He Impaled an Enemy Officer

On July 30, 1864, the soldiers of the 45^th Pennsylvania found themselves in a tight spot. They constituted part of the Army of the Potomac’s assaulting column at the Battle of the Crater, and by noon, everything had gone to Hell. The Union attack had stalled, and with a Confederate counterthrust bearing down on them, it looked increasingly doubtful that the Pennsylvanians could hold onto the enemy earthworks captured by their corps that morning.

The Pennsylvanians braced for the counterattack, and a swarm of Confederates stormed over the parapet, descending onto them and their comrades from the 1^st Brigade, 2^nd Division, 9^th Corps. During the melee, a pistol-bearing Confederate officer attacked the commander of the 45^th Pennsylvania, Captain Theodore Gregg, demanding his surrender. The meeting did not go well for the Confederate. In a move that surprised everyone who witnessed it, Captain Gregg grabbed the Confederate officer’s pistol, drew out his sword, and ran the Confederate officer through the body with it. The officer fell, mortally wounded. (Incidentally, the sword broke. When the Confederate officer fell, Gregg came away with just a hilt.)

The image of Gregg impaling this unfortunate Confederate officer on his sword imprinted itself onto the memory tablets of every witness who survived the fighting. Indeed, how often did a Civil War soldier get to see an old-fashioned skewering? It did not take long for those who witnessed the remarkable incident to circulate stories about it. On August 5, Private Eugene Beauge, a member of Company G, 45^th Pennsylvania, wrote home to his hometown newspaper, the Wellsboro Agitator. He related, “Capt. Gregg, commanding our regiment, was fiercely attacked by a rebel officer, when, seizing a pistol from the hand of his assailant, the Captain knocked his adversary down and ran him through with a sword.”

Another witness, Lieutenant Samuel Haynes, also of Company G, 45^th Pennsylvania, wrote home: “Captain Gregg  . . . did some big fighting in the Rebel pits on Saturday. He killed a Rebel officer who led the charge. The Rebel caught Gregg by the throat and placing a pistol at his head demanded him to surrender. Gregg said: ‘You impudent scoundrel, how dare you ask me to surrender!’ and wrenched the pistol out of his hand, knocked him down with it, drew his sword and ran him through the body and left his sword in him. Then Gregg said, ‘You —, I guess you are my prisoner now’.”

Captain Josiah N. Jones, a member of the 6^th New Hampshire, in the same division, told comrades about the same incident, although he probably did not see the scene first-hand:

I cannot refrain from narrating one incident told to me. Captain Greggs [sic], of the Forth-Fifth Pennsylvania, an old Mexican soldier, was present near the edge of the crater. A rebel officer on the other side near Greggs, pointed a rifle at his head, and called upon him to surrender. With a quick movement of his arm, Greggs knocked away the hand of the rebel officer, at the same time drawing his sword with the other, and running him through. The officer, impaled with the sword, fell back on the other side of the breastwork. General [William F.] Bartlett, seeing the daring act, unbuckled his sword-belt and presented it to Greggs, saying, ‘Captain, you are more worthy to wear it than I am.’ It was truly a recognition of gallantry by a brave officer.

Of all the reports that described the incident, the least impressive was the one written by Gregg himself. When he submitted his after action report, he could not help but mention the incredible stabbing, but he did not describe it with the same vivid detail used by his fellow soldiers. He wrote, “A large rebel officer, who appeared to be in command of the force, rushed upon me, and catching me by the throat, ordered me to surrender, at the same time bringing his revolver to my head. I succeeded in taking the revolver from him, and after a sharp struggle left him dead on the spot.”

Who was Captain Theodore Gregg? It would be best to describe him as a career military man. He was born in 1820 in the town of Milesburg, Pennsylvania, (then called “Central City”), which made him forty-four-years-old when he fought in the Battle of the Crater. In his late-teenage years, he left Pennsylvania to fight in the Second Seminole War. Once that conflict ended, he served four years in the U.S. Navy, before joining the Regular Army in time to fight in the Mexican-American War. Gregg served as quartermaster for the 4^th U.S. Infantry during the Sieges of Monterrey and Veracruz. In fact, Gregg was a friend of Lieutenant Ulysses. S. Grant.

