The Battle of White Sulphur Springs (16 page)

One of the charges was they made on us was led by a Magor the Magor himself succeeded in getting through our lines he ran and squatted down behind a stump then jumpted up and drawd his sword on one of our men and demanded him to surrender which the fellow did the Magor taken him by the Collar and started back to the yankey lines when some of our men noticed him going back and shot him down and wonded the prisoner he had taken
.
³⁰⁹

Major Augustus Bailey, who succeeded the wounded Lieutenant Colonel Barbee in command of the 22
^nd
Virginia, described this as a “spirited and bold charge” upon his lines. “This may be considered the most critical moment,” recounted Bailey.

My ammunition was almost entirely exhausted
—
few had more than five rounds, many none at all. This caused some to break to the rear, but they were easily rallied by their company officers. The enemy, advancing with loud cheers, made a most desperate assault on our lines. Here the bravery of the troops was conspicuous. Led on by their company officers, they determinedly met the foe and repulsed them in handsome style, driving them in confusion beyond their own lines, killing many, and wounding and capturing the field-officer
[McNally]
who headed the charge
.
³¹⁰

Patton realized, “Having thus tried the left and center [and failed], a very heavy force of at least two regiments was formed to force my right, but Colonel Browne, ever vigilant, informed me in time to send him Major [James R.] Claiborne, with about 200 men of the Thirty-seventh Battalion [of Virginia Cavalry], and with them again repulsed the enemy with great slaughter.”
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The 45
^th
Virginia repulsed multiple attacks in its front. “After they had charged our regt. Four different times—and had been repulsed—the next time they came through the brush and go up to within 20 paces before we saw them—and the officers halloed to us—damn you—ain't you Rebles going to run,” recounted Lieutenant Colonel Edwin Harman of the 45
^th
Virginia. “One my fellows—replied—no damn you we aint and then we gave them such a terrific fire they could not withstand it and ran themselves.”
³¹²
Colonel William H. Browne of the 45
^th
Virginia realized that Averell was getting ready to attack again. He brought his reserve battalion forward just in time to help repulse “two furious attacks of the enemy re-enforced.”
³¹³
As Lieutenant Colonel Harman proudly declared, “Our regt. repulsed eight heavy and furious charges.”
³¹⁴

The 3
^rd
and 8
^th
West Virginia also met a superior force of the enemy posted in their front and failed to dislodge it after a desperate struggle.
³¹⁵
Lieutenant Colonel Francis Thompson, the commander of the 3
^rd
West Virginia, made himself conspicuous with his cool courage under fire. He “stood in the hottest of the fire, leading his brave men not less than seven times in desperate charges upon the enemy. They lying in ambush our men would move upon them under any disadvantage, though thus to move was almost certain destruction,” remembered one of Thompson's troopers. “Yet as one order would come after another from the General, to charge on the enemy, the Colonel, cool and brave, would again and again renew the charge. Here more men were killed than anywhere else on the field.”
³¹⁶

“It was now getting late in the evening,” reported George Patton. “The enemy had been repulsed at all points, and not a foot of ground lost by our men since morning. For some time the action was almost suspended, except for the dropping fire of sharpshooters and the occasional boom of a gun.”
³¹⁷
At dusk, though, Morton's guns opened again with a fresh fury, foretelling yet another impending attack. Averell ordered a final mounted attack against Edgar's Battalion in the center by the men who had spent the day holding the horses of the dismounted soldiers on the firing line. These men made a mounted charge down a narrow road enclosed on both sides by high, stout post and rail fences. Edgar's men held their fire until the charge was within just a few yards—Edgar later estimated that they came within fifty yards—of the barricade and then unloosed a savage volley into their faces, halting the charge in its tracks.
³¹⁸
Chapman's weary artillerists helped to repulse the last-ditch Union attack, the “guns speaking in tongues of flame and tones of thunder in the gathering darkness,” as one early historian put it.
³¹⁹

Edgar's soldiers poured volley after volley into the struggling mass of blue-clad horsemen, and dead men and horses littered the road. Dead horses blocked the route of retreat of the Federal cavalry, meaning that “it was fearful to see how they were butchered and shot, and all, as I say, just for nothing,” noted a member of the 14
^th
Pennsylvania Cavalry.
³²⁰
Finally, after nine hours of heavy fighting, the firing sputtered out.

The situation at the end of the day on August 26, 1863.

