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.