Never Eat a Dead Man’s Cake, Part 7; Or, Letters from Yokohama

 

I didn’t intend to write this post, but sometimes the rabbit hole beckons.

In the past six posts, I’ve recounted, in brief, the life and military service of Major Charles Elisha Pruyn, a devout Christian officer who served two stints in the Army of the Potomac, one as adjutant of the 96^th New York and another as commander of the 118^th New York.

You might recall that, in the last post, when Major Pruyn’s widowed mother, Mary, learned about her son’s death, she made a solemn promise to Reverend Robert J. Parvin that she would use Charlie’s death as inspiration to give back to the world. She wrote, “I will now give all that earnest desire I had for the temporal and spiritual good of my own dear child, to all the poor sufferers, many of whom have no mother to bleed and labor for them.”

Did she fulfill her promise? Well, that’s the subject of this post. What did she do after the war? Unsurprisingly, she dedicated the remainder of her life to charity, but the interesting part is that she took her talents to East Asia to do it.

To be clear, Mary Putnam Pruyn was no stranger to charity work. She had been involved in social, educational, and religious reform since before the War of the Rebellion. During her years in the city, she founded two industrial schools in Albany and a “House of Shelter.”

As you may have figured out, Mary Pruyn came from money. She was born in Albany on March 31, 1820, the youngest of eleven children born to Elisha Putnam and Hester Johnson. Her father was an architect and builder who lived at 78 Pearl Street. During Albany’s dramatic period of post-Revolutionary growth, Elisha Putnam raised a small fortune by completing contracts for the city and for local churches. Further, the Putnam family came with a recognizable name. The Putnams traced their lineage to General Israel Putnam, the Revolutionary War officer known for defending Bunker Hill.

Meanwhile, Mary’s husband, Samuel Pruyn, was a merchant who held several important positions in Albany. He served as the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors for Albany County, inspector for the Albany Penitentiary, deacon and president of the board of trustees of the Second Reformed Dutch Church on Beaver Street, and colonel of the Albany Rifle Regiment. Thus, the Pruyn-Putnam marriage—which occurred on August 15, 1838—united two prestigious families. Surely, everyone expected their children—blessed with riches and publicity—would amount to greatness.

But that promise proved difficult to keep. Few of Mary Pruyn’s children lived long enough to make a name for themselves. During her life, she gave birth to eight children: Agnes (b. July 6, 1839), Charles (b. November 11, 1840), Samuel Stephen (b. November 17, 1842), Edward (b. December 24, 1844), Samuel (b. December 7, 1846), Mary (b. January 28, 1849), Francis (b. April 30, 1851), and Annie (b. April 7, 1854). Three of her children—Samuel Stephen, Francis, and Annie—all died before they turned three. Another, Edward, drowned at age eleven. Her eldest son, Charlie, was killed at the Battle of Petersburg, June 15, 1864. Only three—Agnes, Samuel, and Mary—lived beyond the War of the Rebellion. The youngest, Mary Esther, married in April 1871. When her youngest child was finally married off, Mary Pruyn decided to embark upon the next phase of her life.

When the Civil War came to an end, there was another important social upheaval happening on the other side of the world. Japan—which had been long-ruled by the Tokugawa Shogunate—experienced the so-called “Meiji Restoration.” Between 1868 and 1872, the newly-installed teenage emperor, Mutsuhito (later Meiji), began a consolidation of power that returned control of the government to the royal family. For Americans, this meant that Japan finally declared itself amenable to the absorption of “western” ideas. At the moment, American and Japanese relations were only just getting underway. In 1860, Japan erected its first embassy in the United States, and in 1861, Abraham Lincoln appointed a new minister to Japan, Robert Hewson Pruyn (only the second ambassador to hold that position).

As you might have guessed, the name of the new minister mattered. Robert Pruyn was Mary Pruyn’s cousin. Under Pruyn’s tenure, American missionaries established schools in Japan to teach the English language to Japanese children and to provide rudimentary education for Japanese girls, which was practically nonexistent prior to the collapse of the shogunate. Upon his return from Japan, Minister Pruyn issued a call for American missionaries to establish a permanent school in Yokohama. Mary Pruyn led that effort. Days after her youngest daughter married, she traveled to New York City, and there, she met two other women who were interested in participating in the same mission: Julia Neilson Crosby and Louise Henrietta Pierson. Together, they formed the Woman’s Union Missionary Society, or as it was sometimes called in its fuller, preachier form: The Woman’s Union Missionary Society of America for Heathen Lands. The missionary society had several goals: to care for abandoned Japanese and Eurasian children, to teach English, and to introduce Christianity.

Just to be clear, while Mary Pruyn’s intentions were pure-hearted, her attitude toward the Japanese reflected an all-to-prevalent (and insidious) American opinion that Japanese people lacked culture because they lacked Christianity. Pruyn’s missionary letters—which are published as Grandmamma’s Letters from Japan—frequently referred to Japan as a “heathen land,” and it vexed her to behold a people who lacked the ability to read a Bible and who also believed their emperor descended from god. Mary Pruyn understood her mission to Japan by viewing it through a lens of moral superiority that modern readers will likely find unappealing. During her time in Japan, she relentlessly mocked Japanese mythology. For example, she once wrote, “There are a great many foolish stories in this fabulous history: such as a bird coming down and beating the mud of the island hard with his tail; and how these two spirits made love to each other; how their children multiplied, and in their pride they sent one to reign in the sun, and another to be the queen of the moon; and how the first emperor of Japan came from the sun to be the ruler of their country.”

Mary Pruyn believed Japanese folklore was heretical. When she sent letters to her grandchildren, she made sure they understood why she was on this mission to East Asia. In February 1875, she wrote, “I have told you so much because I want you to see how far these people are from knowing the truth, and that they are to be pitied rather than blamed for not believing what they have never been taught.” Indeed, during her first day in Japan, she told her grandchildren to pray for her success:

Now there is something I want you to do for me. Every time you pray at night, I want you to ask God to help me do a great deal for the little children of Japan, so they may learn to love Him, as I think you do. You know these poor children have never heard of our dear Lord Jesus, and they do not know how good He is, nor how much He loves them. This is what I want to teach them, and you can pray for me. I know God hears little children, and it will make me very happy to be sure that you pray for His blessing. Ever your loving Grandmother.

Mary Pruyn’s mission in Japan lasted five years. She set out from New York in May 1871, arriving off the coast of Japan during the second week of June. Her school was called the American Mission Home and her church in Yokohama was called the Union Christian Church. She returned to Albany in 1876. Afterward, two of her granddaughters—Helen Knox Strain and Agnes Pruyn Chapman—took up the call and administrated the same school.

This is the American Mission Home in Yokohama. There are three women in hoopskirts. One of them must be Mary Putnam Pruyn.

Anyway, what does any of this have to do with the Civil War?

Well, very little, except for one incident that occurred in 1872. As mentioned, Mary Pruyn’s mission home took carried on important work in caring for abandoned Japanese children. One day, an eight-year-old boy came into her care. This is what she wrote on July 26, 1872:

I went down [the] street this afternoon, and when I came home I found a dear little boy here, who had been brought by his mother to live with us. His father is a wicked Englishman, who has forsaken several little children, and cares not what becomes of them. The mother is a Japanese woman, and very poor; but she loves her children, and wants to have them taught to read English, though she is a heathen, and would rather not have them learn anything of our religion; for she thinks all Christians are like the father of her children, and if they get to be ‘Christein,’ they will be wicked as he is. What is a little strange about this little fellow is, that although he had some other queer name before, his mother changed it to ‘Charlie,’ just to bring him here. It is very common for these people to change their names whenever they please; but it seems so curious that she should choose the name that belonged to another one of my own dear children. This little Charlie is a bright, handsome boy, just eight years old, and although he cannot speak a word of our language, yet he seems to understand a good deal that is said to him, and we all think we shall love him very much.