“The battle was sanguinary considering the numbers engaged,” reported a member of the 8
^th
West Virginia, “and having the advantage of position, the rebels fought desperately.”
³²¹
A trooper of the 3
^rd
West Virginia recounted, “It is generally conceded that all the regiments fought desperately. Officers and soldiers showed an unyielding purpose to fight until the enemy was routed.”
³²²
A Confederate sounded a more colorful note: “The battle raged with a fury equaled only by the hate of the War Gods, the entire day and part of the night.”
³²³

Averell's all-out attack had failed, and he soon began receiving reports that his entire command was running very short on ammunition. Although Averell did not know it, Patton faced the same problem. “The slackened fire of the enemy evidently indicated that his supply was not plentiful,” noted Averell, as the intensity of the daylong, severe fighting finally petered out.
³²⁴
It was now dark, and the two armies lay in the same positions they had held all day. Both sides posted sentries in front of their lines, and both sides lay down to rest less than three hundred yards apart.
³²⁵

Colonel John H. Oley of the 8
^th
West Virginia had shifted his command late in the afternoon. Five of his companies linked up with the far end of Latham's 3
^rd
West Virginia. Another company was sent to the center to support Morton's guns, and yet another company went to guard Averell's wagon train and serve as a rear guard.
³²⁶
An officer of the 8
^th
West Virginia left a detailed description of the horror of that night. “Our boys held the positions that they took and lay on their arms all night without food, fire or blankets, with the pickets of each side less than fifty yards from each other, expecting to renew the battle with the dawn,” he reported. “I will not attempt to describe our feelings during the fearful night. Surrounded with the dead, for the rebel dead were within our own lines. Our dead had been removed, and our wounded cared for.”
³²⁷

“The boys on the firing line were greatly exhausted not having had anything to eat or drink since the beginning of the battle, the morning before,” recalled a member of the 14
^th
Pennsylvania. The horse holders, who had not been involved in the day's fighting, lit fires and cooked coffee, which, along with some hardtack, was brought to the men on the front lines in the hope of making their plight a little less unpleasant.
³²⁸

“During that long night, the enemy attempted to surprise and capture us,” noted an officer of the 14
^th
Pennsylvania Cavalry, “but we slept on our arms in line of battle—if we slept at all—and were ready for the onslaught. It was made with great loss of life on both sides.”
³²⁹
Firing continued at intervals during the night, with the opposing forces popping away at each other at short range, their muzzle flashes lighting up the inky darkness of the late August night.
³³⁰
One soldier of Chapman's battery remembered that Averell's determined horse soldiers “charged all night from 1 to 2 hours apart. The last charge just before day was the most determined and the hardest to repel.”
³³¹
There is no record of there being so many charges once the sun went down, but this account illustrates the stress faced by Patton's soldiers that warm night.

All day, Averell had expected to hear that infantry reinforcements from the Kanawha Division, part of Brigadier General Eliakim P. Scammon's Subdistrict of the Kanawha, who were expected to be coming from the west to meet Averell's command, would soon link up with his tired horse soldiers. However, no word came from Scammon's troops, and Averell slowly came to the realization that he would have to stand pat with the forces that he had available. Averell had all of his remaining supply of ammunition brought up from the brigade's wagon train, and he deployed every available man on the line of battle.
³³²
However, that meant that Averell had no hope of resupplying his horse soldiers if their meager supply of ammunition ran out. They would not have sufficient ammunition to
carry
on the fight for long the next day if the battle resumed with the ferocity that had marked the first day's combat.

Both commanders held councils of war with their subordinates that night. Averell conducted his at about 11:00 p.m. and inquired of his officers whether they should stay and fight or withdraw. All of his subordinates favored withdrawal, but the New Yorker stubbornly refused, preferring to stay and fight, and he assumed all responsibility for the outcome. Patton also met with his subordinates at about the same time. Most, if not all, of the Confederate subordinate commanders preferred a retreat to at least a more favorable position, if not altogether, but Patton told them that he would not do so. He declared that he would assume all responsibility for the outcome and continue the fight, even if it cost his entire command. Thus, with the fateful decision by both commanders to stay and fight, the die was cast for the next day's action.
³³³

Averell understood that he had to make a difficult decision. “It was quite evident to my mind that if the resistance of the enemy was kept up, I could go no farther in that direction,” he wrote. “It was impossible to retire during the night without disorder and perhaps disaster. By remaining until morning two chances remained with me: first, the enemy might retreat, and, second, Scammon might arrive.” Left with no option, the New Yorker decided to wait out a long and unpleasant night on the battlefield, just a few hundred yards from the enemy's lines. In the meantime, he made every arrangement possible for a speedy withdrawal the next day if necessary.
³³⁴
“Our company was on picket and we could hear the rebels talking and preparing to resume the struggle the next day,” remembered Sergeant Jacob Groft of Company M of the 14
^th
Pennsylvania Cavalry.
³³⁵

Colonel James M. Corns, commander of the 8
^th
Virginia Cavalry.
Judy R. West
.

Colonel George S. Patton spent the long night bristling with nervous energy. He visited his lines, strengthened his weak points and tended to the wounded, who were removed from the battlefield to receive medical care. “During the night the command was busily engaged preparing for the following day,” noted the commander of Patton's 22
^nd
Virginia.
³³⁶
Patton extended his line farther to the right by putting the entire 45
^th
Virginia on the line of battle while Edgar's men bolstered the barricade they had constructed that morning.
³³⁷
About 2:00 a.m. on the twenty-seventh, Patton also received reinforcements in the form of five companies of Colonel James M. Corns's 8
^th
Virginia Cavalry.
³³⁸
Patton dismounted the weary troopers of the 8
^th
Virginia and placed two companies of them, under the command of Major Thomas P. Bowen, in reserve immediately in rear of Edgar's Battalion, which held the center of the Confederate line.
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