Participation
154th NY Monument
Monument Dedication - 1996
Photo Album |
Main Address by Mark Dunkleman
Great-Grandson of Corp. John Langhans, Company H and Regimental Historian
May 26, 1996
By the time the 154th New York Volunteer Infantry reached this clearing in the
Wilderness, in the first hours of May 1863, the regiment had been in Virginia
for seven months. During those seven months, the men experienced many of the
hardships of war. They had grumbled about poor provisions, and suffered from
scanty shelter; they had tramped for miles over rough roads, and slogged through
sticky mud; they had fallen prey to diseases and had been granted discharges;
they had pined with homesickness, and brooded with discouragement over the
ebbing fortunes of the Union cause. Almost a thousand men had left their homes
in Western New York's Cattaraugus and Chautauqua Counties in the summer of 1862
to volunteer for the 154th New York. Now, seven months later, the regiment was
reduced to about six hundred men present for duty.
They still had not been in battle. Their Enfield rifled muskets had wreaked havoc with cattle,
hogs, sheep, chickens and targets, but the men had never leveled their weapons
at the Confederate enemy. That seemed soon to change, here in these fields, on
those first and second days of May. Like storm clouds darkening the sky, events
of the past several days had spread an ominous shroud over the future. A battle
was imminent, and the men individually, and the regiment as a whole, would soon
experience that which they had anticipated with mingled uncertainty, anxiety,
impatience and dread.
The men had left their cozy log huts at
their winter camp near Stafford Court House in mid-April and marched with the
rest of Colonel Adolphus Buschbeck's First Brigade of the Second Division,
Eleventh Army Corps, to Kelly's Ford on the upper Rappahannock River, where they
spent the next two weeks foraging the countryside, picketing the river bank, and
peering at the ragged Rebels on the opposite shore.Then as April waned, the rest
of the Fifth and Twelfth Corps, marched to Kelly's Ford. At sunset on April 28,
the 154th New York boarded pontoon boats, rowed swiftly across the Rappahannock,
secured a bridgehead on the opposite bank, and deployed to protect the laying of
a bridge by the engineers. A few Confederate bullets splashed harmlessly in the
water during the regiment's passage of the river, but by the time the oarsmen
arrived at the southern bank, the enemy videttes had fled into the night.
Thus the 154th New York led the movement of
the right wing of Major General Joseph Hooker's Army of the Potomac in crossing
the Rappahannock. Having taken the lead in opening the campaign, the regiment
was now relegated to the rear of the column, and waited while an immense river
of soldiers flowed down to the ford, across the bridge, and up the road to the
south.April 29 was spent near Kelly's Ford, and the men passed the time by
thoroughly looting the nearby rich farm of the ford's namesake. On April 30, the
154th accompanied the train of pack mules to Germanna Ford on the Rapidan River.
Here the men took a rest while the train firded, and were amused by the
struggles of the mules in the rapid current. Then they resumed the march, which
was kept up at a rapid pace until about midnight, when the men stacked arms and
collapsed with exhaustion in these very fields.
May Day dawned with a chill and heavy fog,
which soon burned off and left a warm pleasant morning. The day began queitly
for the Hardtack Regiment, as the 154th New York was nicknamed by the other
regimants of Buschbecks brigade. The men lolled about, cleaned their rifles and
had them inspected, and about noon fell into line and marched eastward out the
Plank Road in the direction of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia
and the town of Fredricksburg. But after proceeding about half a mile, they
turned around and marched back to these fields. During the day the sound of
musket fire and cannonading to the east was continuous, and late in the
afternoon some shells flew over the regiments position without doing any harm.
The 154th laid on it's arms until late at night, while brigade pioneers built
breastworks.
Greatly simplified, what had happened was
this: General Hooker had divided his Army of the Potomac, leaving part of it to
confront Lee at Fredricksburg and maneuvering the rest of it, including the
Eleventh Corps, across the upper Pappahannock and onto the Confederate rear. But
instead of pushing his right wing out of the tangled forest into open country to
the east and driving the Confederates before him, crushing the enemy between the
two wings of his army, Hooker lost his nerve--as later admitted--and assumed a
defensive posture in the inhospitable Wilderness. General Lee then made one of
the most brilliant strokes of the war by dividing his own army and sending
Lieutenant General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson on a wide arc, under cover of
the dense forest, to strike the extended and isolated right flank of Hookers
army--the Eleventh Corps.
