The Beginning of the War
From another account it seems that one of the prizes, "The Delaware Farmer," was taken in by Cushing himself, and was the first taken in the war by anybody. During most of July the young sailor was on duty with the blockading squadron off the coast of the Carolinas. In August he was once more on the waters of the Chesapeake, engaged in storming a land battery and destroying some small supporting vessels at the same place. In the meantime, Alonzo was just as rapidly obtaining distinction. From West Point he had proceeded without delay to Washington, and on reaching the capital had applied himself most assiduously to the work most necessary at that time to be performed. When the writer of this sketch arrived at Washington as a member of a volunteer regiment early in July, 1861, Alonzo's smooth, swarthy face and supple figure were to be seen wherever there was a volunteer battery in need of instruction and drill. Although he worked his pupils hard, they all loved him for his radiant smiles and frequent infectious laughter, which were potent factors in smoothing the grim front of grizzled war.
He was then only in his twenty-first year and looked still younger. Standing 5 ft. 9 in. in his stockings, his length of limb was such as to give him the appearance, when on horseback, of being under middle height. His good nature was so unusual on the part of young regular officers, that it captivated every volunteer with whom he came in contact. On July 18 he was at the front in the battle, or rather reconnaissance, at Blackburn's Ford, near the stone bridge over Bull Run, and three days later was in the thick of the disastrous fight on the farther side of that stream. His conduct on that occasion was said to have been admirable, but his position was not yet sufficiently advanced to secure him mention in the reports of general officers, such as became a mere matter of course as soon as he fought on his own responsibility, whether in command of his battery or detached for important staff duty at corps and grand division headquarters.
In no instance is there record of failure on his part to meet the utmost expectations of his superior officers, while generally he exceeded those expectations by a great margin. Although not at the very head of his class at the Military Academy, all who knew him concur in the opinion that he came as near realizing the ideal of a perfect soldier as any of the contestants of the Civil War. His assignment to duty as a first lieutenant of artillery on leaving the Academy, was strong proof that high expectations were already formed as to his future.
Within less than a month after he left West Point (July 22, 1861, to be specific), in company with some thousands of other infantry soldiers, I was floundering along the vile wagon way from the Long Bridge to Bailey's Cross Roads, where our regiment was to make its headquarters for several weeks afterwards, sending out scouting parties from time to time, and establishing picket outposts in what appeared to our uneducated eyes to be appropriate points of vantage. On the Monday just mentioned, a copious rain set in at a very early hour, and the roadsides were strewn with knapsacks, blankets, and other impedimenta of the returning soldiers who plodded along towards Washington from the battle of the day before. Many of them had marched all night, and very few of them had taken more than short intervals of rest during their night exit from the vicinity of Bull Run. One battery was distinguished for its fine appearance, however; and that was Battery A of the Fourth regular artillery. Cushing was in command of it when it met and passed us, and even the events of the preceding twenty-four hours had not been sufficient to take away his smile—although it might have shown a sarcastic side to a closer observer than I then was.
The infantry regiment in which I was a private retired to Arlington, about the first of September, from the front line of the troops around Washington, and found that wonderful organization of volunteers west of the Potomac, plastic under McClellan's skillful hand, in the full bloom of its evolution. Cushing entered into the spirit of soldier-making and of earthwork construction, and his labors were of acknowledged value. But what McClellan was competent to do was soon done. The great review at Bailey's Cross Roads was a source of astonishment to the expert spectators from other nations who observed the accuracy of its military movements and the excellent bearing of the 70,000 men who might easily have marched to Centerville the next day and squelched the Virginia section of the rebellion with not a hundredth part of the effort that was required for that purpose in the years following. It must have been with a heavy heart that Alonzo Cushing, always longing for effective action, saw the splendid opportunities of the winter of 1861 squandered in useless delays.
Although he made no complaint, the experience of Howard during 1861 afforded ground for greater personal vexation. He had raised a company from among the newspaper men of Chicago. They had elected him captain, but for some reason their services were not accepted by the Illinois state authorities, and he reluctantly resumed his regular work, pursuing it until he could no longer resist the call of his country to the field. He therefore enlisted (March 24, 1862) as a private soldier in Battery B, First Illinois Artillery, in which he afterwards served faithfully and with as much credit as a private is usually thought entitled to, through several strenuous campaigns, including the operations about Vicksburg. There can be no reasonable doubt that his services as a private would furnish material for a story of interest and instruction; but no record of them is attainable, and the outline of his military life must here be postponed until after the earlier notable achievements of his younger brothers shall have been narrated.
With William, events were shaping themselves as he desired, except that the fighting was not quite as plentiful as he wished. On November 22, 1861, eighteen days after his eighteenth birthday anniversary, he wrote to his cousin Mary (at East Troy, Wisconsin, then recently married to Mr. C. W. Smith), from the "Cambridge," a lively account of an expedition into the Rappahannock River to cut out a vessel loaded with wheat, which was burned on being found hard and fast on shore. Returning, the boat was bombarded by cannon and musketry along the river bank. Of the concluding scenes of this expedition, he gives the following account:
The Southerners had stationed a company of their riflemen in a house, and watching them I fired canister till I had for the time silenced their great gun. I then threw a thirty-pound shell which burst directly in the house, tearing it in pieces, and as I afterwards learned, killing and wounding some twenty-five men. This dis-heartened the rebels, and a few more rounds from the gun and the rifles finished the work, and we quietly steamed down the river to the ship. * * * Of course I was glad to learn that I had been mentioned with credit in the official dispatch to the Navy department.
There was nothing else that winter in the way of adventure of his own that he thought worth mention; but he was a spectator (March 9, 1862), of the battle in Hampton Roads between the "Monitor" and the "Merrimac," wherein the destiny of wooden ships was settled for all time.
Alonzo was prone, with the anonymous poet, to,
Saw at his hands no worthy action done.
The test of worthiness with him was usefulness to the Union cause. So when the defenses of the capital were completed, he took up the duties (January 21, 1862) of ordnance officer for the Second Corps, at General Sumner's headquarters—until the return, in March, of the Army of the Potomac from its fruitless promenade to Centerville, and to the vacant quarters of the Confederate army there. On March 21 he was commanded to act as an aid-de-camp to Sumner, in charge of topographical work, which was considered particularly important in the operations at Yorktown. This lasted from April 5 to May 4, when it was again discovered that the Confederates had declined to wait for the annihilation prepared for them if they would delay moving until McClellan should get all his parallels in shape according to Vauban, or whomever the authority on earthworks then in vogue may have been.