There are many questions that arise. Did the Japanese mother intentionally rename her son Charlie, knowing that, because Mary Pruyn had lost a son named Charlie in the war, it might make her more amenable to take on the education of her child?

Moreover, how did Mary Pruyn come to grips with the return of a new Charlie to her side? Fate (or a divine intervention—if you believe in such things) had placed new Charlie into her care. In 1864, after the death of her Charlie, Mary Pruyn had reached her most despondent period. But she promised herself, “Though not one ray of light can be seen, I will cling to Him still, I will trust Him yet.” She gave her tragic life some additional patience, and this was what came back. Did she consider her missionary work—and all other unnamed Japanese “Charlies” who came into her custody—as the repayment for her unwavering devotion to Christianity when the War of the Rebellion nearly tore out her heart? Sadly, her letters do not say.

It’s tempting to think that, in some small way, she might have believed that Charlie had been returned to her.

To say more about this would overrun the mission of my blog. I’m not an expert in Meiji Japan, nor do I know much about nineteenth-century American missionary work. But before signing off, it’s worth saying the obvious: despite Mary Pruyn’s best efforts to flee the memory of the Civil War, it managed to follow her halfway across the world.

Mary Putnam Pruyn

Mary Pruyn didn’t give up on missionary work. In January 1883, she went to Shanghai, China, to establish similar institutions there. This mission was much shorter. She contracted illness in China and returned home to Albany in 1884. She died on February 10, 1885, a few weeks short of her 65^th birthday. She was buried in Albany Rural Cemetery, the same place where Charlie was laid to rest.

Never Eat a Dead Man’s Cake, Part 6; Or, “God Would Not Take My Precious Child From Me!”

 

Major Charles Elisha Pruyn breathed his last on June 15, 1864. It was only four days after he after he penned his last letter to his mother, Mary Pruyn.

On June 12, orders from Lieut. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant reached the 18^th Corps encampment. The general-in-chief wanted Maj. Gen. Baldy Smith to attack Petersburg. The 18^th Corps infantry had orders to board transports at White House Landing on the Pamunkey, sail up the James River, unload on the Bermuda Hundred Peninsula, cross the Appomattox River on a pontoon bridge, and then follow the City Point Railroad into Petersburg. If they moved swiftly, the men of the 18^th Corps could overrun the earthworks that encircled Petersburg—the so-called Dimmock Line—and move into the city without having to fight a prolonged campaign for it. If Petersburg fell, it would be only a matter of days before the Confederate capital surrendered. This was Grant’s best chance to end the war in the East before the national election. Time was of the essence.

Over the next three days, Maj. Gen. Smith moved his corps into position. By morning, June 15, it was within striking distance of the Dimmock Line. Smith frittered away the rest of the day awaiting the arrival of the rest of the Army of the Potomac. (As he understood matters, he had to await the arrival of the 2^nd Corps, which took an exceedingly long time to march to the same location). At dusk, after he grew frustrated with the delay, Smith determined to attack on his own. Unwilling to await the reinforcements, Smith decided to send his assault troops against the Dimmock Line. He suspected (correctly) that the Confederate earthworks were not heavily manned, and this was the best opportunity for the Army of the Potomac to seize Petersburg without heavy losses.

Smith’s corps was faced southwest, astride the City Point Railroad. Brig. Gen. John H. Martindale’s 2^nd Division connected with the banks of the Appomattox River. On Martindale’s left, just south of the railroad embankment, the 13^th New Hampshire of Brig. Gen. Hiram Burnham’s brigade (2^nd Brigade, 1^st Division, 18^th Corps) took up the line. The 8^th Connecticut (also of Burnham’s brigade) came next. Then came Major Pruyn’s 118^th New York. His men held the left of Burnham’s brigade. On its left, the 118^th connected with a brigade of United States Colored Infantry. The 118^th New York deployed two companies as skirmishers, but the other eight companies took shelter in a ravine at the edge of a line of woods. At 6:30 P.M., Brig. Gen. Burnham held conference with his regimental commanders. They stood behind the skirmish line, observing the enemy position. They beheld an earthwork called Battery Number 5. This massive redoubt contained five cannon—primarily 12-pound howitzers—and over 200 enemy troops. Burnham relayed Smith’s instructions. Smith’s two divisions—with the Colored Infantry on their left—would move in concert, overrunning the Confederate line. After that, a second wave was supposed to move into Petersburg. After they went over the details, the three regimental commanders dispersed, taking their places in front of their regiments.

This illustration depicts the attack made by the 18th Corps against the Dimmock Line on the evening of June 15, 1864. It's not entirely clear which sector of the line is depicted here, but it's quite possibly meant to depict Battery 5.

This Google Earth view depicts the area around Battery 5. That battery is still in existence today--albeit with a Union-made extension on its south side. I've drawn in the other sections of the Dimmock line to show where else it extended. The railroad is still in the same position today as it was in 1864. The Union infantry took up positions northeast of the battery in preparation for attack. I've marked the approximate position of Major Pruyn's mortal wounding.

Ten minutes after the conference, the 18^th Corps artillery roared to life, sixteen cannon firing intermittently, trying to reduce the Confederate position. Then, at 7 P.M., after twenty minutes of artillery fire, the Union cannonade ceased. It was time for the infantry attack to begin. Major Pruyn stood in front of his regiment, who were still hunkered down below the horizon, bayonets fixed. Pruyn cast his eyes across his men. He had taken every effort to be back at the front, ignoring the pleas from his physicians to resign his commission or to remain at the hospital to allow his injured foot to heal. This was what Pruyn wanted. He felt that duty had called him to war, not once, but twice. He shouted, “Attention, Battalion!” The men of the 118^th New York rose to their feet, arms a-port.

Turning toward the enemy, Pruyn was about to utter the word, “Charge,” but before the word could escape his lips, a Confederate shell fired from Battery 5 arced in, ricocheted, struck him on the breast, and exploded. He uttered just a single exclamation, “Oh!” before the shell eviscerated him. According to Rufus W. Clark, his biographer, “His body was terribly mangled.” Most historians—including Gordon Rhea and Sean Michael Chick—have reported that Pruyn died instantly; however, the regimental surgeon did not agree. He claimed that Pruyn “died after a few hours’ suffering.”

Major Charles E. Pruyn, as depicted in Heroes of Albany.

Of course, there wasn’t much time for mourning. At that moment, the other regiments were advancing, and the 118^th New York had to follow suit. Captain Levi S. Dominy assumed command of the 118^th New York. In Pruyn’s stead, he shouted, “Charge!” and the regiment lurched forward, leaving the major’s body in its wake. (I’ve never seen any indication as to what happened next, but I imagine that stretcher bearers must have carried Pruyn back to a field hospital as the rest of the regiment made its attack.) Along with the rest of the 18^th Corps, the 118^th New York broke the Confederate position. The 118^th New York lost twenty-one officers and men in the assault. Pruyn was the only officer from the regiment to be killed.

Despite the victory, the 18^th Corps failed to take Petersburg, but that is a tale for another day.

