By Ronald S. Coddington, 6-14-13
Confederate artillery and infantry fire roared from the formidable defenses of Port Hudson, La., on June 14, 1863. Shot and shell raked the rough-and-tumble terrain where Union forces were pinned down after a failed assault, caught between the lines and unable to advance or retreat.
A glimpse through thick drifts of gun smoke revealed a knoll littered with broken bodies of men in blue. Dead, dying and wounded soldiers blanketed the exposed ground in the scorching heat of the day. Those who had not been struck hugged the earth as the hail of fire continued.
One of the injured federals trapped on the hill was Edward R. Washburn, a popular captain in the 53rd Massachusetts Infantry. A musket ball had ripped into his right leg during the attack. Near him lay the brigadier general who led the assault, Halbert E. Paine. He had also been shot in the leg. Attempts to rescue the general cost the lives of two men, and two more wounded. Paine waved off other rescuers. He “begged them to make no further efforts to get him,” reported First Lt. Henry A. Willis, who told the story of the assault in the 53rd’s regimental history years later.
General Paine and Captain Washburn kept each other’s spirits up as they waited for an uncertain fate. The two men talked, and lay so close to each other that Washburn was able to toss his knife to Paine to allow him to cut off his boot and relieve swelling in his wounded leg. Washburn also tossed his canteen of water to the general. “As for the captain himself,” declared Willis, the historian, “He was able to cautiously smoke a single cigar he had with him, and thought if he had taken along a half-dozen he would have got through the day very well.”
The third of five children born to a Lancaster, Mass., farmer and his wife, Washburn was an unlikely soldier. “He had never belonged to any military organization before the war, nor was there anything in his natural taste or inclination to lead him in that direction, but from motives of purest patriotism he entered the service of his country,” noted Willis. But in the summer of 1862, Abraham Lincoln called for more troops in the wake of Union setbacks in Virginia. Washburn left his job as secretary of a Lancaster insurance company and joined a group of local business and civic leaders who recruited volunteers for a ninth-month enlistment. The recruits formed a company and elected officers, a common practice in the volunteer army. They voted Washburn captain.
Washburn’s company became part of the Bay State’s new 53rd Infantry, the last white regiment mustered into federal service before the African-American 54th and 55th infantries were sworn in to the Union Army.
On Jan. 18, 1863, Washburn and the rest of the 53rd sailed for Louisiana on the steamer Continental. The transport was crowded with soldiers, baggage, officers’ horses, equipment and other stores. Also in attendance were a number of African-American servants, including Captain Washburn’s valet, Stephen Henry.
A week later, during a stop in Key West, Fla., Washburn and Henry joined other men on a stroll through town. “In the evening a few of us officers started out to attend church; curiosity induced us to wend our way to the negro church. We entered and took seats quite in the rear of the audience, and were soon surprised by seeing Stephen Henry,” noted Willis, “walk up the main aisle of the church, enter the pulpit and take full charge of the services. He preached an excellent discourse, (extemporaneous), from the text ‘Cast thy burden upon the Lord.’ No one in the regiment knew that he ever preached or spoke in public, not even the captain, who had employed him.”
The 53rd left Key West the next day, and arrived in Union-occupied New Orleans before the end of the month.
By this point in the war, the federals controlled most of the Mississippi River and were poised to split the Confederacy in two along the waterway. The last remaining Southern-held section was a 240-mile stretch anchored by two well-defended cities. At the northern end lay Vicksburg, where Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s army had been engaged in active operations since late 1862.
Port Hudson and its 7,500-man garrison lay at the southern end. “Port Hudson was undoubtedly the strongest position by nature on the river, with perhaps the exception of Vicksburg. The village stood upon a high, precipitous bluff, and upon this bluff the ‘works’ were constructed,” described Willis. “The position was practically impregnable from the river.”
In May 1863, the commander of Union forces in the New Orleans area, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, set out with 35,000 troops to take Port Hudson. Washburn and the rest of the 53rd participated in a series of frontal assaults on May 27. The attacks failed and Union casualties were high, although the 53rd’s losses were slight compared to those of other regiments. Banks settled into a siege after the repulse.
Two weeks later, Banks renewed the assault. He ordered a nighttime attack on June 14 led by General Paine and his entire division. Paine’s troops targeted a section of the Port Hudson defenses known as Priest Cap, a heavily fortified front-line complex of earthworks near Fort Desperate.
In the vanguard of Paine’s assault column were two regiments deployed as skirmishers, and other troops armed with hand grenades. (Patented by William F. Ketchum, they resembled darts and were designed to explode when the detonation device in the nose struck the ground. They were inefficient and ineffective.) Behind them marched the 53rd and three other regiments in its brigade. The rest of the division followed.
