The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866

On the evening of the 20th, the Seventeenth Michigan made a sortie, and drove the Rebels from the Armstrong House. This stood on the Kingston road, and only a short distance from Fort Sanders. It was a brick house, and afforded a near and safe position for the enemy's sharpshooters, which of late had become somewhat annoying to the working parties at the fort. Our men destroyed the house, and then withdrew. The loss on our part was slight.

For a few days during the siege, four companies of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts were detached to support Roemer's battery on College Hill. While on this duty the officers and men were quartered in the buildings of East Tennessee College. Prior to our occupation of East Tennessee, these buildings had been used by the Rebels as a hospital; but, after a vigorous use of the ordinary means of purification, they afforded us pleasant and comfortable quarters.

The siege had now continued several days. The Rebels had constructed works offensive and defensive in our front; but the greater part of their force seemed to have moved to the right. On the 22d of November, however, they returned, not having found evidently the weak place in our lines which they had sought. It was now thought they might attack our front that night; and orders were given to the men on duty in the outer works to exercise the utmost vigilance. But the night passed quietly.

With each day our confidence in the strength of our position increased; and we soon felt able to repel an assault from any quarter. But the question of supplies was a serious one. When the siege commenced, there was in the Commissary Department at Knoxville little more than a day's ration for the whole army. Should the enemy gain possession of the south bank of the Holston, our only means of subsistence would be cut off. Thus far his attempts in this direction had failed; and the whole country, from the French Broad to the Holston, was open to our foraging parties. In this way a considerable quantity of corn and wheat was soon collected in Knoxville. Bread, made from a mixture of meal and flour, was issued to the men, but only in half and quarter rations. Occasionally a small quantity of fresh pork was also issued. Neither sugar nor coffee was issued after the first days of the siege.

The enemy, foiled in his attempts to seize the south bank of the Holston, now commenced the construction of a raft at Boyd's Ferry. Floating this down the swift current of the stream, he hoped to carry away our pontoon, and thus cut off our communication with the country beyond. To thwart this plan, an iron cable, one thousand feet in length, was stretched across the river above the bridge. This was done under the direction of Captain Poe. Afterwards, a boom of logs, fastened end to end by chains, was constructed still farther up the river. The boom was fifteen hundred feet in length.

On the evening of the 23d the Rebels made an attack on our pickets in front of the left of the Second Division, Ninth Corps. In falling back, our men fired the buildings on the ground abandoned, lest they should become a shelter for the enemy's sharpshooters. Among the buildings thus destroyed were the arsenal and machine-shops near the depot. The light of the blazing buildings illuminated the whole town. The next day the Twenty-first Massachusetts and another picked regiment, the whole under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Hawkes of the Twenty-first, drove back the Rebels at this point, and reoccupied our old position.

The same day an attack was made by the Second Michigan on the advanced parallel, which the enemy had so constructed as to envelop the northwest bastion of Fort Sanders. The works were gallantly carried; but before the supporting columns could come up, our men were repulsed by fresh troops which the enemy had at hand.

On the 25th of November the enemy, having on the day previous crossed the Holston at a point below us, made another unsuccessful attempt to occupy the heights opposite Knoxville. He succeeded, however, in planting a battery on a knob about one hundred and fifty feet above the river, and twenty-five hundred yards south of Fort Sanders. This position commanded Fort Sanders, so that it now became necessary to defilade the fort.

November 26th was our national Thanksgiving day, and General Burnside issued an order, in which he expressed the hope that the day would be observed by all, as far as military operations would allow. He knew the rations were short, and that the day would be unlike the joyous festival we were wont to celebrate in our distant homes; and so he reminded us of the circumstances of trial under which our fathers first observed the day. He also reminded us of the debt of gratitude which we owed to Him who during the year had not only prospered our arms, but had kindly preserved our lives. Accordingly, we ate our corn bread with thanksgiving; and, forgetting our own privations, thought only of the loved ones at home, who, uncertain of our fate, would that day find little cheer at the table and by the fireside.