Surgeon William Q. Mansfield, the surgeon who looked after Charlie Pruyn in his final hours, wrote to his mother, Mary Pruyn, to let her know about Charlie’s fate. Mansfield’s letter arrived in Albany on the morning of June 21. Mansfield indicated that he had sent Pruyn’s body to Norfolk where it was embalmed. She could expect the casket within a week. Since Mary Pruyn was a prominent citizen, the Albany Evening Journal picked up the story. In its June 22 issue, it eulogized Major Pruyn this way:

At the time the One Hundred and Eighteenth Regiment was under his command, and his natural gallantry and pride urged him at any risk to remain at the head of his men in their hour of trial, and it was there that he met death. Before the enemy, with armor on, battling for honor and duty, God and his native land, so went he to the better world! . . . Major Pruyn’s life cannot be measured by length of days. But there are few among us hoary with age who have such a record of duty and patriotism. The score of years, and the early death completes his life better than a century of mere existence. To have been a noble boy, a dutiful exemplary son, a Christian man, and a zealous patriot, throws a halo of blessedness and consolation around the sad, untimely death.

Mary Pruyn’s friend, Rufus Clark, described how Charlie’s death affected her. He wrote, “The sad tidings fell upon the devoted mother like a thunderbolt, and for a time she seemed crushed. All the past, the days of his childhood, the period of his enlistment, his affectionate and graphic letters, his heroic deeds, came rushing upon her memory and overwhelmed her.”

Pruyn’s body returned to Albany on June 27, 1864. After a service at the Dutch Reformed Church, the Zouave Cadets (a militia unit of which Pruyn had once been a member) escorted his hearse to Albany Rural Cemetery.

Throughout the following weeks, notes of sympathy poured into the Pruyn mailbox. The 118^th New York published a general order, honoring Major Pruyn’s sacrifice. Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler renamed an earthwork along the Bermuda Hundred in his honor. The Albany Zouave Cadets published resolutions lamenting his death, as did the members of the city’s Washington Lodge. Officers from the regiment sent letters of condolence. This one was written by Captain Robert Wilson Livingston of Company F:

Though we were so nearly at the extremes, he being almost the youngest and I quite the oldest officer of the regiment, I very early learned to admire his capacity as an officer, and esteem his virtues as a man; and, notwithstanding the disparity of our years, was proud of his friendship. I do not attempt to write words of consolation. While I have lost a dear young friend, you have lost a most dearly loved son—a son who deserved all your love, and fully justified your pride. His memory must be tenderly cherished.

But then came another letter, the one written by Reverend Robert J. Parvin. It will be recalled that Parvin, an agent of the U.S. Christian Commission, had saved the box that Mary Pruyn had sent containing Charlie’s cake. Parvin’s letter arrived one week after Charlie’s funeral. Mary Pruyn sat down to write a reply:

Albany, July 8^th, 1864.

Rev. Robert J. Parvin: Dear Sir:—

Your kind letter is received, and opens anew the floodgates of a sorrow so deep that only He who permitted it to fall can give me strength and composure to reply. . . . I had come, almost insensibly to myself, to feel a sort of security that God would not take my precious child from me, but would permit him to return and be my staff and comfort in the later days of my weary pilgrimage. But Infinite Wisdom saw that this was not best, either for him or his mother. God had prepared some better thing for him than the comforts and luxuries and affections of our earthly home. Even so, Father, for thus it seemeth good in Thy sight.

Mary Pruyn took time to explain why she included a note warning strangers not open the box and eat its contents:

I had sent a box previously, which, owing to purely providential circumstances, was lost in the multitude. Then I thought, God will use that to comfort some other poor sufferer, and has intended it as a test of my trust in Him. So I prepared and sent a second, to prove to my own heart that I would trust, though God did see fit to disappoint me. That second box was sent the day after my darling child passed away into eternity.

Mary Pruyn was a religious woman. For her, faith was part and parcel of her identity. But recent events had tested her. She had lost her beloved husband two years earlier, and now, the war had claimed her eldest son. She might also have pondered why she had allowed him to go to war twice. Charlie had returned to her in June 1862. She believed that her unwavering devotion to her God would compel Charlie to return a second time. Reverend Parvin’s letter seemed to trigger a moment of reflection. For whatever reason, the remembrance of the loss of the first cake and the near-disappearance of the second forced Mary Pruyn to contemplate all the sacrifices her family had made. What, she wondered, was the point of all this divine testing? Of course, she must have realized she was writing to a man of the cloth, so she poured out her emotions. She complained about the difficulty she experienced in putting her faith in the hands of an unseen God who supposedly manipulated existence for a mysterious but wise purpose.

Mary Putnam Pruyn, Charlie's bereaved mother.

At first, Mary Pruyn complained. The recent heartache gave her every reason to forswear her Christian allegiance. She wrote, “And, now, what can I say to this? Is God untrue, and is my faith vain, and shall I cease to trust Him?” But in the end, she elected to support her religion. She intended to give her Christian deity a little more of her patience. She explained:

Oh, blessed be His name. He does not permit my mind to indulge such thoughts! No, though the clouds that gather around Him be as dark as midnight,—though not one ray of light can be seen, I will cling to Him still, I will trust Him yet. He is His own interpreter, and in His own time and way will make it all plain. While He gives me the confidence that my child is safe in glory, where he shall hunger no more, nor thirst any more, where the sun shall not light on him nor any heat,—I am satisfied. I will be patient; and I will now give all that earnest desire I had for the temporal and spiritual good of my own dear child, to all the poor sufferers, many of whom have no mother to bleed and labor for them. I will see a son or a brother in every noble defender of my home and of my country’s honor.

My religious readers will likely see this letter as an example of unwavering Christian devotion at its finest. Perhaps that is the best way to interpret it. However, I would also encourage readers to see it another way. What happened here was a natural response to loss. Mary Pruyn realized she had allowed her son to choose his own path, one that she, initially, didn’t want him to follow. But her instincts told her it was abstractly wrong to hold him back from military service; so, like any caring parent, she acquiesced, not once, but twice. She supported his decision to go to war. She encouraged him. As a result, he rose through the ranks (with her help), he became a respected officer (perhaps due to the moral teachings she imparted in him), and he won over his detractors in the officer corps. Against her maternal instincts, she had sent her eldest son to war and she had lost him. She had to find a purpose in it. She loved Charlie dearly. Having patience with the future (or patience in “God’s infinite wisdom,” for those who believe in a divine afterlife) was the least she could do to honor Charlie’s memory.

But, I would argue, the real key to Mary Pruyn’s revelation was the small act of mercy that triggered it: Reverend Parvin’s mission to send the opened package to its intended recipient.

Never eat a dead man’s cake.

Never Eat a Dead Man’s Cake, Part 5; Or, When Charlie Pruyn Went Back to the Front (Twice)

For the past several posts, I’ve been exploring the career of Charlie Pruyn, an Albany officer who resigned his commission after he learned about the disparaging comments made by Maj. Gen. George McClellan concerning the fighting qualities of Brig. Gen. Silas Casey’s division. Pruyn regretted his decision to resign almost immediately. As soon as the War Department provided another opportunity to join the army, he took it, and for the remainder of the war, he made it his personal mission never to be absent from the front for too long.

Charlie Pruyn returned home to Albany in late June 1862. He expected to take care of his mother, who had been recently widowed; but in actuality, she ended up taking care of him. He had contracted an illness on the Peninsula. By the time he reached New York, it hit him full force. When he came home to Albany, he could barely stand.