In some ways, I find Gregg’s friendship with Grant more interesting than his behavior at Petersburg’s crater. Gregg’s relationship with Grant became known to his men a few days after the debacle. One day, Gregg insisted on visiting the Army of the Potomac’s headquarters at City Point. Lieutenant Samuel Haynes accompanied him. At first, the sentries would not permit their entry, but Gregg’s feisty demeanor and his insistence that he knew Lieutenant General Grant personally convinced the sentries to let them pass. Haynes recalled:

Yesterday afternoon Captain Gregg and I called on General Grant at his headquarters at City Point. Gregg was bound to see him and insisted on having me go with him. The sentinels didn’t want to let us go in, I suppose on account of our rough appearance. We neither had shoulder straps, vests nor shirt collars on; our pants were stuck in our boots, we hadn’t been shaved for several days and altogether presented a very unmilitary appearance and not exactly the thing in which to appear before the lieutenant general commanding the Armies of the United States. Gregg swore some awful oaths that he had most urgent business with the General and the sentinel let us pass.

Haynes expected a polite conversation, but Gregg insisted on being rude to Grant and his staff officers. He flew into Grant’s cabin and unleashed a furious tirade, letting the general-in-chief and the staff officers learn his opinion of the recent Petersburg operation. Haynes continued, “We rushed in, took off our hats and Gregg opened his battery. I expected that we would get kicked out or be ordered in arrest but Gregg was equal to the occasion. He introduced himself as one of Grant’s old soldiers in Mexico in the same regiment (the Fourth United States Infantry) and then introduced me.”

Although Gregg spoke disrespectfully to Grant, it did not get him arrested. Good-naturedly, Grant listened to his old Mexican-American War colleague. As Haynes explained, “General Grant politely asked us to be seated; then he and Gregg rehearsed their old campaigns and ‘fought their battles over again.’ We stayed an hour. Gregg talked to General Grant very much as he would to me. The General expressed himself very much pleased to meet Gregg and when we were leaving asked us to call again. I don’t think I will call again unless I have some business. General Grant asked Gregg many questions about the members of their old regiment and about the fight of July 30^th before Petersburg.”

This tale has led me to conclude a few things. First, Captain Theodore Gregg must have been one of the bravest men in the Union army! What other Union officer could stab a Confederate officer in the gut and then insult the lieutenant general commanding all Union forces just a few days later? My stars, what a bold man! Second, it strikes me that Grant must have been used to hearing Gregg complain, and he knew the best way to deal with a strong-willed man like him was to hear him out. In fact, I’m reminded of an incident that occurred on May 5, 1864, when a frustrated Union general, Brig. Gen. Charles Griffin, threw any equally absurd temper tantrum at army headquarters. According to a witness, Major Theodore Lyman, when Grant heard Griffin’s outburst, he called over to General Meade, asking, “Who is this General Gregg?” Meade replied, “His name is Griffin, not Gregg, and that’s only his way of talking.”

Wait? When Grant heard a random Union general’s outburst, the first name he thought was, “Gregg”? Was he thinking about Captain Gregg, his colleague from the Mexican-American War? Perhaps it is a stretch, but maybe Grant was so used to hearing Gregg’s flare-ups that any outburst triggered his memory of him.

In any event, it is amazing to consider the physical power it must have taken to stab a person through the body with a Model 1850 Foot Officer’s sword. At the Battle of the Crater, this positively medieval form of warfare could be seen in once instance, at least. I’ll bet Gregg remembered that emotionally-charged moment for the rest of his life, and face of his victim—whoever he was—screaming wildly and bleeding out, with Gregg’s shattered sword lodged in his gut.

Gregg died in 1878. He is buried in Eagle Cemetery in his hometown, Milesburg.

Capt. Theodore Gregg, commander of the 45th Pennsylvania, impaled a Confederate officer on his sword.

"No One Can Die Too Young."

On May 10, 1864, Brigadier General James Clay Rice’s brigade (2^nd Brigade, 4^th Division, 5^th Corps) made a probing attack against Confederate earthworks along the Po River. After failing to find a weak point, Rice and his men fell back to their own entrenchments. Shortly after noon, another brigade came to the relief of Rice’s men, but it arrived too far to the left. Thinking that he might be able to call the errant brigade over to the correct position by shouting at it loudly, Rice mounted the earthworks in front of his command. In a minute, he fell back down, struck in the left thigh by a Confederate musket ball. The projectile had nicked the general’s femoral artery and he bled copiously. It took an exceedingly long time for nearby soldiers to apply a tourniquet, but eventually, they stopped the general’s blood loss. Eventually, four men carried him to the rear on a blanket and to a field hospital. Immediately, surgeons performed an amputation, but they worried that Rice had lost too much blood for it to do any good.