After a breakfast of hardtack and coffe on the morning of Saturday, May 2, 1863, the 154th New
York took position in the newly dug rifle pits in these fields, south of the
Plank Road. That morning General Hooker rode along the line of the Eleventh
Corps, and was greeted by hearty cheers. The day passed uneventfully, but for
the rumors swirling through the Eleventh Corps.Word had it that the Confederates
were massing for an attack, and memebers of the 154th came in off the picket
line with news the enemy was passing thruough the woods in the direction of the
corps' right and rear. But at nearby Dowdall's Tavern, headquarters of Eleventh
Corps commander Major General Oliver Otis Howard, reports of an impending
Confederate attack were dismissed or ignored. Howard even rode away from the
corps with his largest brigade, Brigadier General Francis C. Barlow's Second
Brigade of Brigadier General Adolph von Steinwehr's Second Division, to join a
distant attack on what proved to be Jackson's rear guard. That unfortunate move
left Colonel Buschbecks's First Brigade as the only troops in the immediate area
of Dowdall's Tavern.
Shortly after five o'clock in the afternoon, as the members of the 154th New York were cooking
dinner, the crackling of musketry was suddenly heard to the west, down the Plank
Road toward the extreme right of the Eleventh Corps. The racket soon swelled to
a thundering crescendo of rifle and artillery fire, counterpointed by the
unnerving screech of the Rebel yell. Stonewall Jackson , with 28,000 men, had
struck the Eleventh Corps, totalling about 9,000 men in the absence of Barlow's
strong brigade. Outnumbered, outflanked, and unprepared, Eleveneth Corps
companies were crushed one after another before the relentless force of
Jackson's attack. Fleeing down the Plank Road and adjacent fields ina confused
mass of men, cannon, caissons, horses, wagons, mules and cattle, the mob rushed
by Buschbeck's brigade without attempting to reform, for the most part, much to
the astonishment and contempt of the Hardtack Regiment. For almost 2 hours the
fugitives swarmed past Dowdall's Tavern, as the Confederates shattered two whole
division of the Eleventh Corps.
In the meantime, Colonel Buschbeck ordered his men out of their entrenchments facing
south along the edges of this field, and positioned them in a shallow rifle pit
stretched across the fields on both sides of the Plank Road. The makeshift
shelter offered Buschbeck's men little protection, as it had been built to face
the east, and the attack was approaching from the west. Anchoring the left of
the line, in this field south of the road, was the 154th New York. To the
regiment's right was the 73rd Pennsylvania Volunteers, and the 27th Pennsylvania
and the 29th New York Volunteers extended Buschbeck's line north of the road,
where rallied remnants of the other two divisions completed it.
And so the 154th New York prepared to receive it's baptism of fire, under these despartae
circumstance--holding the left flank of a small force, covering the demoralizing
rout of it's corps, and facing an enemy overwhelming in numbers, exultant with
victory, and eager to destroy this last bit of opposition. Behind Buschbeck's
line, the Plack Road disappeared into the gloom of the Wilderness. It was more
than a mile to the nearest Union reinforcements.
Posted at the center of the regiment was
it's commander, Colonel Patrick Henry Jones, a native Irishman and veteran
officer from Ellicottville, the Cattaraugus County seat. Colonel Jones ordered
the regimental colors to be raised, and Color Sergeant Lewis Bishop of Company C
stood up unprotected and waved the National flag, making himself a frequently
aimed at target of Confederate fire. The the Colonel ordered the regiment to
open fire, and the 590 men of the 154th directed a well-aimed volley at the
approaching enemy.
The concentrated fire of the Buschbeck line, ably supported by a few artillery pieces, stunned and
slowed the Confederate advance. But the massive onslaught was not to be stopped.
Buschbeck's men loaded and fired as rapidly as they could, but the enemy lines
soon bypassed both flanks and a murderous fire was directed at the Union line
from the front, sides and rear. Under that deadly crossfire, the Buschbeck line
began to disintegrate. The regimants to the north of the road were the first to
give way, and as they hurried to the rear, part of the 73rd Pennsylvania joined
the retreat. But the left wing of that regiment, seeing the 154th New York
standing fast on the left flank, stood with the Hardtack Regiment in this field
and continued to fight--the last organized elements of the Eleventh Corps on the
battlefield. Finally, realizing his command was in danger of being captured en
masse, Coloenl Jones gave the order to retreat.
From the shallow rifle pit to the woods
behind them stretched an open field. Crossing that terrible guantlet under a
heavy fire, many members of the 154th fell. Entering the darkened woods, the
scattered survivors made their way as best they could toward the rest of the
army, with stray soldiers occassionally falling into enemy hands. Back at the
rifle pit and field near Dowdall's Tavern, a sizeable portion of the regiment
became captives of the Confederates. Among them were many killed and wounded,
including Colonel Jones, who was severely wounded in the hip.
