Southern Storm (62 page)

Lieutenant Fisher reached the
Dandelion
with his exciting news. It was enough to convince the tugboat’s captain to risk taking his craft closer to Fort McAllister. Orders were given to stoke up a full head of steam and raise the anchor. The
Dandelion
descended the Little Ogeechee and Vernon rivers, passed through Hell Gate, and cautiously ascended the Ogeechee River.

According to a soldier with Colonel Theodore Jones’s three regiments, they moved “south and east, then north through the cane that grew very thick around there.” Once his column disappeared into the marsh, Jones’s men became lost from Hazen’s control, as more than one courier sent to chart their progress failed to locate them. (A portion of the 116th Illinois, assigned to screening duties, appears to have taken a more direct route. “I and others of the 116th Ill. were on the skirmish line for what seemed to me to be a long time before the signal to charge was given,” recollected one of them.)

By 4:00
P.M
. the two other elements were in their positions at the edge of the woods bordering the cleared zone and ready to go. Ironically, by hacking down the trees within accurate range of their guns,
the Confederates had unintentionally designated a safe area for the attackers in the still-standing woods.

Sniping between the Yankee voltigeurs and enemy sharpshooters in the fort was constant, with only occasional accents provided by the beleaguered cannon. Toward 4:00
P.M
. the call “cartridges” was repeated along the 47th Ohio’s front. Private Louis Shuttinger from Company A volunteered to get more. He dodged back to the main line, loaded his blouse with fresh ammo, and worked his way forward, following the riverbank, until he reached the skirmish line’s left flank. Calling out, “Keep them down, boys, here I come,” Shuttinger stood up to begin walking methodically along the irregular row of crouching men, dropping a handful of cartridges to each as he passed. He completed the mission, reached the right flank, and dropped to the ground, unhurt. “Shuttinger was our smallest man,” declared a comrade, “but he had the heart of a lion.”

Others along Hazen’s perimeter prepared for the ordeal to come. Moving among the recruits who joined the 47th Ohio after Atlanta had fallen, Captain J. H. Brown “cautioned his men to keep close to the Veterans.” Stepping out from the files of the 70th Ohio, Colonel Henry L. Philips said: “My comrades, knowing that you have been prompt in the discharge of every duty, I deem it a waste of words to urge upon you the importance of continuing to do so.” Pointing out toward Fort McAllister, he continued: “You see what is before you, and you know your duty.”

As Philips stepped back into the crowd, he was intercepted by Private John Compton. Although designated early on as a regimental color bearer, the boy, having spent most of his service as a teamster, had yet to see any combat. “Colonel,” he said, “you know I am not used to this kind of work; please excuse me.” “John,” answered Philips, shaking his head, “were it in my power God knows I would gladly excuse every man in this regiment.”

Hazen’s anxiety to get things started almost matched Sherman’s. The sun was dipping toward the horizon, daylight was running out—and still no word from the right that Colonel Jones’s regiments were coming into line. (As Hazen later learned, Jones’s command “found itself behind a long stream, or sluice, and was a long time getting across it and into position.”) Deciding to stick with the plan for as long as possible, Hazen held off giving the go-ahead to attack.

One of the signal officers at Cheves’ Rice Mill, spotting a wispy column of smoke marking the tug
Dandelion,
quickly spread the word. Sherman, aiming his glasses in that direction, soon made it out, giving the lowly tug an instant upgrade by exclaiming, “Look! Howard, there is the gunboat!” At the other end of the link, Lieutenant Fisher signaled a desire to communicate that was acknowledged by the distant post. He was in touch with Sherman’s army! His first message was not the stuff of legend.

WHO ARE YOU
?

MCCLINTOCK, GENERAL HOWARD’S SIGNAL OFFICER
, was the reply.

HOW CAN I GET TO YOU
?
WHAT TROOPS ARE AT FORT MCALLISTER
?

WE ARE NOW INVESTING FORT MCALLISTER WITH HAZEN’S DIVISION
.

Speaking now with the authority of Major General Foster and Rear Admiral Dahlgren, Fisher asked how he could help.

CAN YOU ASSIST US WITH YOUR HEAVY GUNS
? This time the name tagged to the message was “Sherman.”

Fisher considered his answer and was unable to resist a small joke.

BEING ONLY A TUG-BOAT, NO HEAVY GUNS ABOARD
.