Rice’s aide, Lieutenant Archibald McClure Bush, held the general’s hand throughout the surgery, and soon after, he was joined by none other than Major General George G. Meade, who dismounted and came to Rice’s side. According to an account, Rice told General Meade, “I am badly hurt, General, they do all they can for me. I had tried to do my duty but am ready to die for my country.” Meade stayed awhile, giving Rice some hearty encouragement, but soon, he had to move on. Lieutenant Bush stayed with Rice until the end. At one point, Rice stated emphatically: “No one can die too young if, loving Christ, he dies for his country.”

Next, Rice transmitted a goodbye message, one that he wanted Bush to deliver to his wife, Josephine, and finally he asked that Bush roll him over. When Bush asked why, Rice replied, “Turn me toward the enemy, I wish to die with my face to the foe.” Rice said only one more thing, “Pray for me, lieutenant.” Then, he expired.

Rice’s lifeless corpse experienced a lengthy post-mortem tour. After medical personnel boxed it up for transit to Belle Plain, it traveled by ship, first to New York City, under military escort, where it lay at Madison Square Presbyterian Church, and next to his hometown of Albany for a second procession, until finally, mourners committed it to the earth at Albany Rural Cemetery. New York’s governor, Horatio Seymour, even declared May 16 a day of mourning in honor of Rice, requiring all the flags on the capitol grounds to be carried at half-mast.

One particular thing interests me about Rice’s final words. One of his last lines to Lieutenant Bush emphasized: “No one can die too young if, loving Christ, he dies for his country.” This was not the first time Rice had said these lines. In fact, ten days before dying, Rice wrote to his mother, articulating the same sentiment. While his brigade was at Brandy station, Rice penned these words:

We are about to commence the campaign, the greatest in magnitude, strength and importance since the beginning of the war. God grant that victory may crown our arms; that this wicked rebellion may be crushed, our Union preserved, and peace and prosperity again be restored to our beloved country. My faith and hope and confidence are in God alone, and I know that you feel the same. I trust that God may again graciously spare my life, as He has in the past, and yet one cannot fall too early if, loving Christ, he dies for his country.

In modern times, we consider dying too young a tragedy. Probably, a great many people in 1864 thought the same way. Yet, soldiers had to accept the sad fact that men died young all the time. Clearly, that thought weighed heavily on the mind of General Rice as he lived out his final days. Yet, he made peace with the fact that he might die young. His letter to his mother indicated this, and he repeated the same phrase to his aide, Lieutenant Bush.

In pondering Rice’s fascination with the idea of dying young, I conclude that he had only recently come to terms with it. However, the seeds of his acceptance had been planted about two years earlier. It had happened when he watched a young New York Zouave bleed out on the floor of a Washington, D.C. hospital. As Rice marched his brigade into the bloody Overland Campaign of 1864, I’ll bet the memory of the final hours of Sergeant William Hogeboom was not far from his mind.

 

1st Lt. Archibald McClure Bush, 95th New York Volunteers, stood at General Rice's side as he expired.

 

 

Brig. Gen. James Clay Rice, shown as commander of the 2nd Brig., 4th Div., 5th Army Corps.

 

"The Sergeant Has Halted."

On September 10, 1862, Colonel James Clay Rice (44^th New York Infantry) walked into a hospital in Washington, D.C. (He never specified which one, but probably it was either Armory Square Hospital or Finlay Hospital.) As Rice later explained, “It was perhaps ten days after the second battle of Manassas, that I visited one of the hospitals near Washington, for the purpose of ascertaining if any of the disabled of my own command had been borne there, and if so, of speaking to them a kind, cheerful word, always so grateful to a wounded soldier.”

While passing through one of the wards, two strangers—a sister and an aunt of a wounded man–accosted Rice, asking him if he would stand by the couch of their relative while a surgeon amputated his limb. Rice recalled, “They were both weeping, but the wounded soldier, although suffering intensely, met me with a smile and saluted me. I sat down by his couch, and took his hand in mine.”

Rice never mentioned the name of the soldier, but details from his account render it certain that he met twenty-five-year-old Sergeant William B. Hogeboom (Company K, 5^th New York Infantry). Hogeboom’s regiment, the 5^th New York Zouaves, had been decimated at Second Manassas, losing 297 officers and men. By mid-September, the hospitals in Washington were choked with wounded Zouaves.

Sergeant Hogeboom was in rough shape. He had received a gunshot wound on Saturday, August 30, but had not been removed from the field until Wednesday, September 4. That day, a surgeon dressed his wound and put him on an ambulance to Washington. The next day, Hogeboom endured his first surgery, the physicians deciding it necessary to amputate the damaged limb. When Rice encountered him, it was five days later, and the arteries had commenced to slough away. The surgeons decided that a second amputation was needed.

