Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/129

 GENERAL S. G. GRIFFIN. 107

of the Jerusalem Road near Fort Sedgwick. He formed his brigade in column by regiments, — each regiment in line of battle, — -seven regiments deep, with three companies of pioneers in front, armed only with axes, to clear away the abattis. Just at daybreak, at a preconcerted signal, in connection with General Hartranft on his right and Colonel Curtin on his left, he led his column to the charge. Nothing could exceed the coolness and intrepidity with which officers and men pressed forward under a terriffic fire of grape, canister, and musketry, for our artillery had opened fire and given the enemy warning. Tearing away the abattis, they dashed over the parapets, seized the guns and intrenchments, captured hundreds of prisoners, and held the line. The loss was fearful, but the backbone of the Rebellion was broken ; and when the news of that assault reached Richmond on that Sunday morning, the second of April, Jefferson Davis crept out of church, and stole away a fugitive ; and Petersburg and Richmond were occupied by our troops the next morning. For gallantry in that action, Generjl Griffin was brevetted a major-general of volunteers. General Potter having been severely wounded, he succeeded to the command of the division, — the Second Division, Ninth Corps, — which he retained till the close of the war, with the exception of a short time while he was president of an examining board of officers sitting in Washington. He joined in the pursuit of the rebel forces, and his division formed a part of the cordon militaire, that encompassed Lee, and compelled his surrender. Return- ing with the army, and encamping at Alexandria, he led his division in the Grand Review at Washington on the twenty-third of May ; and, in July follow- ing, when the last regiment of his command had been mustered out of service — the Sixth New Hampshire Volunteers — he returned to his home in Keene to await farther orders; and on the twenty-fourth of August, 1S65, in company with many other general officers, he was mustered out of the service of the United States.

That service had been a most honorable one. Brave, able, of sound judg- ment, patriotic, he was always in demand at the front, and his service was of the most active and arduous kind. His troops were never under fire, or made a march of any importance, except with him to lead them. He took an active part in twenty-two great battles, besides being under fire numberless times in skirmishes and smaller fights. For nine weeks, at one time in front of Petersburg, he held the ground covering the spot where the " Mine " was in process of excavation, and so sharp and constant was the picket-firing, both day and night, that the brigade lost five per cent, of its members each week. Not tor a moment were officers or men safe from deadly missiles, unless under cover of intrenchments, and it was particularly perilous for officers in command who had to pass frequently along the lines. Yet he seemed to lead a charmed life. He never received a scratch, although he had seven ball holes in his clothes and had two horses killed and five wounded under him in action. He never lost a day's duty from sickness, owing, no doubt, largely to his temperate habits. At the second battle of Bull Run, he had one half of his men either killed or wounded ; at Fredericksburg, one third ; at Antietam, one fifth ; and so on ; and he was equally exposed with them. To show the severity of his service in Grant's campaign of 1864, he left Alexandria with six regiments, reporting twenty-seven hundred fighting men. .At the close of the campaign, he had lost three thousand men, killed and wounded, — three hundred men more than his whole number, — new regiments having been assigned him until he had eleven in his brigade, and the oldep ones kept up by recruits.

Upon the reorganization of the Regular Army at the close of the war, the government offered him a position as field officer in one of the regiments, and

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