CHAPTER XXX. THE REBELS DEFEATED--END OF THE BATTLE--INDIANS SCALPINGOUR SOLDIERS AND MUTILATING THEIR BODIES.
|While Sigel’s batteries had been pouring their iron hail upon the hillwhich formed the center of the rebel position the divisions of Carr andDavis had slowly advanced till they occupied the woods where the rebelswere posted when the fight began. I should have said our guns stoppedtwo or three times, partly to allow them to cool and partly to carrythem forward to a closer range. The melting away of the rebel lines wasthe last act of the battle. The order to retire was given, and beforenoon the fighting was over.
“General Sigel’s command went in pursuit, while the rest of the armyremained on the field. The chase was kept up for twelve miles and thengiven up, as the rebels had a fair road before them and could pushon without danger, while we had to be constantly on the lookout forambuscades. General Sigel captured a good many wagons with supplies andsome ammunition, and his men picked up about a thousand stand of armswhich the fleeing rebels had thrown away. They were of very little use,as they were mostly shotguns and squirrel-rifles. The best amongthem were picked out by the officers, to send home as trophies of thecampaign and in memory of the battle we had won.
“As soon as it was certain that the rebels had gone and the field wasours we set about looking after the wounded.
“General Vandever went to the hill where the rebel batteries had beenposted in the morning, and took me along with him. Such a sight as I sawthere I hope never to see again.
“The ground was covered with dead and wounded men, the most of themdead, as they were struck down by shot and shell or by grape andcanister. Some were killed by the falling limbs of trees, and one manwas crushed by the weight of a limb five or six inches in diameter thathad fallen directly upon his shoulders and pressed him to the ground.One tree had been pierced through from side to side by a solid shot;its top was shivered by a shell, and its trunk was pierced by a dozen ormore canister-balls. Here lay the fragments of a battery-wagon that hadbeen blown up, and not far off were five artillery wheels. Three muleslay dead by the side of the broken wagons, and one of them was so tornby the explosion that little more than the general shape of the animalremained.
“In a space thirty feet square I counted seven dead men and threewounded ones, one of the latter just gasping his last. A little furtheron there were fifteen wounded rebels, all begging and imploring forwater. I gave them all my canteen contained, and so did the rest of theparty, and the general sent me off for more. As I turned my horse toride away he jumped aside to avoid stepping on a prostrate man whose armhad been torn off by a cannon-shot, and as he jumped he almost trod onanother whose leg had been shattered. Close by a tree was a dead manwhose head had been blown off by a shell, and by his side was anotherdead man whose breast was pierced by a grapeshot. A letter had fallenfrom his pocket, and I sprang to the ground and picked it up, intendingto read it later.
“The letter was addressed to Pleasant J. Williams, Churchill’s regiment,Fayetteville, Ark.; it was from a girl in Kentucky, to whom Williams wasevidently engaged, if I may judge by the tenor of the document. I shallkeep it in the hope of some day being able to return it to the writer.She was an ardent rebel, but evidently a very sweet and loving youngwoman, though, unfortunately, she does not inclose her photograph.
“I went for the water as fast as I could, and wondered how I was tobring it, as I had but a single canteen. On the way I passed through thecamp, and when I told a captain of the Third Illinois cavalry the objectof my mission, he detailed four men to go with me, and told them togather up a dozen canteens to carry water to the wounded men. Tired asthe men and their horses were, the soldiers went eagerly on their errandof mercy, and it almost made me cry to see how tenderly they cared forthe poor fellows who were so lately their enemies. Curious thing, thisbusiness of making war! Soldiers try their very best to kill each other,but when the fighting is over they do all they can to help the very menthey shot down only a little while before.
“Before I got back to the hill where the wounded men were lying a rebelsurgeon had arrived with a flag of truce, and was doing all he couldfor the sufferers. But several were so badly hurt that they could n’tbe saved, and one of them died within two minutes after swallowing adraught of water I gave him.
“A horrible thing happened here close to this hill. The bursting ofshells, or some burning wads, had set fire to the dry leaves thatcovered the ground, and the woods were burning in every direction. Wetried to remove the wounded before the fire reached them, and thought wehad got them all away; afterward some were found in secluded spots, andthough still alive, they had been terribly burned and blackened by thefire among the leaves and fallen brushwood. One poor fellow had crawledclose to a dry log that was set on fire by the burning leaves, and wasso badly burned that he died soon after being found. The doctors saidhis wounds were so severe that it is doubtful if he could have livedeven if the fire had not reached him.
