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On the evening of that day, the Eleventh, "without colonel or lieutenant-colonel, assembled around its colors," and, having counted its losses, went straightway upon picket duty for the night. It comes not within the scope of this biography to detail the honorable record made by the regiment under the command respectively of Captains Tilton, Dudley, Cogswell, Locke, and Shepard, during the captivity of Colonel Harriman. Let it suffice here to say that that record is the proud one of "Spottsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor, Weldon Railroad, Poplar Grove Church, and Hatcher's Run," - names with which, together with "Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, Jackson, East Tennessee, the Wilderness, and Petersburg," its banner was inscribed "by order of the commanding general of the army for meritorious conduct in battle."

CHAPTER XV.

A PRISONER OF WAR.

- IN PERILOUS DURANCE.

RELEASED.

1864.

COLONEL HARRIMAN, upon his capture, was conducted by a Confederate lieutenant and six privates to the provostguard, half a mile at the rear, and thence two miles farther, on the Fredericksburg and Orange Plank Road, to an open space, where, with a large number of other prisoners, he remained through the night. "My bed," he has said, "was the ground, my covering the heavens, and my food was faith, but no bread." He further writes: "Saturday, May 7th, at noon, we started for Orange Court House. The day was excessively hot. I had taken up two rebel blankets on the battle-field for my bed; but I could not carry so much. weight, and I gave one of them to Sergeant-Major Glitton of the Massachusetts Twenty-first. Nearly overcome with heat and fatigue, we arrived at Orange Court House at ten o'clock at night, having marched twenty-two miles."

Here must find place an interesting sketch, comprising a description of the battle-ground, some leading features of the bloody encounter, the capture of Colonel Harriman, and incidents immediately succeeding, penned, twenty-one years later by a gallant, high-minded Virginian.1 It is the testimony of one who, while of the enemy's guard in escort of prisoners of war, became, on the twenty miles' march to Orange Court House, the personal friend of the captive

1 John W. Jackson, of Columbia, Va. His statement was written, March 1885, as a portion of a review of General Harriman's In the Orient, to explain the writer's connection with the book and its author. The valuable production of a not unskillful pen was sent to the general's son, W. C. Harriman, subject to his disposition.

New Hampshire colonel, and such ever after remained. He writes:

"In May of 1864, the armies of Lee and Grant, as known to all, met each other in 'The Wilderness,' in Virginia, a section of country about ten miles square, equidistant from Orange Court House and Fredericksburg, from which the good and enterprising old colonial governor Spottiswode, (Spottswood) had cleared the original growth for fuel wherewith to make iron, 'moche goode store of whiche' in the quaint phrase of that day was to be found there. This denudation letting in the air and sunlight upon a thin gravelly soil, born poor,' there sprang up a strangely dense and stunted undergrowth of chinquapin, hickory, and dogwood, through which a man on foot can with difficulty grope his way. John Esten Cooke, one of Virginia's post-bellum novelists, in his book, 'Surry of Eagle's Nest,' takes his hero through this sad and weird locality, and succeeds in giving him a severe catch of the blues.' At best it is a gloomy locality.

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"Such was the Wilderness in 1864, where the two armies met, with a shock terrific indeed, and most sanguinary in results, from the fact that from the nature of the ground no artillery could be used, and the fighting was with musketry at short range. So dense was the undergrowth that frequently opposing lines of battle got within fifty paces of each other before being discovered.

"It was in the thickest of this thicket, where for two days the sullen roar of musketry, unrelieved by the deep diapason of the big guns which ordinarily lends variety to the death-song of battle, had risen and fallen with its dread monotony, it was here in this Aceldama, on the second day, that, stepping a few paces in front of his regiment of New Hampshire men, Colonel (later on General) Walter Harriman 'was taken in' by a Confederate picket guard which was lying concealed within twenty steps of his regiThis writer, then an officer in General Lee's bodyguard, or rather a battalion of scouts, guides, and couriers attached to General Lee's headquarters, was one of

ment.

the guard which escorted the Federal prisoners taken in the two days' fight-about twelve hundred in all, officers and men back to Orange Court House. As we rode wearily by the side of the disconsolate column of sad captives, we were attracted by the towering height (six feet two inches) of General Harriman, and by that indescribable and subtle air which marks the man who rises above the crowd, morally and mentally. Noticing his jaded walk, and that he had passed the prime of life, while we were a mere youth, we called him to the side of the column, dismounted, and had him take our saddle.

"We cannot now, after the lapse of twenty-one years, recall all the conversation that passed between us on those dusty miles along the old plank road on that sultry May afternoon; but the recollection of his steady and defiant convictions of the triumph of the Union cause and the downfall of the Confederacy is very vivid to-day. We thought it strange at the time that he, the captive, should be so triumphant, instead of despondent, as would have been natural to his age and under his surroundings. We suggested something of the kind, with the additional remark that we had at least foiled Grant, if not beaten him, and, with the further assurance of youth, that the latter was but a matter of a few days' time. Rising to his full length in our short stirrups (his knees had been drawn up, much as the English ride), for a moment he seemed to think he was again in front of his regiment on the eve of assault, and while his eye flashed, and his hand clutched nervously toward the sabre side, he cried out: 'Never! Your success is only ephemeral. God Almighty is back of our army!'

"That remark placed General Harriman at once in our mind as one of those whom we of the South at that day, with our loose go-as-you-please, devil-may-care, Cavalier notions, styled fanatical Puritans. The Puritan saw God's hand everywhere the battle raged for human rights, no matter how weak his force, or how strong the opposing power of error or guilty wrong. General Harriman, though

a Democrat at one time, was too much of a Puritan to be blinded to the fact that his party, shorn of its strength by its dalliance with the Delilah of slavery, was utterly impotent to grapple with the hideous evil. His Puritanism if you choose to call it that, but we would say principle, undoubtedly the outcome of Puritan teaching and nurture was stronger than his politics. Is New England breeding any of this stock now? Such men are needed."

Several thousand Union prisoners were gathered at Orange Court House. Here the commissioned officers were culled from the prisoners, and taken away by railroad to Lynchburg, where they arrived Tuesday, May 10th. The colonel's diary notes relate the succeeding month's experience:

"I now write (May 10th) at Lynchburg, Va. From the best information I can get in this rebel country, I am led to believe that the battle of the Wilderness was the fiercest, bloodiest battle of the whole war; more men killed, more wounded, and more taken prisoners, than in any other battle. To think now of the fighting, of the field covered with the dead and the dying of that terrible day (May 6th) makes my blood almost curdle. blood almost curdle. I cannot describe it.

"Sunday, May, 15th a rainy, gloomy day. Still in prison at Lynchburg. There are about one hundred and ten Federal officers here,- two brigadier-generals, four colonels, one lieutenant-colonel, several majors, and the others, captains and lieutenants. To-day we have been singing hymns and melancholy pieces. My heart has been on home, and what a home that may be! I fear I am reckoned among the killed in the terrible battle of May 6th. I cannot get a letter or a dispatch through the rebel lines to tell that I am alive.

"Danville, Va., Thursday, May 19. Arrived here this morning before light, having 'broken camp' at Lynchburg Tuesday night (17th) at eight o'clock. We came by railroad, in box-cars without any seats whatever except the filthy floors. From Lynchburg we first traveled easterly

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