October 4, 1864
The General rode
along the whole front of the new line and carefully examined it, accompanied by
his Staff and by the taciturn Roebling. R. is a character, a major and
aide-de-camp and engineer, and factotum to General Warren. He is a son of the
German engineer, Roebling, who built the celebrated suspension bridge over the
Niagara River. He is a light-haired, blue-eyed man, with a countenance as if
all the world were an empty show. He stoops a good deal, when riding has the
stirrups so long that the tips of his toes can just touch them, and, as he
wears no boots, the bottoms of his pantaloons are always torn and ragged. He
goes poking about in the most dangerous places, looking for the position of the
enemy, and always with an air of entire indifference. His conversation is curt
and not garnished with polite turnings. “What's that redoubt doing there?” cries
General Meade. “Don't know; didn't put it there,” replies the laconic one. The
Chief growled a little while at the earthwork, but, as that didn't move it, he
rode onward. We passed at a clever time, for, a few minutes after, the Rebel
skirmishers made a rush, and drove ours out of a house, and their bullets came
over the corner of a field where we had been. Thereat our skirmishers made a
counter-rush and drove theirs again away from the house, and our cannon fired
and there was a small row generally. Some of our earthworks were really very
workmanlike, handsomely sloped in front, and neatly built up with logs in the
rear. It is really a handsome sight to get a view of half a mile of uniform
parapet, like this, and see the men's shelter-tents neatly pitched in the pine
woods, just in rear, while in front a broad stretch of timber has been “slashed,”
to give a good field of fire and break up any body of troops advancing to
attack. It is quite interesting, too, to see a redoubt going up. The men work
after the manner of bees, each at the duty assigned. The mass throw up earth;
the engineer soldiers do the “revetting,” that is, the interior facing of logs.
The engineer sergeants run about with tapes and stakes, measuring busily; and
the engineer officers look as wise as possible and superintend. . . .
SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s
Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness
to Appomattox, p. 240-1
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