Hogeboom regaled Rice with the tale of his survival on the field of Second Manassas. He said:

 

[I] remained where . . . [I] fell . . . , with no food save a few hard crackers left in my haversack; and no water, except that which God gave me from heaven in rain and dew, and which I caught in my blanket.  . . . You know, Colonel, how God remembers us wounded soldiers with rain, after the battle is over, and when our lips are parched and our tongues are burning with fever.

 

At this point, Hogeboom paused in telling his story, and Rice “noticed that his voice was weaker and his face more pale and deathlike.” Looking to the floor, Rice observed blood trickling down from the rubber poncho on which the sergeant was lying. Clearly, the wound had hemorrhaged. He called a surgeon to the bedside. After a short examination, consulting with other surgeons in attendance, the chief physician told Rice that re-amputation would be useless, saying that, in all probability, Hogeboom would not survive the hour. Rice explained the situation to Hogeboom’s aunt and sister. He remembered, “Tears filled their eyes, and they sobbed bitterly; but their grief was borne as Christian women alone can bear such sorrow. . . . The sister, wiping away her tears, and taking a prayer book from her dress, asked me if I would tell her brother how soon he must die, and if I would read him ‘the prayer for the dying’.”

Rice attempted to talk to the sergeant one last time, but he found it difficult. Hogeboom had grown delirious and seemed to think that he was still on the march. To communicate, Rice pretended to issue orders to the dying sergeant. Rice related:

I went to the couch, and stood beside the dying soldier. “Sergeant” I said, “we shall halt soon—we are not going to march much further today.”

“Are we going to halt, colonel,” said the sergeant, “so early in the day? Are we going to bivouac before night?”

“Yes sergeant,” I replied, “the march is nearly over—the bugle call will soon sound the ‘halt’.”

The sergeant’s mind wandered for a moment but my tears interpreted to him my words.

“Oh! colonel,” he said, “do you mean that I am so soon to die?”

“Yes, sergeant,” I said, “you are soon to die.”

“Well, colonel, I am glad I am going to die—I want to rest—the march has been so long that I am weary—I am tired—I want to halt—I want to be with Christ—I want to be with my Saviour.”

Rice recited the prayer, and then Hogeboom began saying his goodbyes. He took off a ring, kissed it, telling his sister that he must give it to their mother. He said, “Tell my mother, sister, that this is for her, and that I remembered her and loved her, dying.” Then, taking a second ring from his hand, he kissed it, and said, “Sister, give this to her to whom my heart is pledged, and tell her—tell her to come to me in heaven.” Finally, addressing Rice, Sergeant Hogeboom said, “And colonel, tell my comrades of the arm—the brave army of the Potomac—that I died bravely, died for the good old flag.”

According to Rice, “These were the last words of the dying soldier. His pulse now beat feebler and feebler, the blood tickled faster and faster down the bed-side, the dew of death came and went, and flickering for a moment over the pallid face, at length rested—rested forever. The sergeant has halted. His soul is now in heaven.”

Of course, we historians must be a bit skeptical of Rice’s account. He was a religious man and deeply dedicated to his country, so his version of what Hogeboom said in his final moments might not have been word-for-word the truth, but what Rice preferred to hear. However, we have no reason to doubt that this incident occurred. Rice watched a wounded soldier die, that much is certain. I have every reason to believe that Rice remembered this moment for the rest of his life. When he died from a serious gunshot wound two years later—the subject of my next blog post—he met his end the same way as Hogeboom, on the floor of a field hospital, comforted by a superior.

It must rip out a piece of a soldier’s soul to watch a fellow soldier die. But sometimes, watching a brave man die can provide a lifetime of emotional fortitude.

Sergeant Hogeboom was laid to rest at Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut.

 

Colonel James Clay Rice, shown as commander, 44th New York Volunteers.

 

Marched to Death

On June 17, 1863, the Army of the Potomac’s 5^th Corps trudged along a dusty road that connected Centreville to a small village called Gum Springs (modern-day Arcola).  It was a tough march, one that lasted twelve hours. That day, the 5^th Corps started out in Manassas Junction. Thus, it covered seventeen miles. Balmy weather slowed the pace of the march and the soldiers suffered intensely under the penetrating rays of the sun. One of the participants, Captain Francis Adams Donaldson, wrote, “We suffered dreadfully on the march to this place for water and the intense heat. We have lost a dozen men or more in the brigade from sun stroke, and yesterday Lt. Col. Gleason of the 25^th New York was overcome and died from the sun’s effect, and as soon as we halted, was buried in a little church yard hard by.”