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“We had repeatedly heard that the rebels were very badly supplied withshoes, and there was proof of the truth of this statement in the waythey stripped the shoes from the feet of dead and mortally-wounded men,no matter to which side they belonged. Not one corpse in twenty ofall that I saw on the battlefield had shoes on its feet. In some casespantaloons and coats were removed, but such instances were not numerous,the great need of the rebels seeming to be in the line of shoes. Ofcourse, the clothing of our soldiers would hardly be desired by therebels, as it would be dangerous for them to wear, and they have noready means of changing its color.
“The general told me to look for him at Elkhorn Tavern as soon as I hadcarried out the order about taking water to the wounded rebels, and Idid so. On the way I passed the spot where a captain of a rebel batterywas killed near the close of the battle, his head having been carriedaway by one of our cannon-shot. They said his name was Churchill Clark,and that he was the son of a prominent politician well known in thestate of Missouri. Young Clark was educated at the military academy atWest Point, and was said to be a splendid officer. He turned againstthe government the advantages of the education he had received at itsexpense. He was carried away by the idea that the right of the statewas paramount to the right of the nation, and this is the end ofstates-rights for him--killed in battle at Pea Ridge.
“But if the battlefield was horrible, the scene at Elkhorn was worse.Dead and wounded men were lying all about, the house was filled withwounded, and every few minutes a corpse was brought out to make roomfor a man whom the surgeons hoped to save. Blood was everywhere, and thesight was a sickening one. All the medical men were busy as they couldbe, and with the hardest work they were not able to give much attentionto each individual case.
“The next morning the general sent me to Elkhorn with a message toone of the surgeons. Outside of the building was a row of corpses ofofficers and men mingled indiscriminately, most of them having diedduring the night from the effect of their wounds or after amputationof limbs. Several legs and arms that had been cut off were lying on theground, some of the legs having the stocking and perhaps a portion ofthe pantaloons still in place.
“The attendants were busy removing the corpses and carrying them to aplace of burial. Each was covered with a blanket, and officers and menwere moving among them, raising the blanket coverings one after theother, in order to find some missing individual. ‘That’s Captain------,’ said one of the officers, as he turned down a blanket andrevealed a face and the double-barred shoulder-straps which indicatedthe rank of the wearer. ‘That’s private --------, of Co. B,’ or ‘that’sSergeant------, of-regiment,’ were the remarks of the attendants asthey went steadily on with their work. Here sat a soldier who was cryingbitterly, as he had just discovered the body of his brother among thedead. The surgeons and their aids gave him no attention; in fact, theywere quite regardless of anything except the wounded whom they weretrying to save.
“Details were sent out to look carefully over the ground where thebattle was fo
ught, in order to bring in the wounded and bury the dead.The work of humanity was rapidly performed, and before night all thedead had been laid to their rest, and all the wounded, except a few whowere not discovered until afterwards, were relieved as far as possible.The dead, where they lay thickly, were buried in trenches containing tenand in some cases twelve or fifteen corpses, but in most cases they wereburied singly or by two’s and three’s. Most of those who fell at PeaRidge found their graves where they lay, and there they will sleepundisturbed through all the rest of this war that is convulsing thecountry and threatening the existence of a nation which was founded asthe home of universal liberty.
“From the hospital I carried a message to Colonel Bussey, of the ThirdIowa Cavalry, who had returned from pursuing the rebels as far asBentonville, and was just then in that part of the field where hisregiment made a charge upon the combined white and Indian troopsof General Pike, and was repulsed with the loss of several men. Itafterward, as I have said elsewhere, rallied and defeated the rebels,recapturing three guns of a battery which had been temporarily lost.
“The rebels may deny as much as they please that the Indians scalpedtheir fallen foes, but here was the evidence that they did it. Eight menof Colonel Bussey’s cavalry were killed in the charge, and the Indiansoccupied the ground immediately and took off the scalps of those eightmen and otherwise mutilated their bodies. Some of the bodies indicatedthat the men were only wounded and not dead when the Indians came intopossession of them by the repulse of the cavalry, but the scoundrelsquickly dispatched them with the tomahawk. Marks of the tomahawk, orsome weapon like it, were plainly visible on several bodies, and thesurgeons who examined the gunshot wounds on some of the bodies declaredthat they were not sufficient to cause death.
