Page 6 of 9
On the tenth of December, the Tenth Reserves and the College Company established a crossing over the Rappahanock River. Three days later the volunteers, fighting on the Union left at Fredericksburg, participated in an initially successful attack. But Conferate Stonewall Jackson’s troops gained reinforcements, whole those of the Union’s George Meade did not. In the Federal retreat through brush and swamp three College boys were captured, others wounded, and Lt. Howe feared killed, though actually he had been taken prisoner. For a period following the Fredericksburg debacle, the company drew rations for only nine men.26
The
Tenth was withdrawn to fortify the defences of Washington and to rest and
recruit. Ayer was now in command of the regiment; the following April he
would be promoted to major, though command would revert to the former colonel
now partially recovered from his wound. Chadwick sullenly reflected that "If
we do as much more fighting as we have done, there will be nobody to muster
out at the end of the time [of our enlistment]."27 He
had made a ledger of all the men of Company I and what had become of them,
unfortunately an accounting lost to posterity. His comment regarding this
melancholy roll call of the missing and the dead was that "It is indeed
a sad, sad record...a heartsickening record. Some of the best, most talented
and promising young men I ever knew are among the number who sleep in soldiers
graves--on the heights of South Mountain, the Plains of Manassas and the
banks of Chickahominy. Alas! the horrors of war." He nevertheless noted
that "although our ranks have been fearfully decimated, the portion
remaining is the true grit."28 On
the second anniversary of the Company’s departure from the Allegheny
campus, 11 June 1863, he lamented that 23 of their number were now under
the sod.
The Tenth was not posted to the May 1863 battle of Chancellorsville. News of the subsequent entry into Pennsylvania of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s army brought petitions from the regiment for reassignment to its home state. In June it was sent to Upton Hill and then to Gettysburg, reaching the on-going battle there on 2 July. Late that day the Tenth was sent to relieve Colonel Strong Vincent's exhausted brigade and held the saddle between Little Round Top and Round Top where vicious fighting had earlier occurred. The next day they built a defensive stone wall between the hills and took their toll on scouts and skirmishers from a Texas regiment. Spying a wounded Union soldier but without his own fellow stretcher-bearer, Stuntz put the man on his own back. Under the fire of troops on both sides, Stuntz carried the lad to safety. While exposed to fire, the fifer fell on boulders so heavily that he himself became crippled for life, but the Union soldier was saved.
On
14 October, during Meade’s half-hearted pursuit of Lee’s army
in its withdrawal from Gettysburg, Company I fought a small and modestly
successful action at Bristoe Station. At New Hope Church, Company I led the
charge of infantry coming in support of the Federal cavalry. The Confederates
stood firm at Mine Run, and the Tenth returned to winter quarters at Manassas.
Company I served as provost guard at the brigade headquarters. Several of
the Company men received a months’ furlough at the turn of the year.
Ayer took the opportunity to marry. One, William Slater from Toledo, brought
back dress goods for a Confederate girl who he had met a few weeks earlier.
He and three comrades from the company were invited to dinner. As they sat
down, Washington Cook spied four men sneaking from the woods to the house
shortly after he spied one of the daughters of the house wave a red handkerchief.
He quickly procured his gun and, when the men entered the room, took them
prisoners. A few days later, several of the infantry boys swapped duties
with friends in the cavalry, riding 110 miles on an essentially fruitless
raid on Alda and Middleburg, gaining nothing but aches and pains for their
long hours in the saddles.29
In the spring of 1864, Ira Ayer, Jr., the Bible scholar of 1861, was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and given command of the Tenth Pennsylvania Reserves. On 5 May, Company I was the first Federal unit to enter the slaughter pen later known as the Battle of the Wilderness, where the men again acted as skirmishers. The next day these by now hardened veterans held the center of the Union line and advanced through thick woods. Company casualties were high. Lt. Colonel Ayer was again wounded, this time quite seriously, by a sharpshooter’s bullet that passed through the large bone of his leg.30 Late that afternoon, the Tenth was hurriedly called to repel a Confederate flank attack on the Union right.
The men were exhausted, but for once the Union forces did not retreat after the initial battle; a stubborn general named Ulysses S. Grant was now in command. The troops moved on to Spotsylvania and fought fiercely there on 8 and 9 May. On the tenth, the Company and its regiment were sent to reconnoiter near the Po River. General Lee, however, successfully retreated to the North Anna River, with the Tenth in pursuit.