Donaldson’s account is typical. Without fail, the 5^th Corps soldiers who wrote about the June 17 hike mentioned the corps’ most famous sunstroke casualty, Lieutenant Colonel Shepard Gleason, age twenty-five. No doubt, it was shocking for them to learn that a regimental commander might die from heat exhaustion. Unlike the enlisted men, Gleason rode his horse and did not have to burden himself with a rifle or tenting equipment. Yet, even that did not save him from death—testament to the intensity of the heat endured on that awful day.

Even more amazing is the fact that Gleason was only nine days short of mustering out. The 25^th New York was a two-year regiment. It had left New York City in the summer of 1861 under the promise that it would muster out on June 26, 1863. Recently, the regiment had been lightly engaged at Chancellorsville, but that proved to be its last battle. Probably, the New Yorkers expected to wait out the remainder of their service while in bivouac, but Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s pursuit of the Army of Northern Virginia during the second week of June roused the defeated bluecoats from their encampments along the Rappahannock River. The entire army—all 90,000 of them—went ahead with a series of exhausting marches during one of the hottest weeks of the year. That urgency—the need to move quickly after the fall of the Union garrison at Winchester—killed Gleason, and it did so as his enlistment was about to expire.

What baffles me most is the fact that no one made any effort to transport Gleason’s remains back to his home in Rochester. Logic dictated that the regiment could have easily boxed up his corpse and shipped it north. Members of the regiment knew that the army did not intend for the 25^th New York to participate in the remainder of the grueling campaign, chasing the Confederates into Pennsylvania. In fact, the order detaching the 25^th New York arrived on June 20, three days after Gleason perished. At first, the officers in his brigade considered packaging Gleason’s body, but then decided against it. Writing to the New York Herald, one soldier explained: “In my last letter I mentioned the death of Lieut. Col. Gleason from sunstroke. It had then been arranged to send his remains home; but subsequently it was decided to bury him in this place, and his remains now lie in the graveyard of the old church here.”

The day after the corps arrived at Gum Springs, Maj. Gen. George Sykes issued orders to halt and not resume the march until June 19, when the weather cooled. Amid a terrible rainstorm, the soldiers of the 25^th New York formed up to say goodbye to their fallen commander. So continued the soldier who wrote to the Herald, “His burial was an impressive scene: for no more gallant, efficient and popular officer was ever in this corps. Although raining violently, there was a large attendance of officers, besides the entire regiment, attended by the Second United States infantry band. . . . The deceased,  . . . by his talents, which were of a high and brilliant order, and his gallantry, shown in every action, rose to the position he held at the time of his decease. Excepting at Shepherdstown, he took part in every battle in which this army has participated. His name and services, high accomplishments and courtesy will ever remain green in the memory of his old comrades in arms.”

Eulogistic words from the nineteenth-century often brushed over the complexity of a person’s personality, but it is safe to say that Gleason was a popular officer. Few others could boast so meteoric a rise. Back in 1861, Gleason enlisted as a private in the 13^th New York Infantry. In October, he transferred to the 25^th New York, mustering in as a second lieutenant in Company K. His promotion to lieutenant colonel came on May 9, a few days after his regiment returned from the Chancellorsville battlefield. Thus, he rose from private to lieutenant colonel in less than two years. On June 26, an alumnus from Rochester Collegiate Institute, Robert Wilson, wrote to his favorite professor, informing him of Gleason’s death:

My dear professor:

You will, of course, remember Mr. Gleason who was a member of your class in 1856, when we were reading Cicero. Yesterday’s paper has the announcement of his death from exhaustion or from sun stroke during the late march of his regiment, the 25th N. Y. V. His death was sudden and quite unexpected by his fellow soldiers. He was found dead on the morning of last Thursday. I saw the Colonel under whom he served (Johnson) and he seemed much affected by the death of one for whom his fellow officers and men entertained so much respect and esteem. I have spoken to several of the officers and men of his regiment, and they all, without exception, speak in terms of unbounded praise, not only of the brilliancy and efficiency as an officer, but speak of him also as a true man and courteous gentleman. One of them said to me to-day, that had Mr. Gleason lived, he must certainly have risen to a position of eminence; for in him were displayed those rare qualities of mind, temper and manner, which go to make up the chivalrous soldier and the able officer.

When I learned two years ago that he had enlisted as a private in the old 13th Regiment of Rochester, I could not but feel sad, while I volunteered the prediction that he would not be long in the ranks. I was not disappointed. His talents raised him through all the grades of Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, till, at his death he held the responsible and honorable position of Lieut. Colonel. I am told also that only his modesty forbid him from going another step higher, having refused the position of Colonel but a few weeks since.

