankee. Several men were hit upon this same hillock, or immediately in rear of it; and I for one never crossed it without wondering whether I should get safely to the other side.

Another fatal spot was an exposed corner in the narrow terrace which our men had made in the bank, as a standing place whence to fire over the knoll.

"Don't go there, Captain," a soldier said to me when I first approached the place. "That's Dead Man's Corner. Five men have been killed there already."

I understood that Hubbard and Wrotnowski of [Brig. Gen. Godfrey] Weitzel's staff both received their deathshots at Dead Man's Corner, on the 27th of May. Early on my first day in the gully, just as I had risen, smirched and damp, from my bed on the brick-colored earth, a still breathing corpse was brought down from this spot of sacrifice. A brave, handsome boy of our Company D, gay and smiling with the excitement of fighting, disdaining to cover himself, was reloading his rifle when a ball traversed his head, leaving two ghastly orifices through which the blood and brains exuded, mingling with his auburn curls. He uttered strong, loud gaspings; it seemed possible, listening to them, that he might yet live; but his eyes were fast closed and his ruddy cheek paling; in a few minutes he was dead.

We lost eight or ten men during that first day, partly from not knowing these dangerous localities, and partly from excess of zeal. Our fellows attempted to advance the position, leaped the knoll without orders, and took to the trees on the outer slope, and were only driven back after sharp fighting.

"Served me right. I'd no business there," said a suddenly enlightened Irishman, as he came in with a hole through his shoulder.

As the siege drew on and we found that there was plenty of danger without running after it, we all became more or less illuminated by this philosophy. It is a remark as old as sieges, that trench duty has a tendency to unfit men for field fighting. The habit of taking cover becomes stronger than the habit of moving in unison; and moreover, the health is enfeebled by confinement, and the nervous system by incessant peril.

-- John William DeForest
Captain Company I,
12th Connecticut Infantry Regiment