The ground that they had to cross to reach Priest Cap was forbidding. “It was said, by one who had visited all points on our extended line, that no point presented less protection to an attacking party than the one selected for the assault of this column,” declared Willis, the historian. “At all other points hills and ravines, covered with brushwood and stumps, afforded a covering to skirmishers, but here was nothing of the kind. The ground in places was slightly depressed, but every hollow which would have afforded any protection to a body of men approaching was completely enfiladed” by well-directed enemy fire.
Washburn and his comrades in the 53rd understood the perils, and knew that many would not survive.
A massive artillery bombardment opened the attack. Lack of communication and coordination delayed the assault until the early light of dawn. Finally, about 3:30 a.m., the first attack wave, which consisted of the skirmishers and the brigade that included the 53rd, raced across the exposed ground. “The firing is terrific, but we have succeeded in reaching a point within one hundred yards of the works. We had lost heavily but were not yet broken up,” reported Willis. Paine then gave the order “‘to charge forward and enter the works.’ The line sprang forward with alacrity, wildly cheering, and advancing at ‘double quick’ close up to the works amid a most galling front and enfilading fire.”
There they discovered to their horror a grim reality. The rest of the division had somehow confused its orders and did not follow the 53rd and the rest of its brigade. “We were alone just at the foot of the entrenchments,” recounted Willis.
A small number of soldiers entered Priest Cap and were promptly captured. The main attack stalled. It was at this point that rebel bullets tore into Paine and Washburn and stranded them on the little knoll. With no way forward and no reinforcements behind them, Willis recalled that, “No rally could be made for another charge, and we could only lie there, hugging the ground and protecting ourselves as well as we might from the heavy firing still poured in upon us, through the entire day.” The assault had failed.
“That fourteenth of June was a long day for us. It seemed an age,” wrote General Paine years later. “The experience of survivors lying in an open field in the burning sun, tortured with pain and thirst, waiting and hoping for rescue was that of hundreds of others who did not survive but gave their lives to their country on that bloody battlefield.”
Paine added, “A Confederate officer, who served in my front, has since the war informed me that when they learned who I was and observed the attempts to carry me from the field they concluded that I must be a good fellow and it was ordered that no more shots should be fired at me.” This act of soldierly respect may have saved the life of Paine and those around him, including Washburn.
Paine, Washburn and the other wounded were rescued after nightfall and transported to New Orleans for treatment. Paine’s left leg was beyond saving, and a team of army and navy physicians performed an amputation. He survived the surgery, returned to the Army and mustered out at the end of the war. He went on to serve as a congressman and President Grant’s patent commissioner. Paine died in 1905 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
The bullet that struck Washburn’s right leg fractured the upper third of the femur and passed completely through his thigh. An assistant surgeon removed a fragment of bone and lead from the wound, and placed Washburn in traction to prevent extreme shortening of the leg. The doctor employed a procedure known as Buck’s Extension: named for the physician and pioneering plastic surgeon Gurdon Buck, the treatment combined adhesive bandages with a weight and pulley system connected by an elastic band.
The surgeon began Washburn’s extension treatment at half a pound and gradually increased the weight to 18 pounds. His body acted as the counterweight. On July 30, 1863, seven weeks after the wound occurred, the doctor described Washburn’s condition as “strong,” and reported that his leg had shortened by only one-half inch. Washburn was discharged from the hospital and sent home to Massachusetts with a prognosis for a full recovery.
Meanwhile, his comrades in the 53rd witnessed the surrender of the garrison of Port Hudson on July 9. The Confederate commander, Franklin Gardner, was forced to capitulate after Grant’s capture of Vicksburg five days earlier had made their position untenable. The 53rd completed its nine-month enlistment and mustered out of the Union army in early September 1863.
Washburn returned to his old job at the insurance company about the time the 53rd returned home. He was determined to get back into the Army, but the injured leg did not completely heal and he suffered its ill effects. The wound broke open the following summer and became infected with sepsis. On Sept. 2, 1864, as he lay on his deathbed in agony, his fellow officers in the 53rd met for their first reunion. Three days later, Washburn succumbed to the infection at age 28.
Ronald S. Coddington is the author of “Faces of the Civil War” and “Faces of the Confederacy.” His most recent book is “African American Faces of the Civil War.” He writes “Faces of War,” a column for the Civil War News.
Image 1: Edward Richmond Washburn pictured as a captain, circa 1862
Image 2: This illustration of Buck¹s Extension was included in a paper, 'An Improved Method of Treating Fractures of the Thigh,' by Dr. Gurdon Buck, circa 1863 Credit The Transaction of the New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. II, digitized by Google
From: opinionator.blogspot.nytimes.com.
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