I like to remember and keep track of the old members of the Collegiate, and I always consider it a treat when I see one. Among them all there is not one for whom my respect and affection is more profoundly sincere than for Shepherd Gleason [sic]. During our acquaintance in Rochester as fellow students I loved to admire the many noble qualities of his nature, and have always felt proud in being a sharer in his courteous and generous friendship. I feel that in his decease the United States army has lost one of its best officers and the community one of its best citizens.

Sed ne longum sit [Latin for, “Indeed, let me speak briefly.”]: You will pardon me if I have taken too much of your attention with this scribble, for I could not withhold my tribute of respect to the memory of one for whom my affection is equaled only by the exalted opinion I have ever held for his manly excellence and various genius.

Currently, a small gravestone sits in Riga Cemetery, Monroe County, New York, honoring Gleason’s death. If his earthly remains are buried there, then, at some point, friends from Rochester journeyed to Gum Springs to claim them.

The whole story leaves behind some unanswered questions. First, why did the officers of the 5^th Corps choose to leave Gleason’s body, leaving it buried in the graveyard of an old Virginia church? Second, which church was it? (None of the accounts say.) Third, how did Gleason’s family manage to recover the remains? I do wonder about the answers.

Regardless, I grimace whenever I contemplate the grueling seventeen-mile march of June 17, 1863, a trek that killed seventeen men in the 5^th Corps. One of them, Gleason, had only to survive nine more days in order to go home. Rather than accept the fact that his regiment would be of no practical use in the upcoming campaign, the army chose to march him to death.

 

Lt. Col. Shepard Gleason

In My Time of Dying

Every Civil War nerd knows the dying words of Stonewall Jackson. (For the uninitiated, they are, “Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees.”) We know where Jackson died, when he died, and who surrounded him as he breathed his last. Indeed, we might even make an educated guess as to what was on his mind as he expired.

We are often at a loss to do the same for the other 620,000 soldiers who perished. Not all were lucky enough to have their last words recorded. I have, however, found an exception to this rule. His name was Simeon Smith. He died on November 7, 1863.

That day, five regiments from the Union 6^th Corps made a daring attack against Confederate earthworks at Rappahannock Station. Although Smith’s regiment was not involved in the assault, it was close enough to the action to come under fire. During the fighting, a stray shell struck the ranks of Company I, 10^th Massachusetts, mortally wounding two men. One of them was Private Simeon P. Smith, a twenty-two-year-old soldier from Meredith, New Hampshire. The Confederate shell shattered his left knee, which might have meant instant death for him, but Smith had the wherewithal to draw out a handkerchief, tie it around his leg, and then use his bayonet to create a makeshift tourniquet.

Unfortunately, the tourniquet bought Smith only a few hours of additional life. An ambulance carried him to a hospital in town, but the surgeons pronounced him a lost cause. A chaplain from the 77^th New York, Norman Fox, came over to give Smith his final absolution. Fox remembered, “I found a young man of the 10^th Mass. Regiment, with his leg crushed and mangled by a piece of shell. The shock had been so severe that amputation was useless, and he was sinking rapidly. I inquired concerning his religious history. It was the old story,—a bright hope, active church membership, army life and irregularities, and the abandonment of his profession. ‘And now,’ said he, if there can be forgiveness for such a wanderer, pray for me’.”

Chaplain Fox did his sworn duty, to pray for the soul of a dying soldier in his final hour. He noted how the whole scene looked rather bizarre. He felt awkward about lifting up a prayer amid the assorted group of soldiers who stood nearby:

I confess I felt more backwardness than was right. There stood a circle of rough soldiers surveying the solemn scene with morbid curiosity. There stood another group, more educated and refined,—a knot of surgeons, some of whom, I knew, had no belief in God or eternity, and considered my interview with the dying man as at best but amiable uselessness. But there lay the sinking sufferer, and I wore the uniform of a minister of Christ. Bending over the table where he lay, I asked the Good Shepherd to pardon the returning wanderer. Murmured responses throughout the prayer disclosed his own earnestness in the petition; the smothered hope revived again; and faint at first, but growing brighter and brighter, there beamed on him the full radiance of that faith which supports in the stern hour.

As an aside, Smith had a family member at his final bedside. Another young soldier stood by, affectionately smoothing Smith’s hair. Initially, Fox believed he was just a hospital steward. But growing suspicious, Fox asked him, “Is this a friend of yours?”

The soldier replied, “It is my younger brother.” Indeed, Private Smith’s older brother, Corporal Hanniel P. Smith, served in the same company. His company commander allowed the older Smith to accompany Simeon to the field hospital.