Allusion has already been made to the bastion-work known as Fort Sanders. A more particular description is now needed. The main line, held by our troops, made almost a right angle at the fort, the northwest bastion being the salient of the angle. The ground in front of the fort, from which the wood had been cleared, sloped gradually for a distance of eighty yards, and then abruptly descended to a wide ravine. Under the direction of Lieutenant Benjamin, Second United States Artillery, and Chief of Artillery of the Army of the Ohio, the fort had now been made as strong as the means at his disposal and the rules of military art admitted. Eighty and thirty yards in front of the fort, rifle-pits were constructed. These were to be used in case our men were driven in from the outer line. Between these pits and the Fort were wire entanglements, running from stump to stump, and also an abatis. Sand-bags and barrels were arranged so as to cover the embrasures. Traverses, also, were built for the protection of the men at the guns, and in passing from one position to another. In the fort were four twenty-pounder Parrotts (Benjamin's battery), four light twelve-pounders (of Buckley's battery), and two three-inch guns.

Early in the evening of the 27th there was much cheering along the Rebel lines. Their bands, too, were unusually lavish of the Rebel airs they were wont occasionally to waft across the debatable ground which separated our lines. Had the enemy received reinforcements, or had Grant met with a reverse? While on picket that night, in making my rounds, I could distinctly hear the Rebels chopping on the knob which they had so recently occupied on the opposite bank of the river. They were clearing away the trees in front of the earthwork which they had constructed the day before. Would they attack at daybreak? So we thought, connecting this fact with the cheers and music of the earlier part of the night; but the morning opened as quietly as its predecessors. Late in the afternoon the enemy seemed to be placing his troops in position in our front, and our men stood in the trenches, awaiting an attack; yet the day wore away without further demonstrations.

A little after eleven o'clock, p. m., November 28th, I was aroused by heavy musketry. I hurried to the trenches. It was a cloudy, dark night, and at a distance of only a few feet it was impossible to distinguish any object. The men were already at their posts. With the exception of an occasional shot on the picket-line, the firing soon ceased. An attack had evidently been made on our pickets; but at what point, or with what success, was as yet unknown. Reports soon came in. The enemy had first driven in the pickets in front of Fort Sanders, and had then attacked our line which was also obliged to fall back. The Rebels in our front, however, did not advance beyond the pits which our men had just vacated, and a new line was at once established by Captain Buffum, our brigade officer of the day.

It was now evident that the enemy intended an attack. But where would it be made? All that long, cold night—our men were without overcoats—we stood in the trenches pondering that question. Might not this demonstration in our front be only a feint to draw our attention from other parts of the line, where the chief blow was to be struck? So some thought. Gradually the night wore away.

A little after six o'clock the next morning, the enemy suddenly opened a furious cannonade. This was mostly directed against Fort Sanders; but several shots struck the Powell House, in rear of Battery Noble. Roemer immediately responded from College Hill. In about twenty minutes the enemy's fire slackened, and in its stead rose the well-known Rebel yell, in the direction of the fort. Then followed the rattle of musketry, the roar of cannon, and the bursting of shells. The yells died away, and then rose again. Now the roar of musketry and artillery was redoubled. It was a moment of the deepest anxiety. Our straining eyes were fixed on the fort. The Rebels had reached the ditch and were now endeavoring to scale the parapet. Whose will be the victory,—O, whose? The yells again died away, and then followed three loud Union cheers,—"Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!" How those cheers thrilled our hearts, as we stood almost breathless at our posts in the trenches! They told us that the enemy had been repulsed, and that the victory was ours. Peering through the rising fog towards the fort, not a hundred yards away,—O glorious sight!—we dimly saw that our flag was still there.