The silence that followed at the other end made Fisher wonder if he had misjudged his man. The flags at the post began waggling again, but this message was not directed toward him. Aimed at the opposite shore, it was addressed to Brigadier General Hazen:

Hazen had run out of time. First Brigade or not, he was ordering the attack. Telling his signal officer to transmit that he was assaulting at once, Hazen hurried to his command post for the action, which one soldier described as “a big [tree] stump.” His bugler, J. A. Vaughan of the 55th Illinois, looked at him expectantly. With a nod from Hazen, Vaughan sounded the call “Attention.” All along the two-thirds-complete ring, the men chosen for the attack moved to the edge of the tree line that had hid them from most of the enemy’s attention. In response, the decimated Confederate cannon crews did their best to step up the rate of fire.

Fort McAllister December 13, 1864

After another nod from Hazen, bugler Vaughan sounded “Forward.” “To my great surprise and joy the right brigade, under Colonel Theodore Jones, moved out accurately at the same moment,” sighed a vastly relieved brigadier. “It had crossed the stream and formed in line just in time to receive the order.” Hazen’s 3,000 men now faced an advance of six or seven hundred yards. “The forward movement began promptly at the sound of the bugle,” recorded an Ohioan in the center, “with varying speed from a brisk walk to double-quick and from that to a run.” The Buckeye officer on the left who was worried how well his recent recruits would behave noted with pride that “they all started off in fine style something like old soldiers.”

There were some uninvited but welcome guests, as a portion of one reserve regiment—the 55th Illinois—impulsively tagged along. “There was no firing,” Hazen added, “and the line was well up to the fort before its defenders were ready to resist, so well had the sharpshooters, who now advanced with the main line, done their work.”

To Sherman’s anxious eyes, Hazen’s men came “out of the dark fringe of woods that encompassed the fort, the lines dressed as on parade, with colors flying, and moving forward with a quick, steady pace.” An aide with the General remembered “a long line of blue coats and bright bayonets, and the dear old flag was there, waving proudly in the breeze.” A cannoneer standing in the jump-off area recollected seeing “a single line of men advancing, gun in the right hand, in a stooping posture, at a fast walk, toward the fort, but they did not go far in this way before they straightened up and broke into a fast run.”

Some 150 yards out from their objective, the various Union regiments began firing, which triggered a response from Fort McAllister. “The musketry from the assaulting force and the musketry and artillery from the fort showed [that the fight]…was being made in earnest,” declared a staff officer with Howard. “Our troops fired but one volley, the enemy fired continually.” To a soldier charging in the center, McAllister “seemed alive with flame; quick jets of fire shooting out from all its sides, while the white smoke first covered the place and then rolled away from the glacis.”

Added another soldier present: “This was the moment the General looked for.”

At different points along the converging assault lines Hazen’s men entered the narrow torpedo zone.

Then the thin, long lines pressed into the snarled strip of slashed trees. The soldiers struggled to get through what one of them called “the netted abatis work,” while another recollected “crawling under and over the trees that were felled with their tops pointing out from the fort.” The Yankees emerged from the scratching tangles to sprint the ten to twenty-five yards to the next obstacle, the spiked ditch girding McAllister’s land sides. Hazen had anticipated this moment, instructing his officers that once they had broken through the abatis they were “to charge with a rush, every man for himself.”

To one gasping Yankee the row of sharpened stakes resembled “a tangle of buckhorns shining in the sun.” He continued: “There was no passing this barrier until a few brave men bending over their guns
crawled under and through, lifting and pushing the logs apart and leaving gaps through which the regiment[s] speedily rushed.” Another soldier struggling at the obstacle wrote “that it would take four or five men to break one of them of[f] So that we could get through.” “Some got through the small openings,” added an Ohioan in the 70th, “some were held up by comrades, and fell over, others were helped over by those on the other side.”

Not everyone was struggling to get out of the ditch. Alert members of the leftmost regiment, the 47th Ohio, noticed that the staked strip ended at the riverbank, and with the tide out there was an unobstructed beach fronting the fort, wide enough for a charging column. Without hesitating, Colonel Augustus C. Parry bawled out orders that halted the forward rush, then reoriented it into a compact column that the officer with his second in command led onto the beach toward McAllister. Scrambling in with them were some soldiers from the 111th Illinois, equally glad to have found a way forward that saved them “from the bullets and [we] gained the fort from the river side, where there was not a man to keep us out,” declared one of them.

At Cheves’ Rice Mill, Sherman was reacting to the sights like an avid sports fan: “There they go grandly; not a waver.” “See that flag in the advance, Howard; how steadily it moves; not a man falters.” “There they go still; see the roll of musketry. Grand. Grand.”