At this point, Fox decided to sing a hymn, “Why Should We Start and Fear to Die?” It dated back to the 1830s, but the lyrics later became more well-known when it was incorporated into a popular gospel hymn entitled, “In My Time of Dying,” which, among other things, was commercialized by both Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin. Typically, “Why Should We Start and Fear to Die?” was sung in four verses, although some versions contained as many as twelve. Fox maintained that he got to the fourth verse:

Jesus can make a dying bed

feel soft as downy pillows are

While on his breast I lean my head

And breath my life out sweetly there

At about this point, Private Smith tried to write out a final message, a missive written to some unknown friend. According to Fox, the dying soldier garbled a few words: “There’s—a—silver—pencil—in—pocket.” Fox recalled, “It was with deepest sorrow that he could not speak friendship’s last message. There was but one friend of whom he could speak now.” Smith soon died, although his last words represented something of a bang, not a whimper. Fox explained, “We watched him silently, while he lay for some minutes motionless; I thought all was over; but rousing suddenly, he said—‘Jesus, lover of my soul,—oh, repeat that again!’ My voice choked up so that I could hardly speak. I know not if he heard me, for before I reached the last verse, ‘the storm of life,’ was over, the ‘haven’ was reached, and ‘billows’ had died away in the eternal peace.”

It happened at 10 o’clock, P.M.

If you’re the religious sort, you’ll likely take solace in the fact that faith was the last thing on Private Smith’s mind as he parted this world. If you’re not religious, you can still appreciate this tale. I, for one, find it incredible that the final moments in the life of an ordinary twenty-two-year soldier can be told so thoroughly. How often can we be exactly certain of what a man was thinking as he died? In Simeon Smith’s case, we can be pretty sure.

This is Chaplain Norman Fox, 77th New York, the minister who watched Pvt. Simeon Smith breathe his last.

Speak in Code

Years ago, I had a chance to research an original Civil War diary. It belonged to Lt. James H. Walker, 81^st Pennsylvania. I possessed a keen interest in reading Walker’s diary because his regiment left behind so few primary accounts.

I thoroughly enjoyed Walker’s entries. He wrote with flair and purpose. However, quite aggravatingly, he wrote in code. It was infuriating. What did he do? Check out this odd sentence. He wrote: “I could perceive at once that the lzm vzr gzke bqzyx.”

When I saw this code, I muttered, “Ah, what the hell!” You see, it’s hard enough to read nineteenth-century handwriting. In addition to reading his English script, I had to decode his cypher. Not having any experience in cryptology, I fretted, believing that I would never get the answer. Then, I noticed an odd sentence. Someone (perhaps an archivist) had defaced a single word in the diary. (I’m a bit torn here. I’m not sure whether I should thank the unknown defacer for giving me the key to Walker’s code or chastise him for writing inside this irreplaceable artifact.)

Anyway, one sentence read, “staid awhile and stopped in bgzladqr on my way down.” Above the coded word, “bgzladqr,” the defacer had written the word, “chambers.” Indeed, “chambers” was the correct word, and no doubt the defacer had figured it out from the context of the previous sentence. Using this one word, I did my best to figure out Walker’s cypher. Eventually, it dawned on me. Walker intended each coded letter to refer to the next letter of the alphabet. For instance, if Walker wrote “b,” he actually wanted to write the letter, “c.” Coded letter “d” actually meant, “e,” and so forth. (Coded letter “z” meant “a.”)

Having figured out Walker’s method, I set about decoding his entries.

What kind of information did Walker encode? Believe it or not, he disguised entries about, uh, booty calls, for lack of a better phrase. In March 1864, Lt. Walker returned home to Philadelphia as part of his regiment’s recruiting detail. He was responsible for finding new recruits and forwarding them to the Army of the Potomac’s winter encampment at Brandy Station in preparation for Ulysses Grant’s Overland Campaign. While staying in Philadelphia, he looked up some old girlfriends and had romantic liaisons with them. Most of the decoded material related to these saucy hook-ups.

For instance, on April 24, he wrote this about a girl named Sallie: “[I] Did not go forward [meaning he did not return to Brandy Station]. In [the] evening [I] called for Sallie [and] I went with her to church. [to] Have her to understand how I regarded her. [I] Found that I was not altogether obnoxious.” All of this had been encoded. Each word was incomprehensible until I applied the cypher to it.

Walker really liked Sallie, whoever she was. A week later, he skipped church, presumably to fool around with her. On May 1, he wrote, “In the afternoon [I] went up to see Sallie [and I] did not go to Church. I thought it might be the last afternoon I should spend with the only woman I ever loved.”