Let us now go back a little. Under cover of the ridge on which Fort Sanders was built, Longstreet had formed his columns for the assault. The men were picked men,—the flower of his army. One brigade was to make the assault, two brigades were to support it,1 and two other brigades were to watch our lines and keep up a constant fire. Five regiments formed the brigade selected for the assaulting column. These were placed in position not more than eighty yards from the fort. They were "in column by division, closed in mass." When the fire of their artillery slackened, the order for the charge was given. The salient of the northwest bastion was the point of attack. The Rebel lines were much broken in passing the abatis. But the wire entanglements proved a greater obstacle. Whole companies were prostrated. Benjamin now opened his triple-shotted guns. Nevertheless, the weight of their column carried the Rebels forward, and in two minutes from the time the charge was commenced they had filled the ditch around the fort, and were endeavoring to scale the parapet. The guns, which had been trained to sweep the ditch, now opened a most destructive fire. Lieutenant Benjamin also took shells in his hand, and, lighting the fuse, tossed them over the parapet into the crowded ditch. One of the Rebel brigades in reserve now came up in support, and planted several of its flags on the parapet of the fort. Those, however, who endeavored to scale the parapet were swept away by the fire of our musketry. The men in the ditch, satisfied of the hopelessness of the task they had undertaken, now surrendered. They represented eleven regiments. The prisoners numbered nearly three hundred. Among them were seventeen commissioned officers. Over two hundred dead and wounded, including three colonels, lay in the ditch alone. The ground in front of the fort was also strewn with the bodies of the dead and wounded. Over one thousand stands of arms fell into our hands, and the battle-flags of the Thirteenth and Seventeenth Mississippi and Sixteenth Georgia. Our loss was eight men killed and five wounded. Never was a victory more complete; and never were brighter laurels worn than were that morning laid on the brow of the hero of Fort Sanders,—Lieutenant Benjamin, Second United States Artillery.

Longstreet had promised his men that they should dine that day in Knoxville. But, in order that he might bury his dead, General Burnside now tendered him an armistice till five o'clock, p. m. It was accepted by the Rebel general; and our ambulances were furnished him to assist in removing the bodies to his lines. At five o'clock, two additional hours were asked, as the work was not yet completed. At seven o'clock, a gun was fired from Fort Sanders, the Rebels responded from an earthwork opposite, and the truce was at an end.

The next day, through a courier who had succeeded in reaching our lines, General Burnside received official notice of the defeat of Bragg. At noon, a single gun—we were short of ammunition—was fired from Battery Noble in our rear, and the men of the brigade, standing in the trenches, gave three cheers for Grant's victory at Chattanooga. We now looked for reinforcements daily, for Sherman was already on the road. The enemy knew this as well as we, and, during the night of the 4th of December, withdrew his forces, and started north. The retreat was discovered by the pickets of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts, under Captain Ames, who had the honor of first declaring the siege of Knoxville raised.

It would be interesting to recount the facts connected with the retreat of the Rebel army, and then to follow our men to their winter quarters, among the mountains of East Tennessee, where, throughout the icy season, they remained, without shoes, without overcoats, without new clothing of any description, living on quarter rations of corn meal, with occasionally a handful of flour, and never grumbling; and where, at the expiration of their three years of service, standing forth under the open skies, amid all these discomforts, and raising loyal hands towards heaven, they swore to serve their country yet three years longer. But I must pause. I have already illustrated their fortitude and heroic endurance.

The noble bearing of General Burnside throughout the siege won the admiration of all. In a speech at Cincinnati, a few days after the siege was raised, with that modesty which characterizes the true soldier, he said that the honors bestowed on him belonged to his under officers and the men in the ranks. These kindly words his officers and men will ever cherish; and in all their added years, as they recall the widely separated battle-fields, made forever sacred by the blood of their fallen comrades, and forever glorious by the victories there won, it will be their pride to say, "We fought with Burnside at Campbell's Station and in the trenches at Knoxville."

RELEASED

A little low-ceiled room. Four wallsWhose blank shut out all else of life,And crowded close within their boundA world of pain, and toil, and strife.Her world. Scarce furthermore she knewOf God's great globe, that wondrouslyOutrolls a glory of green earth,And frames it with the restless sea.Four closer walls of common pine:And therein lieth, cold and still,The weary flesh that long hath borneIts patient mystery of ill.Regardless now of work to do;No queen more careless in her state;Hands crossed in their unbroken calm;For other hands the work may wait.Put by her implements of toil;Put by each coarse, intrusive sign;She made a Sabbath when she died,And round her breathes a Rest Divine.Put by, at last, beneath the lid,The exempted hands, the tranquil face;Uplift her in her dreamless sleep,And bear her gently from the place.Oft she hath gazed, with wistful eyes,Out from that threshold on the night;The narrow bourn she crosseth now;She standeth in the Eternal Light.Oft she hath pressed, with aching feet,Those broken steps that reach the door;Henceforth with angels she shall treadHeaven's golden stair forevermore!

FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT

The last of the grand old generation of German poets is dead. Within ten years Eichendorff, Heine, Uhland, have passed away; and now the death of Friedrich Rückert, the sole survivor of the minor gods who inhabited the higher slopes of the Weimar Olympus, closes the list of their names. Yet, although with these poets in time, Rückert was not of them in the structure of his mind or the character of his poetical development. No author ever stood so lonely among his contemporaries. Looking over the long catalogue, not only of German, but of European poets, we find no one with whom he can be compared. His birthplace is supposed to be Schweinfurt, but it is to be sought, in reality, somewhere on the banks of the Euphrates. His true contemporaries were Saadi and Hariri of Bosrah.

Rückert's biography may be given in a few words, his life having been singularly devoid of incident. He seems even to have been spared the usual alternations of fortune in a material, as well as a literary sense. With the exception of a somewhat acridly hostile criticism, which the Jahrbücher of Halle dealt out to him for several years in succession, his reputation has enjoyed a gradual and steady growth since his first appearance as a poet. His place is now so well defined that death—which sometimes changes, while it fixes, the impression an author makes upon his generation—cannot seriously elevate or depress it. In life he stood so far aloof from the fashions of the day, that all his successes were permanent achievements.

He was born on the 16th of May, 1788, in Schweinfurt, a pleasant old town in Bavaria, near the baths of Kissingen. As a student he visited Jena, where he distinguished himself by his devotion to philological and literary studies. For some years a private tutor, in 1815 he became connected with the Morgenblatt, published by Cotta, in Stuttgart. The year 1818 he spent in Italy. Soon after his return, he married, and established himself in Coburg, of which place, I believe, his wife was a native. Here he occupied himself ostensibly as a teacher, but in reality with an enthusiastic and untiring study of the Oriental languages and literature. Twice he was called away by appointments which were the result of his growing fame as poet and scholar,—the first time in 1826, when he was made Professor of the Oriental Languages at the University of Erlangen; and again in 1840, when he was appointed to a similar place in the University of Berlin, with the title of Privy Councillor. Both these posts were uncongenial to his nature. Though so competent to fill them, he discharged his duties reluctantly and with a certain impatience; and probably there were few more joyous moments of his life than when, in 1849, he was allowed to retire permanently to the pastoral seclusion of his little property at Neuses, a suburb of Coburg.

One of his German critics remarks that the poem in which he celebrates his release embodies a nearer approach to passion than all his Oriental songs of love, sorrow, or wine. It is a joyous dithyrambic, which, despite its artful and semi-impossible metre, must have been the swiftly-worded expression of a genuine feeling. Let me attempt to translate the first stanza:—

"Out of the dust of theTown o' the king,Into the lust of theGreen of spring,—Forth from the noises ofStreets and walls,Unto the voices ofWaterfalls,—He who presentlyFlies is blest:Fate thus pleasantlyMakes my nest!"2

The quaint old residence at Neuses thus early became, and for nearly half a century continued to be, the poet's home. No desire to visit the Orient—the native land of his brain—seems to have disturbed him. Possibly the Italian journey was in some respects disenchanting. The few poems which date from it are picturesque and descriptive, but do not indicate that his imagination was warmed by what he saw. He was never so happy as when alone with his books and manuscripts, studying or writing, according to the dominant mood. This secluded habit engendered a shyness of manner, which frequently repelled the strangers who came to see him,—especially those who failed to detect the simple, tender, genial nature of the man, under his wonderful load of learning. But there was nothing morbid or misanthropical in his composition; his shyness was rather the result of an intense devotion to his studies. These gradually became a necessity of his daily life; his health, his mental peace, depended upon them; and whatever disturbed their regular recurrence took from him more than the mere time lost.