“Colonel Bussey and several of his officers and men have made oathto the evidences of the use of the tomahawk and scalping-knife by theIndian allies of the rebels, and the documents will be placed on record.It is probable that more than this number were scalped, as severalbodies were buried before an investigation was thought of, but aboutthese eight there can be no mistake. We hope the rebels are proud ofthese murderous savages, who may yet turn upon them in their frenzy whenleast expected to do so. A few of the Indians were captured, and if ourmen had not been restrained by their officers they would have hanged orshot the rascals. General Curtis has allowed all the rebel surgeons tocome and go freely under parole, with the exception of the surgeon of anIndian regiment; him the general is keeping a close prisoner, and willsend under guard to St. Louis.”
The rebels disappeared so suddenly from the battlefield that the unioncommanders could not make out where they had gone. General Sigel wentafter them in one direction and Colonel Bussey in another, but could notovertake them, and the pursuit was soon given up. It seems they turnedoff through several hollows and ravines, taking obscure roads, andfinally reuniting in the neighborhood of Bentonville, where they campedfor the night. A good many of them continued along the road withouthalting, determined to get a safe distance between themselves and theterrible Yankees. Previous to the battle the officers had spread themost startling stories about northern atrocities to prisoners, with theobject of nerving the men up to a high pitch of courage.
On this subject let us listen to Jack, whom we left in the hands of theenemy, and who was carried away by them in their retreat.
“The night after they captured the colonel, and took me along with him,” said Jack, “we had a hard old time of it. We had very little to eat,and nothing but our clothes to sleep in. We were no worse off than theofficers and men around us, as there were a good many of them that hadn’t any blankets, and nearly all were ragged and fearfully out at theelbows. Each man had for his rations a piece of corn-bread as dry as astone and nearly as hard, and some of them had nothing more than an earor two of corn, that they chewed on as though they were horses. One ofthe doctors dressed Colonel Herron’s wounded leg. He could n’t stand onit, and when he wanted to move around I helped him on one side and oneof the hospital attendants on the other. They put him in an ambulancealong with one of their own wounded officers and started us off on theroad to Bentonville, and there we stayed through the night. Probablythey would have sent us further if they’d known how the next day’sbattle was coming out.
“They were going to send me off with the soldiers, but Colonel Herronasked to be permitted to keep me as a personal attendant. He offered togive his parole and become responsible that I would not escape, the sameas he had done when we were first captured, and this they accepted aftera little palaver. At one time I thought they wouldn’t do it, and beganto think I’d have to trudge along the road with the soldiers. And Ithink I owe my good fortune to an old friend; at least I ‘ll call himso, as he acted like a friend, though he had no reason to remember mekindly.
“You remember the captain we helped to capture near Rolla when we wenton our scouting expedition on foot?”
“Certainly,” replied Harry; “I remember him well.”
“He was the man that befriended me,” said Jack, “and he did it justat the right time, too. He was one of the officers that was debatingwhether to do as the colonel wanted, and let me go with him, and whilethey were talking a little way off from us he kept eying me all over.After a while he came up to me and said:
“‘Are you one of the boys that was out one day on the road from Rolla toPilot Knob, and found out where a captain had a recruiting camp?’
“I turned all sorts of colors, I know, and while I was trying to stammerout something to convince him I was n’t the boy he was looking for henodded his head in a satisfied sort of way.
“I thought my case was done for and he’d have me shot sure, but heonly laughed and said I was made of good stuff and had ‘got the sand,’whatever that was. Then he went back and talked with the others, andafter a few minutes he came to me and said he would be responsible forme.
“My heart went down in my boots at this, but he did n’t let it staythere long. ‘You’re all right,’ said he, ‘and you may go with yourcolonel. But, first, you must give me your solemn word of honor that youwon’t try to escape as long as you are allowed to be with him.’
“I gave my word of honor and signed a parole which he wrote out, andthen he said he thought he could trust me. ‘You caught me once,’ saidhe, ‘but you weren’t under any parole, and I had no business to talkwith you as I did. You boys did a smart thing, and just the kind ofthing I believe in, and as long as you’re in my hands I ‘ll look out foryou. And I ‘ll look out for you, too,’ he added, dropping his voice, ‘ifyou try any Yankee tricks on me now that you’re under parole.’
“I repeated my promise, and felt relieved at the way he acted toward me.Then he hurried a man off and got something for us to eat. It was n’tmuch, only a slice of corn-bread and a piece of bacon for me, and a tincupful of tea and some more bacon and bread for the colonel. He told meto stay by the ambulance, where the colonel was, and said I could ridewith the driver, except ‘when they were going up-hill, where I must getoff and walk’.”