Pruyn spent the next few weeks bedridden. On July 4, the Albany Independence Day procession passed his house at 109 North Pearl Street, and although he was quite sick, he went to the front door to watch it. The massive parade included militia companies full of military-age men. After a few minutes, Pruyn came inside and told his mother, “I cannot stand here. It makes me indignant to see that it is possible to get up so large a company of men in the city of Albany. No wonder the South can beat us, when the men of the North would rather stay at home and parade the streets.” Mary Pruyn must have been shocked. Her son had only just returned. But she recognized the same earnestness in his eyes that had actuated him the previous year. He said, “It is a shame and disgrace for a young man like me to be at home in comfort while the country is imperiled.” As soon as he regained his health, he planned to return to duty.

It seemed as if the government, too, wanted Pruyn to come back. On July 2, the War Department called for 300,000 more U.S. Volunteers, and the nation underwent another surge of mobilization. The U.S. barracks in Plattsburgh, where Pruyn’s old regiment, the 96^th New York, had organized, needed veteran officers to run it. Thus, on July 16, 1862, even as Pruyn still lay abed, he received a commission as adjutant of that post. He departed as soon as his health allowed it, heading to Plattsburgh sometime in late July. He took command of the recruits who had already arrived to fill the ranks of Colonel Samuel T. Richards’s “Adirondack Regiment.” Pruyn’s military experience garnered the attention of Colonel Richards, who insisted that he accompany the Adirondack regiment to the front as its adjutant. Here, Pruyn faced another tough choice. The adjutant-general of New York had already made a promise to him. If he stayed in Plattsburgh, he could become major of the next regiment to organize. But Richards wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. He called his officers together, telling them that he needed Pruyn to be his adjutant. If a position later opened up as major, Pruyn would have to receive it. The other officers agreed to this. Thus, Richards made the offer to Pruyn, who agreed to accompany the Adirondack Regiment to the front.

Orders arrived on September 1, 1862, and the Adirondack Regiment, now officially mustered in as the 118^th New York Volunteer Infantry, boarded a steamboat that carried it down Lake Champlain. The regiment unloaded at White Hall, and there it boarded a train bound for Saratoga Springs and then Albany. (It was a rough trip because many of the poor soldiers were packed into cattle cars.) At Albany, Pruyn’s mother, Mary, prepared a luncheon for the 118^th. Remembered First Lieutenant John L. Cunningham, “We were served by Albany ladies and it was a well-handled and enjoyable affair.” 

Near as I can tell, this was the last time Pruyn and his mother ever saw each other.

The 118^th New York continued its way south on a serious of additional train rides, reaching Fort Ethan Allen in Northern Virginia on September 4. The regiment joined the 7^th Corps, which was assigned to the defenses of Washington, and it remained on garrison duty until the spring of 1863, when it received assignment to Suffolk, and from there, in the summer of 1863, it moved to the Yorktown Peninsula.

On August 28, 1863, Pruyn received his commission as major; however, to took some work to get it. On July 8, Colonel Richards resigned. The colonel had reported sick with rheumatism before the 118^th New York left for Washington. When his condition failed to improve, he decided to leave the army. The lieutenant colonel and major were promoted to colonel and lieutenant colonel, respectively, leaving the major’s position vacant. The company officers remembered how they had promised Colonel Richards that if that position ever became vacant, they would endorse Pruyn’s right to take it. They held a vote, and the majority recommended Pruyn for the position. However, the two field officers, Colonel Oliver Keese, Jr. and Lieutenant Colonel George F. Nichols, had other ideas. They wanted to recommend one of the captains for that position. To ensure his promotion, Colonel Keese secured a leave of absence and went to Albany to recommend that captain’s appointment. Meanwhile, Pruyn’s supporters drafted a statement based upon the company officers’ vote, explaining the promise made to him by Colonel Richards. They mailed this document to Pruyn’s mother. Ever protective of her son, she took the document to Governor Horatio Seymour, who, at once, appointed Pruyn to the rank of major. By the time Colonel Keese reached Albany to present his own recommendation, he was informed that he had arrived too late.

Lieutenant Cunningham noted how this incident created distress within the 118^th New York’s officer corps. He remembered, “Naturally this division of opinion and its result caused some regimental friction; but be it said to the credit of the defeated officers, it was finally pleasantly accepted and all was forgotten in a few weeks. There were many other instances which evidenced the fine respect for harmony and mutual good-will which prevailed in our regiment and which added to the pleasure of serving in it.”

Major Charles E. Pruyn

The 118^th New York remained encamped at Yorktown and Portsmouth (as two separate battalions) until May 4, 1864. At that time, the two battalions reassembled and the regiment became attached to Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler’s Army of the James. Under Butler’s leadership, Pruyn and his comrades embarked upon the Bermuda Hundred Campaign. On May 16, 1864, the 118^th New York took part in the Battle of Relay House, losing 55 officers and men. The battle resulted in the wounding of Lieut. Col. Nichols, who had to be evacuated by ambulance. Meanwhile, Colonel Keese had fallen ill before the campaign began; he was not with the regiment. Thus, on May 16, Major Pruyn assumed command. Undoubtedly, the moment proved to be a challenging one. Not only had he survived a brutal engagement, but he had to assume greater responsibility because of it. That evening, he wrote a letter to his mother. Typically religious, Pruyn credited the power of his mother’s prayers in getting him through another bloodbath.

Near Bermuda Hundreds, May 16th, 1864.

My dear Mother — Thank God I am safe. Never before have I so felt the kind protection of my Heavenly Father, and with His assistance I will serve Him more faithfully than I have ever done before. I am worn out, used up, sick, sick at heart, but I trust a few days rest will restore me. We have been for eight days fighting all the time, (bushwhacking) and had worked our way up to within nine miles of Richmond, so that from the top of a high pine we could see the place. We carried their outer line of defences; but this morning they came upon us in overwhelming numbers, and, after several hours murderous fighting; on both sides, they drove us back.

But our gallant regiment did nobly, and stood their ground till the last regiment had left the field. Indeed, they stood their ground till they were nearly all shot down. Oh, my heart aches so to-night! Some of my best friends are killed. Those I had learned to love so well are gone. Oh! when will this cruel, wicked war end. We have lost heavily, I fear, but know nothing except the thousand rumors that are floating around. But, still, there is something for which Ave may congratulate ourselves. This action has called away a large force, which would otherwise have been with Lee, so Gen. Grant reaps the benefit.

I was not hurt in the least. It was your prayers my dearest mother, that saved me. Oh, I know it; I feel it. I trust I shall live hereafter as a true Christian. Never before have I felt as I do to-night. I am not excited as I write this, though all worn out. Your good long letter just received; will study it. Yes, I will try.

Ever,

Charlie.

On May 31, 1864, the 18^th Corps (to which the 118^th New York belonged) received a transfer to the Army of the Potomac. It arrived in time to be present for the assault against the Confederate position at Cold Harbor. On June 3, the 118^th New York was slated to participate in the morning attack—the infamous assault that Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant later regretted. As the regiment deployed in line-of-battle in the morning mist, an enemy ball struck Pruyn in the foot, passing completely through it. His soldiers carried him to the rear, and while at an aide station, he had his wound dressed. At this point, he could hear the noise from the great Union attack arising from the western horizon. The 118^th New York was scheduled to go in with the 18^th Corps’ third wave. Pruyn wanted to head back straight away, thinking he might have enough time to reach his regiment and participate in the attack. His horse had been wounded the previous day, which meant he had to hobble back on foot. As soon as a surgeon dressed the wound, Pruyn was off. Along the way, he passed his corps commander, Maj. Gen. Baldy Smith, who, upon seeing Pruyn hobbling, presumed he was going to the rear to have his wound treated. Promptly, Smith sent an orderly to assist Pruyn into an ambulance. Pruyn thanked him, but told him that he was on his way back to his men. A few minutes later, as Pruyn closed in on his regiment, the same orderly rode up, holding a glass of brandy. He said, “Major Gen. Smith sent this to you, and says you are a brave officer.”

