SHOOTING "PROVOST GUARDS"

AT NEW-BERNE, N. C.

W. P. DERBY, 27th MASS.

URING the summer of 1862 the 23d Mass, served a part of the time on "provost duty" in NewBerne, N. C. While in the discharge of such duty four members of that regiment had been wounded by being fired upon by inmates of houses in the city. At 9.30 P. M., July 25th, a fifth man was seriously wounded in the groin. The house was immediately surrounded by two companies of the 23d Regt. and six men and one woman were made prisoners. The following morning the regiment appeared before the house-a large, square, two-story building— and knocking out the underpinning attached strong ropes to the purlin plates and, after a deal of pulling, drew it over upon its side, when the whole house collapsed into a mass of debris. As the house fell over, the band struck up the inspiriting tune, "Bully for you! Bully for you!" The fence met a fate similar to the house, and then the grounds were stripped of tree and shrubbery. The gardens, too, met a most desperate pruning, and when the regiment marched back to its quarters, a more perfect picture of desolation could hardly be found. After this affair the "provost guards" at New-Berne suffered no farther harm.

NOT ENOUGH TREES.

SOLDIER, telling his mother of the terrible fire at Chickamauga, was asked by her why he did not get behind a tree. "Trees!" said he; "there wasn't enough for the officers."

MISSIONARY RIDGE.

The battle of Missionary Ridge, Tenn., Nov. 25, 1863, says Major Wright, of the 36th Alabama, "resulted in such a rout as had never been previously known of a Confederate Army.”

Running Forts Jackson and St. Phillip.

APRIL 24, 1862.

The Enemy's Blazing Fire-Raft Matched by Farragut.

GEN. B. F. BUTLER.

the spring of '62, one tropical night, so calm and still that a low mist hung clingingly to the shores and across the wide rolling waters of the Mississippi, in two divisions up and down the stream lay the Federal fleet; the flagship Hartford, two miles below Fort Jackson, a casemated work, armed also with guns en barbette. Sheltered by the edge of the forest which grew down into the water, lay twenty-one schooners, each having a thirteen inch mortar on her deck, which for nearly eight days had been throwing a shell at the fort every twenty minutes.

The second division of the fleet, under command of Captain Bailey, lay parallel to Farragut's division, nearer the left bank of the river on which was Fort St. Phillip, a strong but not a casemated work. Both these forts were fully armed with eight and ten inch Columbiads and six inch rifles, the heaviest ordnance then known. The only sailing ship, the sloop of war Portsmouth, had been towed into position in the early nightfall and moored where her batteries could command the water battery of Fort Jackson.

Every preparation had been made for silencing the enemy's guns as the fleet passed the forts. The port guns of the first division were loaded with grape and canister and their muzzles depressed so as to reach the embrasures of the casemates of the fort, which lie just above the water which flows by its base. The guns on the right side of that division were left unloaded because Bailey's division would be between them and Fort St.

Phillip. In his division the reverse was done; the right guns were loaded with grape and canister, and the left guns, next Farragut's division, were unloaded to prevent accident.

Between the fleet and the forts lay the remains of the enormous chains floated on schooners which had been anchored across the river forming, as the commanders of the forts thought, an impassable barrier to navigation. By a daring reconnoissance this chain had been cut and the cables of the schooners slipped, so that the chains on both sides were floated down parallel to the line of the shore, and instead of an obstruction, the chains became a guide to the channel on either hand.

It is now two o'clock in the morning. The mortars for hours had ceased their play. The forts are silent. Nothing is seen but the lights of the fleet. A red light goes to the truck of the top gallant mizzen-mast of the Hartford, the signal to make sail. The clanking of windlasses only are heard to the music of the boatswain's whistle. In almost the time in which it can be told, the two divisions of the fleet were steadily steaming up the river against a four-knot current at a speed of eight knots. The minutes seemed almost hours before a single gun flashing from Fort Jackson showed that the movement was known. Twenty mortars burst forth together, sending their heavy shells flying through the air in parabolas of nearly two miles, lighting up the heavens with their blazing fuses, which began to rain down in broken fragments upon the fort. At the same moment the Portsmouth opened upon Fort Jackson with her starboard battery, keeping up a rapid and continuous fire until the last vessel had passed.

