Battlefield of Pickett’s Mill, a bloody defeat for Sherman’s forces. Sgt. James Cummings had a premonition of his death there.
Some soldiers believe they can never be killed in combat, while others are always fearful. On occasion, men suddenly “feel” that their demise is near and their premonition comes true.
In late spring of 1864, at the height of William T. Sherman’s invasion of Georgia, Federal soldier Rice Bull was advancing with his unit on Dallas, Georgia, where they had a leisurely dinner while engineers bridged Pumpkinvine Creek. As Bull attempted to relax, his good friend Sgt. James Cummings sat down. Wise noticed that Cummings, usually affable, was “melancholy and sad.” Cummings confessed to a belief that he would not survive their next battle. Bull attempted to reassure his friend, explaining that occasionally they all experienced a premonition of death, which always failed to materialize. Cummings insisted that death was near, but it would be in the service of his country, and since he was a Christian he had no fear for his future.
When the bridge was finished, the company marched on to a crossroads called New Hope Church. By morning Northerners would dub it the “Hell Hole.” The Federals ran into a storm of rifle fire and batteries of artillery that pumped vicious charges of canister into their advancing lines. Bull’s colonel was killed, and the soldiers took shelter behind a slight ridge as night arrived and nature erupted with a furious thunderstorm. Men pressed close to the sodden earth, more fearful of Confederate fire than of drowning in the pools of water that formed around them. Rice heard one soldier call to an officer, “Now Captain, if you will just give the order, we will swim over and tackle the Johnnies.”
Around 10 p.m. the shooting slackened, but isolated picket fire still punctured the night. Cumming had gone to ground near Bull, but now he stood up, drawing a harsh whisper from Bull: “Jim, you know there are orders not to fire; why do you stand and expose yourself?”
“I don’t think there is any more danger in standing here than lying in the mud, I have had enough of that,” he explained.
No more than a minute later Bull heard a noise like a hammer hitting a tree. He looked up to see Cummings fall heavily to the ground, a bullet through his forehead. His premonition had come true.
Another Union invader was Theodore Upson, a literate private who recorded his experiences in a diary which was published in 1943. Upson’s regiment was involved in one of the few real battles that occurred during Sherman’s infamous march to Savannah in November, 1864. While bypassing Macon, Sherman left a blocking force of 1,500 men and two cannon at Griswold to prevent Confederate troops from interfering with his passage. A 3,700-man force of Georgia militia, mainly young boys and old men with no military experience and led by a drunken general who disobeyed orders to avoid combat, encountered the Federals. Upson’s men slaughtered the attacking Georgians from behind barricades. Southern casualties exceeded 500; Northern losses totaled ninety-two, with only thirteen killed.
One of the dead was an older enlisted man fondly called “Uncle Aaron” by his younger messmates. The night before the battle, Upson found Aaron Wolford “greatly depressed, something unusual for him.” Upson asked what was wrong, and with no evidence of impending fighting, Wolford confided that he had experienced a premonition of his own death.
“I felt that I have not long to live,” Wolford stated, “and when I am gone I want you to promise me that you will take charge of my things. Send them to my wife and write to her all about me.”
Wolford rejected Upson’s reassuring words, “sure his time was nearly out.” At the height of the battle Wolford took a bullet in his head.
“I put my hand on him and spoke his name,” Upson recorded, “but he was gone where I hope there are no wars, no sudden partings. That night after the Johnnys had gone we buried our dead. We had no coffins, but I could not bear to think of putting my old friend into his grave in that way. I remembered that at a house a short distance away I had seen a hollow log of about the right length and size. We got it, split it in halves, put one in the grave dug in the sandy soil, put his lifeless body in it, covered it with the other half, filled up the grave and by the light of a fire we had built with the rails, marked with a piece of lumber pencil his name, Company, and Regiment.”
Upson then sat down to write Wolford’s widow. Enclosing the little money Wolford had on him, his watch, and “a well worn Testament,” Upson described “what a good man” Wolford had been, “how brave and faithful to duty he was.” Thinking of his dead friend and the wife and eight children he had left behind, Upson’s tears smudged the wet ink on the paper. “I hope they will realize what a grand soul he had,” Upson thought.
Soldiering: The Civil War Diary of Rice C. Bull.
With Sherman to the Sea: The Civil War letters, diaries & reminiscences of Theodore F. Upson (Check local libraries or interlibrary loan).
From Weird Georgia (Cumberland House, 2000).
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