Pruyn reached his regiment, which had just watched two waves of assault troops head into the mist and come tumbling back out, broken and bloodied. Captain Cunningham remembered that Pruyn addressed the regiment, intending to steady them prior to the attack. He recalled, “Major Pruyn, commanding our regiment, who had been slightly wounded, addressed the regiment in pertinent and manly words of courage. I do not believe a heart faltered in this terrible hour.” But the orders to attack never came. Having sent four brigades into the fray with no discernible result, Smith ordered Brig. Gen. Hiram Burnham’s brigade—to which the 118^th New York belonged—to stay put. Thus, Pruyn was one of the only casualties suffered by the 118^th New York on June 3, 1864.

That evening, Pruyn went to the hospital to have his wound treated. The surgeons urged him to resign his commission. With a wound so aggravating, they said, he had no right to remain in the army. An officer had to be able to keep on his feet when his men were in combat. This prognosis annoyed him. According to biographer Rufus Clark, “no argument could convince him, neither could he be induced to remain in the hospital but a few days.” Pruyn wrote his mother, “I write you from this hospital to-day, but I expect to leave it to-morrow. The doctor says it will be several weeks before my foot is well, and I cannot think of staying away from the regiment so long. I am needed there, and must go back.”

He stayed at the hospital only seven days, returning to the front on June 10, 1864. One day later, he penned his last letter.

In the Rifle Pits, June 11, 1864.

My dear Mother — I received a few lines from you this a. m. . . . I joined the regiment yesterday. My foot is not well, but I cannot stay back. It seems wrong for me to do so, especially as the doctors tell me it will be four or five weeks before it is entirely healed; but it is only a flesh wound, and if it was on my face or hand, would heal in a short time; but a wound in the foot, no matter how slight, always takes a long time to heal, as the circulation in that part of the body is so slow.

My general health is tolerable. Of course, I don’t feel as well as if I was at home, and could get my sleep and meals regularly, and where I would not have the care and responsibilities which the commanding officer of a regiment always has, especially a young man like me, entrusted with the lives of more than two hundred men. But I do not mean to complain, but rather thank God that he has kept me alive, and from being severely wounded, as so many have been in this terrible struggle.

We had one poor fellow killed yesterday, our only casualty during the day. Our regiment has now been in the rifle pits, under constant fire, ever since we came here, ten days. Of course, we are protected by the breastworks, but ‘familiarity breeds contempt,’ and the men become so accustomed to it that they get careless, and in this way many lose their lives. Besides, it is impossible for them to stay in the pits all the time, they must leave once in a while.

I thank you, dearest mother, for writing to me so often. Even if it is only a few lines, it cheers me, and makes me feel better when I am thus constantly reminded that the dear ones at home think of me, and it seems to bring me near to you. As I lie on the ground at night and look up at the stars, I think those same stars are looking down on you, and I go to sleep, dreaming of home and mother. Don’t think me romantic; the army is the last place for that; and although I do feel anxious that this dreadful war should end, and that I may be spared to return to you, yet I do not get homesick. I do not allow myself to do that. Love to all.

Your affectionate, Charlie.

Charlie Pruyn had made a promise to himself never to leave the front, so long as he had two feet. On June 11, 1864, he still had two feet—barely.

His last battle was only four days away.

Never Eat a Dead Man’s Cake, Part 4; Or, “With the Exception of Casey’s Division . . .”

 

In the past several posts, I’ve been exploring the military career of Adjutant Charles E. Pruyn. You might think that, given his earnestness to serve in the War of the Rebellion—even persuading his reluctant mother to allow him to enlist—he would have stayed with his regiment for the full three years. But if you made that guess, you’d be incorrect. In fact, barely three weeks after his first battle, Adjutant Pruyn resigned his commission. A single phrase from one of George McClellan’s telegrams drove him out.

Here’s how it happened.

On the morning of June 2, 1862, the survivors of the 96^th New York returned to the battlefield at Seven Pines. They discovered that little remained of their old encampment. Their tents were riddled with holes from shot and shell and the ground was covered with shell craters and detritus. Nearly all their equipment and personal belongings had been pilfered by the rebels. Luckily, Adjutant Pruyn still had his trunk, which was inside one of the regimental wagons on the other side of Chickahominy River, but his knapsack and all his regimental papers were gone.

In the end, the Confederate attack had been a fizzle. Although the rebels had overrun the position at Casey’s redoubt, reinforcements from the 2^nd and 3^rd Corps had turned the tide. These troops arrived late in the day on May 31 and during the predawn hours of June 1. The Confederates made a series of attacks near Fair Oaks Station on the morning of June 1, but they could not dislodge the new Union line. In addition, the Confederate army commander, Maj. Gen. Joseph Johnston, received a wound from Union artillery near the close of the fighting on May 31. The Confederate army’s interim commander, Maj. Gen. Gustavus W. Smith, proved unwilling to continue the engagement after Johnston’s fall. He allowed the morning attacks on June 1, but after that, Smith called off any further offensive moves. With that, the rebels abandoned the ground they had taken on the 31^st. Since the Army of the Potomac had held its position, and also because none of the Confederacy’s tactical plans had been achieved, the Battle of Seven Pines could only be called a Union victory.

Still, that victory had come at high cost. The two-day engagement—which sprawled across Casey’s redoubt, the Seven Pines Crossroads, and Fair Oaks Station—had cost the Army of the Potomac 5,031 casualties. Casey’s division had suffered some of the heaviest losses. It taken over 6,000 men into the fight and it reported a loss of 1,433.

Brig. Gen. Silas Casey

Even though it had formed the Army of the Potomac’s first line, and rightly ought to have been praised for its plucky defense, Casey’s Division suffered a public relations nightmare. Neither the army commander nor the public at large were willing to award Casey’s men any credit for their defense of the Williamsburg Stage Road. It all began with a series of poorly-worded messages issued by the army’s Left Wing commander, Brig. Gen. Samuel Heintzelman. When interpreted broadly, these messages seemed to disparage the fighting qualities of Casey’s troops. On May 31, Heintzelman was the overall commander of the troops on the south side of the Chickahominy, the 3^rd and 4^th Corps. The defense of the Williamsburg Stage Road fell under his jurisdiction. In the evening, after the Confederate attack, Heintzelman sent a series of panicked messages to the army commander, Maj. Gen. George McClellan, complaining that Casey’s troops could not be relied upon to hold the line. At 9:15 P.M., May 31, Heintzelman wrote McClellan that, “I soon met the fugitives of Casey’s Division and I learned that most of them had given way.” Forty-five minutes later, he sent another message, saying that, “Gen. Casey’s Division cannot, however be relied upon for any purpose whatever.”

Surely, Heintzelman intended these messages to inform McClellan that he needed a sizeable number of reinforcements to patch the breach at Seven Pines because, as things stood, he could not rally Casey’s division. It had sustained heavy damage during the afternoon engagement—a point that Heintzelman conveniently forgot to mention in his dispatches. Taken together, Heintzelman’s messages had a subtle effect on McClellan, who took them to mean that Casey’s division was full of poor fighters. Reading between the lines, McClellan believed that Heintzelman was insinuating that Casey’s men had unnecessarily given way. At midnight, after the Union line had been shored up by the 2^nd and 3^rd Corps, McClellan telegraphed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, informing him that, “Casey’s Division was in [the] first line [and] gave way unaccountably & discreditably. This caused a temporary confusion during which some guns & baggage were lost. . . . Our loss is heavy, but that of the enemy must be enormous. With the exception of Casey’s Division our men behaved splendidly.”