Fort St. Phillip opened fire upon Bailey's division, followed by all the guns of Fort Jackson opening fire upon Farragut's division, which he boldly steers within three hundred yards of its walls; and as each ship came within short range, the guns were served with the utmost quickness of fire, so that the booming cannon made one continuous deafening roar; the rolling smoke in the misty night wrapped everything in darkness impenetrable, save as the flashes flamed out like lightnings from a lowhanging summer cloud. Eleven shells from the mortar-boats were seen flying high in the air, at one time, thence rolling down a stream of fire and shot upon the ill-fated cannoneers of the fort. Bravely they stand to and serve their guns amid death-shot falling thick and fast on every hand.

Under the fire of Bailey's division, that of Fort St. Phillip has been nearly silenced, and his division was passing her guns in safety. Protected by casemates, the gunners of Fort Jackson did not give Farragut's division so easy success. The fire of Fort Jackson is incessantly kept up with precision, so that it seemed impossible that the Hartford, a wooden ship, could live while passing through that volcano of fire.

See! The heavens light up with something different from the flashing red of artillery. A new danger threatens the daring Farragut. A fire-raft comes sweeping along the current at four miles an hour. What is a fire-raft? A flatboat some two hundred feet long by sixty wide, filled high with cotton picked open, saturated with rosin, pitch, and turpentine, intermingled so as to burn the more hotly, and interlaced with cross-piled sticks of light wood, all ablaze, fiercely burning, fanned by the light wind. Such a fire-raft is sent broadside upon the Hartford, so well directed that it engages her bows and the hot flames set fire to her fore-rigging and are burning the foremost sails of the flag-ship. This new enemy is met; and while the crew of the port guns ply their batteries upon the foe, the rest of the men, organized as a fire-brigade, fight the fire on the blazing spars of their ship. Boats are lowered and manned, grapnels thrown on board the burning raft, which is towed away to float harmlessly down the river, as the Hartford passes up beyond the range of fire of the forts. Two of the Federal gunboats only of the whole fleet came drifting down disabled, which told those below that the others had passed the forts in safety.

Hardly had the fire been extinguished when a new peril met the Federal fleet. The iron-clad ram Manassas came tearing down from above, forced by current and steam, upon the fleet. She is nearest the steamer Mississippi, for whose side she is making with her fearful prow. The Yankee commander, Melancthon Smith, was equal to the occasion. He calls out: "Flag officer, I can ram as well as she; shall I ram her?” "Go for her," is the answer, and the stem of the Mississippi struck the iron-clad under the full momentum given by her powerful screw; the ram is disabled, and a few shot crash through her armor and set her on fire and she drifts down a useless hulk. But this is but an episode, for there is a fleet of the enemy's gunboats quite equal in number although not the equal in

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strength of the Federal force, lying in wait above the forts to renew the conflict. The fight is of short duration. Thirteen of the enemy's vessels were sunk or disabled, and the others fled up the river to New Orleans.

The morning wind sprang up and rolled away the smoke, and as the sun rose up in the heavens the fleet was seen lying at anchor above the forts with flags of rejoicing flying from every mast-head.

A

ON officer of the Union army relates that on one occasion after a charge upon the enemy's works, a fierce encounter, and a fall back for re-enforcement, a bright young Irish soldier was found to have a rebel flag captured from the foe. Approaching him he said: "I'll send that to the rear as one of our trophies; give me the flag." "Sure, I'll not give it ye," said Pat; "if ye are wanting one, there's plinty av 'em behind that ridge over beyant, where I got this. Sure ye can go and get one for yerself.”

PICKET LINE EXCHANGES.