John S. Wise: "The Most Glorious Day of My Life"

John S. Wise—a son of Henry Wise who was an antebellum Virginia Governor—was in his teens during the Civil War years and desperate to see battlefield action. Sent to Virginia Military Institute in an effort to keep him away from the front lines, Cadet Wise found himself taking part in the Battle of New Market on May 15, 1864. While the Cadet Corps advanced in reserve down Shirley's Hill, they came under fire and Cadet Wise was wounded and did not take part in the corps later famous charge. He survived his slight injury and after the war practiced law and represented Virginia in Congress.

This account details the prelude, march, and early shots of the Battle of New Market from Wise's perspective and is part of his memoirs which was published in 1899.

In the spring of 1864, I was still a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute. “Unrest” is the word to describe the feeling pervading the school. 

Rosser’s [cavalry] brigade had wintered in Rockbridge, but a few miles from the Institute. Lexington and the Institute were constantly visited by Rosser, his staff, and the officers of his brigade. They brought us in touch with the war, and the world beyond, more than anything else we had seen. They jangled their spurs through the archway, laughed loudly in the officers’ quarters, and rode off as if they carried the world in a sling. In March, they broke camp, and came ambling, trotting, galloping, prancing past the Institute, their mounted band playing, their little guidions fluttering, bound once more to active duty in the lower valley. Before their departure, General Rosser presented a captured flag to the corps of cadets. His escort on the occasion was decked with leaves of mountain laurel, the evergreen badge which the brigade had adopted. We felt ashamed of having flags captured for us by others. When the Laurel Brigade took its departure, many a cadet followed it longingly with eyes and heart.

Then, too, we heard that Grant had been transferred to command in the East; and we all knew that there would be great fighting at the front. Many cadets resigned. Good boys became bad boys for the express uprose of getting “shipped,” parents and guardians having refused to permit them to resign.

The stage-coaches for the railroad stations at Goshen and Staunton stopped at the sallyport on nearly every trip to take on cadets departing for the front.

Many a night, sauntering back and forth on the sentry beat in front of barracks, catching the sounds of loud talk and laughter from the officers’ quarters, or pondering upon the last joyous squad of cadets who had scrambled to the top of the departing stage, my heart longed for the camp, and I wondered if my time would ever come. I was now over seventeen, and it did seem to me that I was old enough. 

The proverb saith, “All things come to him who waits.” It was May 10.

Nature bedecked herself that springtime in her loveliest garb. Battalion drill had begun early, and the corps had never been more proficient at this season of the year.

The parade ground was firm and green. The trees were clothed in the full livery of fresh foliage. The sun shone on us through pellucid air, and the light breath of May kissed and fluttered our white colors, which were adorned with the face of Washington.

After going through the maneuvers of battalion drill, the corps was drawn up, near sundown, for dress parade. It was the time of year when townsfolk drove down, and ranged themselves upon the avenue to witness our brave display; and groups of girls in filmy garments set off with bits of color came tripping across the sod; and children and nurses sat about the benches at the guard-tree.

The battalion was put through the manual. The first sergeants reported. The adjutant read his orders. The fifes and drums played down the line in slow time, and came back with a jolly, rattling air. The officers advanced to music and saluted. The sun sunk beyond the House Mountain. The evening gun boomed forth. The garrison flag fell lazily from its peak on the barracks’ tower. The four companies went springing homeward at double time to the gayest tune the fifes knew how to play. Never in all its history looked Lexington more beautiful. Never did sense of secluded peacefulness rest more soothingly upon her population. In our leisure time after supper, the cadets strolled back and forth from barracks to the limits gate, and watched the full-orbed moon lift herself over the mountains. Perfume was in the air, silence in the shadows….

Hark! The drums are beating. Their throbbing bounds through every corner of the barracks, saying to the sleepers, “Be up and doing.” It is the long roll.

Long roll had been beaten several times of late, sometimes to catch absentees, and once for a fire in town. Grumblingly the cadets hurried down to their places in the ranks, expecting to be soon dismissed and to return to their beds. A group of officers, intently scanning by the light of a lantern a paper held by the adjutant, stood near the statue of George Washington, opposite the arch. The companies were marched together. The adjutant commanded attention, and processed to read the orders in his hands.

They announced that enemy in heavy force was advancing up the Shenandoah Valley; that General Lee could not spare any forces to meet him; that General Breckinridge had been ordered to assemble troops from southwestern Virginia and elsewhere at Staunton; and that the cadets should join him there at the earliest practicable moment. The corps was ordered to march, with four companies of infantry and a section of artillery, by the Staunton pike, at break of day.