McClellan’s message was unfair. Casey’s division had held its position for almost four hours before giving way to superior numbers. To his credit, McClellan retracted his comment after he received the action reports from the 4^th Corps, but that retraction occurred weeks later. Unfortunately, McClellan’s message to Stanton became national news almost immediately. Somehow, the dispatch got leaked to the press. By the end of the week, all the major newspapers across the U.S. were sharing it. There, in big print, the nation learned McClellan’s opinion. Every unit in the Army of the Potomac had behaved well in the recent fight, he said, “with the exception of Casey’s Division.”

Here's an example of the leaked dispatch, reprinted in a Pennsylvania newspaper.

Naturally, the soldiers of Casey’s division took umbrage at McClellan’s ridicule. Adjutant Pruyn was vexed by it. From his perspective, it appeared as if his regiment had fought heroically, against overwhelming odds, and had done so in an exposed position, holding on until it became impossible to defend it any longer. Writing to his mother, Pruyn vented his bitter opinions. Here’s what he said:

But now that it is all over, we are told by Gen. McClellan in his dispatch that ‘the troops all did nobly, except Casey’s Division.’ Or, in other words, because six thousand men did not beat back fifty thousand, they are cowards. This makes us all sick of fighting. To stand in front of such a superior force, and fight as we know we did, and then be branded as cowards, is certainly too much to bear. And then to have it go before the world over McClellan’s signature, of course it will be believed, and we shall be sneered at forever. Why it would have been far better if we had not been in the fight at all, for then nothing would have been said about us. Oh, it does seem to me I can’t get over this! If you see me coming home soon, don’t be surprised. But enough of it. It makes me so indignant I don't want to think of it—if I can help it.

As the month dragged on, the fury of being labeled a coward by General McClellan seemed to have overtaken Pruyn. He could not let go of that phrase: “with the exception of Casey’s Division.” In the middle of June, he wrote to friends in Albany, remarking:

Now every one [in our regiment] is utterly disheartened. How much a few words from one in authority can do. Those words of McClellan’s so unjustly delivered—‘The men all done splendidly except Casey’s Division’—this is what has broken us down. For whatever others have done, the Ninety-sixth New York fought as well as men could fight, and only left the field when the enemy was on three sides of them, and then retired with their faces to the foe, loading and firing as they walked, for they did not run. If the public need proof of what we did, we can give the best of proof—our list of killed and wounded—one man out of every four actually on the field—did any other regiment do this? Our division hardly six thousand strong, held in check more than thirty thousand rebels. Did any other division do this? Oh, is it not hard after all this to be branded as cowards?

In the end, it became too much for him. Pruyn wanted to leave the army as soon as possible. As it happened, he had a legitimate excuse. His father had died only four months earlier, on February 18, leaving his mother widowed. Pruyn felt a deep responsibility to see to her safety and comfort. When he learned of his father’s death, he offered to resign his commission and return home immediately. His mother refused to allow this. She recalled how intent he had been to serve in the army. She would have felt guilty if her son gave up his commission on her account. As Pruyn’s biographer later claimed, “finding her willing to sacrifice every personal consideration to her country’s good, he decided that the claims of his country were paramount.”

Adjutant Charlie Pruyn

But Adjutant Pruyn’s opinion seemed to change after McClellan’s disparagement of Casey’s division hit the press. He could not bring himself to sacrifice his life for a general who did not respect the sacrifice already made by his comrades. Although McClellan eventually retracted his comments, it was too late to keep Pruyn in the field. He approached his regimental commander, Colonel James Fairman, explaining his need to return home to get his family’s affairs in order. With that, Colonel Fairman drafted orders, accepting Pruyn’s resignation. Clearly, Fairman was sorry to see his young adjutant leave:

Camp Ninety-sixth Regiment N. Y. S. Volunteers, Before Richmond, June 17, 1862.

Lieutenant Charles E. Pruyn:

Dear Sir—I herewith transmit your honorable discharge from the service of the United States, and in so doing would express my unfeigned regret at the loss of your companionship and service as a man and officer. I cheerfully give my attestation to your courage and devotion as a soldier of the Union, to which I was witness in the terrific battle of Fair Oaks, before Richmond, May 31^st. And I shall ever remember you with peculiar interest as a soldier, who stood by my side while one out of four was killed or wounded, and one out of three of our regiment was lost in battle. With cordial wishes for your future success, I am truly yours, &c.,

James Fairman, Col. 96^th Reg’t N.Y.S. Vols.

The next day, Pruyn boarded a transport at White House Landing, ready to begin the long journey back to Albany. The ship had barely pulled away from the dock when Pruyn experienced a tinge of regret. Only moments after becoming a civilian, knew he had made a mistake.

Never Eat a Dead Man’s Cake, Part 3; Or, the White Flag at Casey’s Redoubt

 

In the last post, I narrated the tale of Adjutant Charlie Pruyn, an Albany-born soldier who convinced his devoutly Christian mother to allow him to enlist. As a member of the 96^th New York, Pruyn found himself accompanying the vanguard of the Army of the Potomac during the opening of the Peninsula Campaign.

Pruyn experienced his first combat on May 31, 1862, at the Battle of Seven Pines. In the last post, we learned that Pruyn possessed a gentle heart. According to his mother, “he will never come down to anything vicious.” At Seven Pines, Pruyn acted somewhat contrary to his mother’s expectations. He did something that some might call vicious. He ordered his men to fire on a white flag.

As it turned out, it was the correct course of action. Here’s how it happened.

At noon, May 31, 1862, Lieutenant Pruyn walked to the headquarters tent of his regimental commander, Colonel James Fairman. Pruyn handed Fairman a pile of reports. Pruyn, who was quite ill (as were a great many Union soldiers at the time), had taken all night to complete them. At the moment, Pruyn’s regiment, the 96^th New York, was bivouacked at Seven Pines Crossroads, a stopping point along the Williamsburg Stage Road named for a distinctive cluster of pine trees. The rest of the division, Brig. Gen. Silas Casey’s 2^nd Division, 4^th Corps, (6,200 aggregate) was congregated in the same area, forming a vast tent city. The previous week, the area had been hit by heavy rains, turning the landscape into a vast mudpit. The 96^th New York was positioned behind an earthwork called “Casey’s Redoubt,” a pentagonal fortification that housed a battery of artillery. Pruyn’s regiment was not far from the famous twin farm houses that became the battlefield’s primary landmarks. The whole area was full of puddles. Many of the Union earthworks and rifle pits had become small ponds, unusable as defensive positions because of the standing water.

This photograph depicts the battlefield of Seven Pines. Casey's Redoubt is in the foreground. The Twin Houses--landmarks of the battlefield--are in the middle distance. The 96th New York's bivouac was located near the Twin Houses, in the right background.