Lieutenant Colonel Henry C. Loomis rallied
survivors of the regiment to the colors during a brief pause in their retreat,
at some vacated log breastworks in the woods. Inspecting the national flag, the
men counted some twenty bullet holes in its folds, and 3 more balls had struck
the flag staff, one between the hands of Sargeant Bishop, but the brave color
bearer himself was unhurt. What was left of the regiment continued it's retreat
to the vicinity of Fairview, where the men were placed in reserve of a division
of the Third Corps, and witnessed the ensuing nighttime fight. There too they
found the remainder of Buschbeck's brigade, and around midnight the reunited
command was ordered to the rear of General Hookers headquarters at
Chancellorsville, to spend the rest of the night.
Early on the morning of May 3, the Eleventh Corps was moved to the left of the Union
line, along the road to the United States Ford where the disgraced corps was
thought to be well out of harm's way. There they 154th New York occupied
trenches and quietly remained on MAy 4 and 5, soaked by a drenching rainstrom
the latter day. During those two days, a number of men who had become separated
from the regiment during the chaos of May2, rejoined the 154th. Among them was
Captain Matthew B. Cheney's Company G, which had somehow managed to stay intact
during the retreat, and picked up a number of stray men from other companies as
it made its way through the woods to the Union lines. There Company G was
temporarily attached to a divsion of the Twelfth Corps, and with that command it
participated in heavy fighting near the Chancellorsville house on May 3. During
that portion of the battle, several men of the 154th New York were, killed
wounded and captured.
The Hardtack regiment left it's muddy trenches on the morning of May 6, slipped and slid
through the mire to the pontoon bridge at the United Staes Ford, and recrossed
the Rappahannock along with the rest of Hooker's defeated army. The men reached
thier dilapitated old camp near Stafford Court House on May7, and the
Chancellorsville Campaign was over.
It was a depressing defeat. The soldiers had embarked on the campaign with optimism, and
finished in bewilderment. The rout of the Eleventh Corps was widely blamed as
the reason for the army's defeat, and a heap of abuse was directed at the
unfortunate men-- particularly the corps' large German contingent--by the rest
of the army. And the soldiers were stunned by the staggering losses. The
Hardtack Regiment's old camp was desolate; huts that had once held four or five
now had but one or two occupants, and some were entirely empty. Of the 590 men
of the 154th New York who held the line in the shallow rifle pit near Dowdall's
Tavern, 240 had been killed, wounded and captured, one of the highest regimantal
losses in the Army of the Potomac, and a casulty rate of forty percent.
Many of the regiments badly wounded laid on
the abttle field without care for ten days, before the Confederates released
them to Union hands. They were transported to the division hospital at Brooks
Station, where friends from the regiment visited them, cared for them, and in
some cases, burried them. The regiment's many prisoners of war were marched by
the Confederates to Richmond, where they spent a couple of nights in Libby
Prison and Belle Island. Fortunately for them, however, they were soon marched
to City Point, Virginia, and paroled. After a short stay in the parole camp at
Annapolis, Maryland, they languished at the convalescent camp at Alexandria
Virginia, for the next several months, before being exchanged and rejoining the
154th in Tennessee.
Despite the disparagement endured by the
Eleventh Corps in the aftermath of the battle, Buschbeck's brigade recieved some
acknowledgement for it's stand. Colonel Buschbeck's officila report of
Chancellorsville is not known to survive. According to Musician Thaddeus L.
Reynolds of Company I and Private James W. Washburn of Company C, however, the
colonel help the 154th New York in high reguard after it's first fight.
"Buschbeck thinks more of this regiment now," Reynolds wrote, " than any others
in the brigade." Washburn noted, "[Colonel] Buschbeck said that we fought the
best of any new regiment he ever saw." Praise was bestowed on Buschbeck's
brigade all the way up the chain of command. General von Stainwehr, in his
officail report, declared the brigade fought "with great determination and
courage," and "displayed the greatest bravery under very trying circumstances."
In the postwar years, higher commanders even exaggerated Buschbeck's stand.
General Howard credited the brigade with quickly taking position on the reverse
side of it's entrenchments, holding the Confederates for more than an hour, and
retreating in good order, facing the enemy the entire way. General Hooker--who
cited the rout of the Eleventh Corps as the major reason for his defeat at
Chancellorsville--toured the battlefield in 1876 and said during a stop at
Dowdall's Tavern, "Buschbeck's brigade of that corps did wonders here, and held
the whole impetuous onset of the enemy in check for an hour or more, which gave
me the opportunity to bring my reserves into position."