First sergeants were ordered to detail eight artillerists from each of the four companies, to report for duty immediately, and man a section of artillery.

As these orders were announced, not a sound was heard from the boys who stood there, with beating hearts, in the military posture of parade rest. 

“Parade’s dismissed,” piped the adjutant. The sergeants side-stepped us to our respective company parades.

Methinks that even after thirty-three years I once more hear the gamecock voices of the sergeants detailing their artillery and ammunition squads, and ordering us to appear with canteens, haversacks, and blankets at four A.M. Still silence reigned. Then, as company after company broke ranks, the air was rent with wild cheering at the thought that our hour had come at last.

Elsewhere in the Confederacy, death, disaster, disappointment may have by this time chilled the ardor of our people, but here, in this little band of fledglings, the hope of battle flamed as brightly as on the morning of Manassas.

We breakfasted by candle-light, and filled our haversacks from the mess-hall tables. In the gray of the morning, we wound down the hill to the river, tramped heavily across the bridge, ascended the pike beyond, cheered the fading turrets of the school; and sunrise found us going at a four-mile gait to Staunton, our gallant little battery rumbling behind.

We were every way fitted for this kind of work by our hard drilling, and marched into Staunton in the afternoon of the second day, showing little ill effects of travel.

Staunton, small as it is, seemed large and cosmopolitan after our long confinement. As we marched past a female school, every window of which was filled with pretty girls, the fifes were laboring away at “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” There was no need for the girls to cry, “Fie! Fie!” at such a suggestion. Not one of us were thinking of the girls we left behind us. The girls we saw before us were altogether to our liking.

We found a pleasant camping ground on the outskirts of the town, and thither the whole population flocked for inspection of the corps, and to witness dress parade, for our fame was widespread. The attention bestowed upon the cadets was enough to turn the heads of much humbler persons than ourselves. We were asked to visit nearly every house in town.

Having an invitation to dine at the home of a friend, Louis [a cousin] and I waded in a creek to wash the mud off our shoes and trousers. With pocket-comb and glass we completed our toilet in a fence-corner. Then we walked about until our garments were dry, and proceeded to meet our engagement. Everything goes in war time.

At night, the town was hilarious. Several dances were arranged, and, as dancing was a cadet accomplishment, we were in our element.

The adoration bestowed upon us by young girls disgusted the regular officers. Before our coming, they had had things all their own way. Now, they found that fierce mustaches and heavy cavalry boots must give place to the downy cheeks and merry, twinkling feet we brought from Lexington. A big blonde captain, who was wearing a stunning bunch of gilt aiguillettes, looked as if he would snap my head off when I trotted up and whisked his partner away from him. They could not and would not understand why girls preferred these little, untitled whippersnappers to officers of distinction. Veterans forgot that youth loves youth.

Doubtless some feeling of this sort prompted the band of a regiment of grimy veterans to strike up “Rock-a-bye, Baby,” when the cadets marched by them. Quick as soldiers’ love of fun, the men took up the air, accompanying it by rocking their guns in their arms as if putting them to sleep. It produced a perfect roar of amusement with everybody but ourselves. We were furious.

All this on the eve of a battle? Yes, of course. Why not? To be sure, everybody knew there was going to be a fight. That was what we came for. But nobody among us knew or cared just when or where it was coming off. Life is too full of trouble for petty officers or privates, or young girls, to bother themselves hunting up such disagreeable details in advance. That was the business of the generals. They were to have all the glory; and so we were willing they should have all the solicitude, anxiety, and preoccupation.

At dress parade, May 12, orders were read for the movement of the army down the valley the following morning. We always moved on time. Now, who would have believed that a number of girls were up to see us off, or that two or three were crying. Yet it was so….

We made a good day’s march, and camped that night near Harrisonburg. During the day, we met several couriers bearing dispatches; they reported the enemy advancing in heavy force, and had left him near Strasburg and Woodstock.

Pressing on through Harrisonburg, which we reached early in the morning, we camped the second night at Lacy’s Springs… Rain had set in, but the boys stood up well to their work, and but few lame-ducks had succumbed.

Evidences of the approach of the enemy multiplied on the second day. We passed a great many vehicles coming up the valley with people and farm products and household effects, and a number of herds of cattle and other livestock, all escaping from the Union troops, now and then a weary or wounded cavalryman came by. Their reports were that Sigel’s steady advance was only delayed by a thin line of cavalry skirmishers, who had been ordered to retard him as best they could until Breckinridge could march his army down to meet him.