Pruyn and Fairman had just begun to converse when a Confederate shell came whizzing overhead, exploding only fifty paces from Fairman’s tent. Pruyn said, “If it had been a little lower, . . .” Then, another enemy shot came whirring past, striking a little nearer, interrupting Pruyn mid-sentence. (These were undoubtedly the famous “signal shots” fired by the Confederates, shells meant to indicate the beginning of their attack.) Pruyn’s brigade commander, Brig. Gen. Henry W. Wessells, whose tent was nearby, came over. Yelling at Fairman and Pruyn, he said, “This will never do, if we don’t get out of this some of these boys will get hit!” Fearing a Confederate infantry attack was on its way, Wessells told Pruyn to form the regiment near the road. As more artillery fire came crashing in, splashing the men with mud, the drummers of the 96^th New York beat the long roll. Everywhere, frantic Union soldiers grabbed their weapons from the stacks and formed into line-of-battle. Soon, Casey’s division stretched across the Williamsburg Stage Road, the infantrymen manning the muddy earthworks as best they could. The 96^th New York held a position immediately to the south and on the outside of the pentagonal redoubt. Another regiment, the 81^st New York, joined on the 96^th New York’s left. As Casey’s line took shape, Pruyn could hear the popping of rifle fire coming from the west. The division’s skirmishers were engaging!

Colonel James Fairman commanded the 96th New York at Seven Pines.

Brigade commander Wessells was correct. A massive Confederate attack was on its way. This was part of Maj. Gen. Joseph Johnston’s plan to drive the Army of the Potomac from the gates of Richmond. Four Confederate divisions were concentrating on Brig. Gen. Erasmus Keyes’s 4^th Corps, of which the 96^th New York formed a part. The vanguard of the Confederate attack, Maj. Gen. D. H. Hill’s division, was making its way toward Seven Pines, where thirteen untested regiments of Brig. Gen. Casey’s division were posted. The 96^th New York was about to face its first test of battle.

After Pruyn’s regiment stood at attention, a hail of small arms fire sailed in from overhead, hitting the men as they stood in formation. One soldier fell dead. Colonel Fairman decided to move the regiment to cover. The only protection that could be seen was a tree line to the southwest. Fairman assumed the division’s skirmishers were there, so he decided to go to their support. But when the regiment got halfway across the field, the men saw puffs of smoke. Suspecting they belonged to the oncoming Confederates, and not to the Union skirmishers, Colonel Fairman halted his regiment.

This Google Earth view depicts the location of the Battle of Seven Pines, which is essentially erased by the development of Sandston, Virginia, and the Richmond Airport. The light blue line depicts the Union earthworks. (Take note of the bulge formed by Casey's Redoubt.) The green line depicts the edge of the wartime tree line. At that tree line, the men of the 96th New York encountered the phony white flag.

Nearby, some of the New Yorkers saw a white flag being raised behind a fence. They cried out, “Don’t shoot!” Pruyn’s instincts kicked in. He smelled a rat. Without hesitating, he countermanded the order. As he wrote, “But I remembered the treachery of the rascals, and shouted, ‘It’s them, but they are trying to deceive you, take good aim and let them have it!’”

Apparently, the men of the 96^th New York responded to their adjutant’s orders, delivering their first volley of the war. Pruyn narrated what happened next:

If you could have heard the volley that followed this order of mine you would have heard something. As soon as our boys opened on them they rose up, and then we saw what an escape we had had. There were several thousand men there, and if we had gone down where we were ordered, it is not possible that [any] one [of us] could have escaped alive.

Pruyn’s decision to fire on the phony white flag had flushed out an enemy brigade, the one commanded by Brig. Gen. Robert Rodes, which was coming up from the south in an attempt to flank Casey’s line. Caught in the open, the 96^th New York and the 81^st New York, which came up on its left, returned fire, trying to hold back the Confederate attack. Pruyn recalled, “Oh! how they opened on us. It is a miracle that any of us came off alive. Our boys dropped like sheep, but still they did not flinch. They stood right up to it till the regiment which joined on to us gave way, then our boys fell back to the rifle pits.”

As Pruyn wrote, the two New York regiments beat a retreat back to the muddy earthworks adjoining Casey’s redoubt. Unfortunately, there was not much that could be done to defend this portion of the line. D. H. Hill’s division fell upon the Union earthworks like an avalanche, and two brigades—the one under Rodes and another under Brig. Gen. Gabriel Rains—flanked Casey’s line to the south. Unable to stay at the earthworks, Pruyn and his comrades found themselves having to defend their bivouac. He wrote:

Here [at the earthworks] we only staid a short time, for we found the enemy had what is called a ‘raking fire’ on us, which swept down the ditch in such a manner that one shot would wound or kill several. Here it was that we lost the most, so we fell back to our former position [at the bivouac] and made our last stand. Our men fought nobly, bravely; never flinched under a murderous fire. I was proud of them. The man next to me was shot down dead with the colors in his hand. The Colonel caught them and looked around for some one to take them. I sprang forward and took and held them till a sergeant came and relieved me.

The color bearer who fell dead was Sergeant William Henry Trombly, age twenty, of Plattsburgh. Apparently, in the past few months, Pruyn had become quite attached to him. As Pruyn related to his mother, “The color bearer who was killed, was one that I had always taken a great interest in, for the reason that I had promised his father, in Plattsburgh, that I would exercise a care over him. He did not belong to my company, but that made no difference. Poor fellow, he died nobly, but how I pity his poor father!”

Sergeant William H. Trombly

The whole experienced was shocking, to say the least, but Pruyn was able to manage his fear. He told his mother this:

Perhaps it was caused by excitement, but I really knew no fear; and although the bullets flew around me thick as hail, I thought no more of them than of so many pebble stones. You may think I want to brag, but it is not so; and this is not my case only. If a man is going to show fear, he will do it before the fight. Once in it, and there is no time to think of self. How long we were here I know not. I was busy exhorting the men to stand up to it, ‘give it to them,’ ‘pop them down, boys,’ ‘take good aim and bring down one of the rascals;’ until, finally, on looking around, I saw that, with the exception of the Colonel, two or three officers, and about a dozen men, we were alone.

The Confederate attack against Casey’s division reached its climax at 3:30 P.M. At that moment, the whole of D. H. Hill’s division overran the Union bivouac, seizing the area around the twin houses. Dislodged from the redoubt and the adjoining earthworks, the bulk of Casey’s division fled eastward, heading for a line of abatis near the cluster of seven pine trees. There, Keyes’s other division—the one under Brig. Gen. Darius Couch—was arriving as reinforcements. Pruyn, who had stayed at the bivouac for a bit too long, now had to make a difficult decision. Should he surrender to the Confederates or run for safety? He narrated his thoughts:

I looked across the open ground, and thought that my chance of getting over it safely was out of the question. Actually, at that moment, I would not have given two cents for my life. Thus I soliloquized: ‘Pruyn, my boy, it’s impossible for you to get over there in safety. You haven’t one chance in ten thousand; but then you know, my boy, the rebels don’t give quarter, and they will be in here in less than two minutes; so, if you don't get there, you’re done for anyway. So here goes.’ I started; I did not run, mother—I never will do that; but I walked, and it did seem to me I never should reach the woods.

But he did reach them—and without a scratch. As the rebels took possession of the bivouac, they began looting it. This might explain why no Confederate soldier attempted to kill or capture Pruyn as he made his slow-paced retreat. As Couch’s division took up the fight at the abatis, Pruyn went looking for his comrades. Not many could be found. The retreat from Casey’s redoubt had happened so messily that none of the regiments in the division could be reformed that night. Pruyn wrote, “Our regiment was all gone in—broken and scattered. I met all that was left of it that night; fragments that the Colonel had collected together and marched about two miles to the rear.” Total losses in the 96^th New York amounted to fifty-eight: eleven enlisted men killed or mortally wounded, twenty-seven officers and men wounded, and twenty officers and enlisted men missing or captured.

This illustration depicts the Confederate attack against Casey's Redoubt. This view is from the Confederate line, looking east. The redoubt and twin houses are visible in the left middle-distance. The woods where the white flag appeared are in the right background. The woods where Lt. Pruyn walked in retreat are in the far background.