Members of the 154th New York would have
scoffed at those statements. They knew that Buschbeck's brigade had stood at
most for half of the time Howard and Hooker cliamed, and that it too had been
routed like the rest of the brigades of it's corps. The Hardtack Regiment felt
no need to exagerate their rol at Chancellorsville, or inflate what they ahd
done as the anchor of the Buschbeck line. Immediately after the battle, they
described it exactly as it had been described here, and recorded their
impressions of what happend in these fields in simple and solemn words. Let us
listen to the today:
"Our regiment fought like tigers and were all cut to peices....I tell you we had
a hard place in the fight." Corporal Thomas R. Aldrich, Company B.
"The balls came round my head like hailstone and the men was a-falling on all
sides of me. I hope I shan't see another such a time. It ain't a pleasant palce
to be in." Private Harvey Earl, Company H.
"Our regiment was on the extreme left, so we was under [a] heavy cross fire
until orders came to fall back. Such a stampede that our corps was in never was
seen, but before we run, we give the Rebs enough." Private James D. Emmons,
Company F.
"Well Alfred, I had seen the elephant and Lord God, how he did roar and bellow.
Good God, they scared me some." Corporal Truman Harkness, Company H.
"The 154th has gained a name, but at what a loss." Sergeant amos Humiston,
Compoany C.
"The command behaved with all the firmness and unflinching bravery peculiar to
the American soldier. Many instances of personal and conspicious gallantry came
uner my observation." Lieutenant Colonel Henry C. Loomis.
"We were badly cut up, but the boys fought like tigers. I think if they had
retreated sooner, we should not have had so many taken prisoner." Corporal
George J. Manson, Company K.
"[Colonel] Buschbeck siad this regiment stood longer than they had ought to, but
we did not know when we were outflanked, and supposed one brigade could whip
Jackson's whole army....Some time ago I wrote about staying in Dixie till I had
seen the elephant. I believe I have seen all I want to now." Corporal John N.
Porter, Company H.
"The Eleventh Army Corps shamefully fell back- a few regimants fruitlessly
trying to stay the panic and skedaddle; among them stands out conspicuously the
heroic 154th....That they tried to do thier duty, their thinner ranks and
melancholy losses will stand as perpetual witness....I am proud of the bravery,
the heroism and the valor of the 154th! Our ranks are thinned, but our name is
untarnished; and whosoever of us may live to return once more to our family and
friends, can do so proudly and unblushingly!" Surgeon Henry Van Aernam.
"Nobly did the 154th respond to the call of duty, and bravely did she susyain
the credit of old Cattaaugus. Not a man flinched amid the most withering fire of
shel, grape, canister and musket balls, while thier deadly rifles mad terrible
havoc in the ranks of the advancing enemy. But numbers could not prevail. Their
ranks were filled as fast as they fell, and they were fast turning our flanks.
At last prudence became the better part of valor, and our colonel ordered a
retreat. We now had an open field of about 50 rods to cross to reach a wood in
our rear, and this crossing under the tremendous crossfire was terrible. Many
was the poor fellow of the 154th who failed to reach the wood unharmed." Captian
Lewis D. Warner, Company C.
Needless to say, the survivors never forgot
the terrible scene that occurred in these fields at sunset on that day in May.
Years later, Captain Warner tersely summed up his opinion of the regiment's role
in the battle. "The most unfortunate thing about the 154th," he said, "was that
we had not learned to run when we ought to have done so." You would think the
regiment learned that lesson at Chancellorsville, but apparently it did not--for
two months later at Gettysburg, it stood agian to cover a retreat of the
Eleventh Corps, and those who were not killed or wounded were captured in a
body, with only a handful escaping unharmed.
Years later, the State of New York erected a monument to the 154th New York on it's Gettysburg
battleground, to mark the spot of it's second most costly encounter. But these
fields, where the regiment fought it's bloodiest battle, went unmarked, except
for the occassional footsteps of a veteran of the 154th, returned to Virginia to
tour the old battlefield. a regimental history, which promised to "rescue the
true record and honors of the Regiment from misrepresentation and oblivion," and
tell "the true history of the battle of Chancellorsville, of the 2d of May," was
written in the latter part of the century but never published, and the story
went untold.
It has fallen to us their descendants--grandchildren, great-grandchildren and generations
beyond--to tell the story of our ancestors of the 154th New York Volunteers, and
to mark this field, so momentous a place in the history of the regiment. We do
so with great pride and respect for what they did here, and with great sorrow
for the losses they suffered here. We are gratified to forever mark this field
as the site of their great battle, to bear witness to their sacrifice to this
generation and generations to come. We are honored and proud to dedicate this
monument to the memory of our ancestors of the 154ty New York.
Source: The Lincourt Historical Collection
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