Towards evening, we came to a stone church and spring, where a cavalry detail with a squad of Union prisoners were resting…. When we reached camp, the rain had stopped and the clouds had lifted, but everything was wet and gummy. To add to my disgust, I was detailed as corporal of the guard, which meant loss of sleep at night, and a lonesome time next day with the wagons in rear of the corps….

Night closed in upon us; for a little while the woodland resounded with the axe-stroke, or the cheery halloos of the men from camp-fire to camp-fire; for a while the fire-lights danced, the air laden with the odor of cooking food; for a while the boys stood around the campfires for warmth and to dry their wet clothing; but soon all had wrapped their blankets around them and laid down in silence, unbroken save by the champing of the colonel’s horse upon his provender, or the fall of a passing shower. 

I was on duty as corporal of the guard; a sentry stood post near the pike; the remainder of the guard and the musicians were stretched before the watch-fire asleep. It was my part to remain awake, and a very lonesome, cheerless task it was, sitting there in the darkness, under the dancing shadows of the wide-spreading trees….

An hour past midnight, the sound of hoofs upon the pike caught my ear, and in a few moments the challenge of a sentry summoned me. The newcomer was an aid-de-camp, bearing orders for Colonel Shipp from the commanding general. When I aroused the commandant, he struggled up, rubbed his eyes, muttered something about moving at once, and ordered me to arouse the camp without having the drums beaten. Orders to fall in were promptly given, rolls were rattled off, the battalion was formed, and we debouched upon the pike, heading in the darkness and mud for Newmarket.

Before the command to march was give, a thing occurred which made a deep impression upon us all… In the gloom of the night, Captain Frank Preston, neither afraid nor ashamed to pray, sent up an appear to God for his protection of our little band: it was a humble, earnest petition, that sunk into the heart of every hearer. Few were the dry eyes, little the frivolity, when he had ceased to speak of home, of father, of mother, of country, of victory and defeat, of life, of death, of eternity. Captain Preston had been an officer in Stonewall Jackson’s command; had lost an arm at Winchester; was on the retired list; and was sub-professor of Latin, and tactical officer of B Company: he was typical Valley Presbyterian….

Day broke gray and gloomy upon us toiling onward in the mud. The sober course of our reflections was relieved by the lightheartedness of the veterans. We overtook Wharton’s Brigade, with smiling “Old Gabe,” a Virginia Military Institute boy, at their head. They were squatting by the roadside, cooking breakfast, as we came up. With many good-natured gibes they restored our confidence; they seemed as merry, nonchalant, and indifferent to the coming fight as if it were their daily occupation. A tall, round-shouldered fellow, whose legs seemed almost split up to his shoulder-blades, came among us with a pair of shears and pack of playing cards, offering to take our names and cut off love-locks to be sent home after we were dead; another inquired if we wanted rosewood coffins, satin-lined, with name and age on the plate. In a word, they made us ashamed of the depressing solemnity of our last six miles of marching, and renewed without our breasts the true dare-devil spirit of soldiery.

Resuming the march, the mile-posts numbered four, three, two, one mile to Newmarket; then the mounted skirmishers hurried past us to their position at the front. We heard loud cheering at the rear, which was caught up by the troops along the line of march. We learned its import as General John C. Breckinridge and staff approached, and we joined heartily in the cheering as that soldierly man, mounted magnificently galloped past, uncovered, bowing, and riding like a Cid. It is impossible to exaggerate the gallant appearance of General Breckinridge. In stature he was considerably over six feet high. He sat his blood-bay thoroughbred as if he had been born on horseback; his head was of noble mould, and a piercing eye and a long, dark, drooping mustache completed a faultless military presence.

Deployed along the create of an elevation in our front, we could see our line of mounted pickets and the smouldering fires of their last night’s bivouac. We halted at a point where passing a slight turn in the road would bring us in full view of the position of the enemy. Echol’s and Wharton’s brigades hurried past us; this time there was not much bantering between us. “Forward!” was the word once more, and, turning the point in the road, Newmarket was in full view, and the whole position was displayed….

It was a Sunday morning at eleven o’clock. In a picturesque little Lutheran churchyard, under the very shadow of the village spire and among the white tombstones, a six gun battery was posted in rear of the infantry lines of the enemy. Firing over the heads of their own troops, that battery opened upon us the moment we came in sight….

Until now, as corporal of the guard, I had remained in charge of the baggage-wagon with a detail of three men,—Redwood, Standard, and Woodlief. My orders were to remain with the wagons at the bend in the pike unless we were driven back. In that case, we were to retire to a point of safety.