Pruyn survived the Battle of Seven Pines without a scratch, even though he had been in the thick of it. To me, it seems as if his fate had been determined by two assumptions he held concerning the nature of his enemy: 1) he believed the rebels were known for their dirty tricks, and 2) he believed the rebels didn’t take prisoners. The former conjecture caused Pruyn to order his men to fire on the white flag and the latter conjecture convinced Pruyn not to surrender.

It’s not really the purpose of this post to analyze from where these assumptions came. It’s enough to say that more men in his regiment would have fallen if Pruyn hadn’t ordered them to fire on that white flag. Clearly, Pruyn had good instincts in combat, enough to convince him to cast aside his soft-heartedness and be a little more vicious than his mother would have wanted him to be.

Never Eat a Dead Man’s Cake, Part 2; Or, Charlie Pruyn Goes to War

 

In the previous post, I introduced readers to the end of the story, an unclaimed box of cake on the docks at City Point. To whom was it addressed? Answering that question is purpose of this installment.

Charles Elisha Pruyn was born on November 11, 1840, in Albany, New York. His parents were Colonel Samuel Pruyn and Mary Putman Pruyn. “Charlie,” as he was known to his family, grew up in a well-to-do Christian household. He received his education at the Albany Academy and at the Middle Dutch Church of Albany, where he started as a pupil and eventually became a teacher at the Sabbath School. His mother appears to have had a strong influence on his personality, driving him to lead a life of purity and piety. At one point, a family friend wanted his own son to associate with Charlie Pruyn, hoping he would be a good influence. But this same friend was also worried that his own son’s wild behavior might rub off on Charlie. Mary Pruyn was not afraid of this. She responded to the request with a maternal sense of certainty: “You may rest assured your fears for Charlie are groundless; he will never come down to anything vicious; his morals are impregnable, and I feel sure his course will always be to draw others up to his level.”

Adjutant Charles E. Pruyn

It’s important to recognize that much of what we know about Charlie Pruyn comes through the filter of his mother, Mary, and his biographer, Reverend Rufus Clark, a Presbyterian minister who meticulously scripted a story that Mary Pruyn wanted to tell. The result was Clark’s epic, Heroes of Albany. As an historian with a critical eye, I am quick to doubt the sincerity of a book written for the purpose of spreading religious propaganda. Clark told only the stories of Christian soldiers who went to war. He wanted his book to inspire other church-goers by showcasing the connections between Christianity and the Union victory. Thus, Clark was not an historian, but a religious booster. At the bottom line, we must be wary of the selective way he described Charlie Pruyn. But that being said, there are certain truths we can draw from Mary Pruyn’s and Rufus Clark’s presentation of Charlie. It’s clear that Mary Pruyn expected much from her son, particularly when it came to his moral values. Did he really “draw others up to his level?” I don’t think the answer to that question is important. But that particular assertion is important in another way, because it forces us to recognize that Mary Pruyn wanted her son to adhere to specific principles as he grew into manhood. Notwithstanding what Charlie himself wanted, Mary Pruyn envisioned her eldest son encompassing a life of piety, one that would benefit her family’s standing within the Christian community.

There is some evidence to suggest that Charlie Pruyn did not want what his mother wanted—not exactly, anyway. When the Civil War began, Pruyn was only twenty years old, and like many young men, he wanted to participate in it. According to Clark, Charlie Pruyn was keen to enlist right away. He contended, “When the news of the fall of Sumter was received, his face glowed with shame and indignation. He seemed to feel it a personal insult, and for many days he was too excited to eat or sleep.” Both of his parents resisted the idea, particularly his mother, who believed her son was destined for something greater than military service. Thus denied, Charlie Pruyn stayed at home. During the war’s first summer, the first wave of U.S. Volunteers went to the front, emptying Albany of Charlie Pruyn’s friends and peers. As the weeks went by and the war continued without result, he grew restless. The narrative of what happened next, which seems to have been constructed by his mother’s recollections, paints the picture of a reluctant parent acquiescing to her child’s earnest desire to be a soldier:

Hearing him restlessly pacing the floor one night, after midnight, she went up to his room and said: ‘Charlie, my dear son, why are you so excited?’ He answered: ‘Mother, how can I help it; how can I remain here at home and sleep quietly in my bed, when the country is in such a state? Why, mother, I don’t want to go into the street anymore; I am ashamed to look people in the face; a strong, healthy fellow like me, staying at home and enjoying all these comforts when the country is in danger, and needs my services.’ His mother then told him, that God had made her feel that it was his duty to go, and that his parents had no right to interpose obstacles in the way. She engaged to obtain his father’s consent, only stipulating that he should first endeavor to procure a commission; but if he failed to do so in a reasonable time, she would not object to his going as a private. The change immediately produced by this conversation was wonderful. He expressed the greatest delight and gratitude, and at once set himself to work to obtain a commission in some regiment already in the field.

It was now autumn 1861, and another wave of U.S. Volunteers was being raised by the War Department. Pruyn learned that a new regiment was being raised up in Plattsburgh, New York, 160 miles to the north, on the western shore of Lake Champlain. Knowing there were positions available for officers, Charlie Pruyn packed his bags and left. On October 19, he enlisted in the newly-formed unit, which was then known as “Macomb’s Regiment,” and he applied to become an officer. The regiment filled slowly over the next few months, and Pruyn’s commission as first lieutenant arrived on February 20, 1862. Upon muster, Pruyn belonged to Company A, 96^th New York Volunteer Infantry, but for much of his time with his regiment, he served as acting adjutant, completing paperwork at regimental headquarters. On March 11, 1862, the regiment, finally full, left for the front. At Washington, the 96^th New York was brigaded with three Pennsylvania regiments, forming the 2^nd Brigade, 3^rd Division, 4^th Corps, under the command of Brig. Gen. William H. Keim. Along with the rest of the Army of the Potomac, the 96^th New York embarked on transports bound for the Yorktown Peninsula. Pruyn and his comrades participated in the last three weeks of the Siege of Yorktown (April 17 to May 4), and on May 5, the regiment participated in the pursuit of Confederate forces at Williamsburg, Virginia. The 96^th New York came under fire there, but it lost none killed or wounded.

The next day, May 6, the 96^th New York marched onto the Williamsburg battlefield and Charlie Pruyn saw the dead lying in heaps. The bulk of the combat had been carried on by Brig. Gen. Samuel Heintzelman’s 3^rd Corps against Maj. Gen. James Longstreet’s Confederate division. The sight of the battlefield shocked Pruyn. He wrote home to his mother:

What I saw I cannot attempt to describe, but never, never shall I forget it. I thought, what a horrible thing is war! And as I saw men lying dead, torn into all imaginable shapes by cannon and grape-shot, I thought of the homes made desolate, and the hearts that would bleed, and the many who would remember this day when they were made widows and orphans, with sorrow as long as they lived. And I thanked God most fervently that my poor life was spared, and that in His great goodness He had not permitted me even to be wounded.

Given this sentiment, I think it’s quite likely that much his mother’s estimation of Charlie was correct. She told a friend that Charlie “will never come down to anything vicious.” Even though he had chosen to become an officer in the Union army, he still felt sympathy for the families of the enemy dead, the widows and orphans would experience “sorrow as long as they lived.” Truly, he was his mother’s child.

This sketch by E. S. Hall depicts the field of Williamsburg, where Lt. Charlie Pruyn first saw the war's tragedy.

As Adjutant Pruyn would soon find out, he would, in fact, see this sight again, a mere twenty-five days later, and he would have the misfortune of being in the thick of it.