When I first visited Coburg, in October, 1852, I was very anxious to make Rückert's acquaintance. My interest in Oriental literature had been refreshed, at that time, by nearly ten months of travel in Eastern lands, and some knowledge of modern colloquial Arabic. I had read his wonderful translation of the Makamât of Hariri, and felt sure that he would share in my enthusiasm for the people to whose treasures of song he had given so many years of his life. I found, however, that very few families in the town were familiarly acquainted with the poet,—that many persons, even, who had been residents of the place for years, had never seen him. He was presumed to be inaccessible to strangers.

It fortunately happened that one of my friends knew a student of the Oriental languages, then residing in Coburg. The latter, who was in the habit of consulting Rückert in regard to his Sanskrit studies, offered at once to conduct me to Neuses. A walk of twenty minutes across the meadows of the Itz, along the base of the wooded hills which terminate, just beyond, in the castled Kallenberg (the summer residence of Duke Ernest II.), brought us to the little village, which lies so snugly hidden in its own orchards that one might almost pass without discovering it. The afternoon was warm and sunny, and a hazy, idyllic atmosphere veiled and threw into remoteness the bolder features of the landscape. Near at hand, a few quaint old tile-roofed houses rose above the trees.

My guide left the highway, crossed a clear little brook on the left, and entered the bottom of a garden behind the largest of these houses. As we were making our way between the plum-trees and gooseberry-bushes, I perceived a tall figure standing in the midst of a great bed of late-blossoming roses, over which he was bending as if to inhale their fragrance. The sound of our steps startled him; and as he straightened himself and faced us, I saw that it could be none other than Rückert. I believe his first impulse was to fly; but we were already so near that his moment of indecision settled the matter. The student presented me to him as an American traveller, whereat I thought he seemed to experience a little relief. Nevertheless, he looked uneasily at his coat,—a sort of loose, commodious blouse,—at his hands, full of seeds, and muttered some incoherent words about flowers. Suddenly, lifting his head and looking steadily at us, he said, "Come into the house!"

The student, who was familiar with his habits, led me to a pleasant room on the second floor. The windows looked towards the sun, and were filled with hot-house plants. We were scarcely seated before Rückert made his appearance, having laid aside his blouse, and put on a coat. After a moment of hesitation, he asked me, "Where have you been travelling?" "I come from the Orient," I answered. He looked up with a keen light in his eyes. "From the Orient!" he exclaimed, "Where? let me know where you have been, and what you have seen!" From that moment he was self-possessed, full of life, enthusiasm, fancy, and humor.

He was then in his sixty-fifth year, but still enjoyed the ripe maturity of his powers. A man of more striking personal appearance I have seldom seen. Over six feet in height, and somewhat gaunt of body, the first impression of an absence of physical grace vanished as soon as one looked upon his countenance. His face was long, and every feature strongly marked,—the brow high and massive, the nose strong and slightly aquiline, the mouth wide and firm, and the jaw broad, square, and projecting. His thick silver hair, parted in the middle of his forehead, fell in wavy masses upon his shoulders. His eyes were deep-set, bluish-gray, and burned with a deep, lustrous fire as he became animated in conversation. At times they had a mystic, rapt expression, as if the far East, of which he spoke, were actually visible to his brain. I thought of an Arab sheikh, looking towards Mecca, at the hour of prayer.

I regret that I made no notes of the conversation, in which, as may be guessed, I took but little part. It was rather a monologue on the subject of Arabic poetry, full of the clearest and richest knowledge, and sparkling with those evanescent felicities of diction which can so rarely be recalled. I was charmed out of all sense of time, and was astonished to find, when tea appeared, that more than two hours had elapsed. The student had magnanimously left me to the poet, devoting himself to the good Frau Rückert, the "Luise" of her husband's Liebesfrühling (Spring-time of Love). She still, although now a grandmother, retained some traces of the fresh, rosy beauty of her younger days; and it was pleasant to see the watchful, tender interest upon her face, whenever she turned towards the poet. Before I left, she whispered to me, "I am always very glad when my husband has an opportunity to talk about the Orient: nothing refreshes him so much."