When it was clear that a battle was imminent, one thought took possession of me, and that was, if I sat on a baggage wagon while the corps of cadets was in its first, perhaps only engagement, I should never be able to look my father in the face again. He was a grim old fighter, at that moment resisting the advance on Petersburg, and holding the enemy in check until Lee’s army could come up. I had annoyed him with importunities for permission to leave the Institute and enter the army. If, now that I had the opportunity to fight, I should fail to do so, I knew what was in store for me, for he had a tongue of satire and ridicule like the lash of scorpions.

Napoleon in Egypt, pointing to the Pyramids, told his soldiers that from their heights forty centuries looked down upon them. The oration I delivered from the tailboard of a wagon was not so hyperbolic, but it was equally emphatic. It ran about this wise: “Boys, the enemy is in our front. The corps is going into action. I like fighting no better than anybody else. But I have an enemy in my rear as dreadful as any before us. If I should return home and tell my father that I was on the baggage guard when the cadets were in battle, I know what my fate would be. He would kill me with ridicule, which is worse than bullets. I intend to join the command at once. Any of you who think your duty requires you to remain may do so.”

All the guard followed. We left the wagon in charge of the black driver. Of the four who thus went, one was killed and two were wounded. We overtook the battalion as it deployed by the left flank from the pike. Moving at double-quick, we were in an instant in line of battle… Rising ground in our immediate front concealed us from the enemy. 

The command was given to strip for action. Knapsacks, blankets,—everything but guns, canteens, and cartridge-boxes, was thrown upon the ground. Our boys were silent then. Every lip was tightly drawn, every cheek was pale, but not with fear. With a peculiar, nervous jerk, we pulled our cartridge-boxes round to the front, laid back the flaps, and tightened belts. Whistling rifled shells screamed over us, as, tipping the hill-crest in our front, they bounded past. To our right, across the pike, Patton’s brigade was lying down abreast of us.

“At-ten-tion-n-n! Battalion forward! Guide center-r-r!” shouted Shipp, and up the slope, we started. From the left of the line Sergeant-Major Woodbridge ran out and posted himself forty paces in advance of the colors as directing guide, as if we had been upon the drill ground. That boy would have remained there, had not Shipp ordered him back to his post; for this was no dress parade. Brave Evans, standing six feet two, shook out the colors that for days had hung limp and bedraggled about the staff, and every cadet leaped forward, dressing to the ensign, elate and thrilling with the consciousness that this was war.

Moving up to the hill crest in our front, we were abreast of our smoking battery, and uncovered to the range of the enemy’s guns…. The enemy’s veteran artillery soon obtained our range, and began to drop his shells under our very noses along the slope. Echols’s brigade rose up, and was charging on our right with the well-known rebel yell.

Down the green slope we went, answering the wild cry of our comrades as their muskets rattled out in open volleys. “Double time!” shouted Shipp, and we broke into a long trot. In another moment, a pelting rain of lead would fall upon us from the blue line in our front.

Then came a sound more stunning than thunder. It burst directly in my face: lightnings leaped, fire flashed, the earth rocked, the sky whirled round. I stumbled, my gun pitched forward, and I fell upon my knees. Sergeant Cabell looked back at me pityingly and called out, “Close up, men!” as he passed on. I knew no more.

When consciousness returned, the rain was falling in torrents. I was lying upon the ground, which all about was torn and ploughed with shell, and they were still screeching in the air and bounding on the earth. Poor little Captain Hill, the tactical officer of C Company, was lying near me bathed in blood, with a frightful gash over the temple, and was gasping like a dying fish. Cadets Reed, Merritt, and another, whose name I forget, were near at hand, badly shot. The battalion was three hundred yards advance of us, clouded in low-lying smoke and hotly engaged. They had crossed the lane, which the enemy had held, and the Federal battery in the graveyard had fall back to the high ground beyond. “How came they there?” I thought, “And why am I here?” Then I found I was bleeding from a long and ugly gash in the head. That rifled shell, bursting in our faces, had brought down five of us. “Hurrah!” I thought, “Youth’s dream is realized at last. I’ve got a wound, and am not dead yet.”

Another moment found me on my feet, trudging along to the hospital, almost whistling at thought that the next mail would carry the news to the folks at home, with a taunting suggestion that, after all the pains they had taken, they had been unable to keep me out of my share of the fun….

Source:

Excerpt from The End of an Era by John S. Wise (1899).