Yet, Walker’s most scandalous entries involved a love triangle that involved him, a woman named Lucy McGonigal, and a man named Pendleton. Lucy loved Walker, so it seemed, but she could not shake the unwanted attentions of her other suitor, Pendleton. Here’s what Walker wrote about it.

[I] went down where I had left my baggage & found Ktbx & a number of others waiting staid all night – learned that mia amiga carina con los ojos azul gzc lzmzfdc  sn fds gdqrdke hmsn  cheebtksx  – un muchacho maquinista & cantador en una iglesia methodisto amaba ella y tenia su compromiso de casa pero cuando ese caballero gdzqc sgzs  su carina tenia poco gusto del soldado Ihl gd vzr rdhydc  vhsg z idzkntr ehs zme vdms sn gdq ezsgdq.

Did you figure it out what he said? This one is tricky. Walker injected some Spanish (as if his code was not hard enough.) Here’s what he wrote, if everything is translated into English:

[I] went down where I had left my baggage & found Lucy & a number of others waiting[.] [I] staid all night – learned that my friend and sweetheart with the blue eyes had managed to get herself into difficulty – an engineer and singer at the Methodist Church loved her and had her commitment but when that cowboy heard that my sweetheart had had a little taste of soldier Jim he was seized with a jealous fit and went to her father.

So, in this account, Walker met his “sweetheart with the blue eyes,” Lucy, who had gotten a “little taste” of him, whatever that means, and when Pendleton (the singer at the church) found out about her affection for Walker, he got angry and tattled to her father.

The intrigue got worse, in fact. The next day, Walker attended a party. Pendleton brought Lucy as his date, but Lucy wanted to be with Walker. Lt. Walker described the tense scene that arose. As usual, he wrote his entry in a mix of coded words and Spanish. He wrote, “soon after we arrived Mr. Pendleton came with the first of the fair [meaning Lucy]. I could perceive at once that the man was half crazy. One of the young ladies gave me an introduction & I afterwards drank along with him and the rest of the male members of the party – he seemed greatly excited but had nothing to be angry at me for. – when saying, ‘toast to your good health,’ he told me that, ‘you are a fine looking fellow I must confess though I say it to your face;’ . . . I saw at once that he loved her [Lucy] deeply & thought that she thought more of me than of him.” (Here, I have decoded the coded language and translated the Spanish text.)

Pendleton gave Walker the evil eye all evening. Being a bold man, Walker decided to give her a kiss goodbye, something that Pendleton would not forget. He wrote, “Between one thing and another Lucy felt pretty well worried and her tears were falling fast when I kissed her good bye which operation must have been daggers in the heart of her poor lover.” (The italicized text indicates the encoded portion.)

Walker didn’t remain long in Philadelphia. A few days later, he left for the front and arrived at Belle Plain on May 12. He was wounded at Cold Harbor but remained in the army until February 1865.

After that, I don’t have much to say about the enigmatic Lt. Walker. Probably, he returned to Philadelphia. I wonder if all the romantic drama he left behind in 1864 still troubled him. He took pains to write  about it in code, after all.

Two Brothers, One Face

Recently, I was reading “Dear Pa—and So it Goes,” a collection of letters edited by Gertrude K. Johnston. It’s an old book, known by a few Civil War scholars as the collected letters of the Pardee family, a family of wealthy coal mine owners centered in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. In my personal opinion, it’s a wonderful collection, especially because  it contains plenty of material written by the daughters of the family. (Letters written by Civil War women are, of course, rare finds.)

Anyway, the collection also contains letters from two brothers, Lt. James Boyd Robison and Lt. Isaiah Robison. (These letters are in the collection because the Robisons’ older sister, Anna, married Ario Pardee, Sr., the family patriarch.) Army of the Potomac enthusiasts might recognize the Robison boys because they served in some of the army’s famous campaigns. James Boyd Robison (b. 1838) served with Company G, 10^th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry from 1861 to 1862. He was wounded in the hand at Second Manassas. The younger of the two, Isaiah Robison (b. 1840), served in Company A, 28^th Pennsylvania, until he was killed-in-action at the Battle of Peach Tree Creek, July 20, 1864. Both brothers served as officers in their respective units.

I was looking at the images of the two men and I noticed something odd.

This is J. Boyd Robison:

This is (purportedly) Lt. James Boyd Robison, Co. G, 10th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry.

This is Isaiah Robison:

This is (purportedly) Lt. Isaiah Robison, Co. A, 28th Pennsylvania Infantry.

 

The faces of these men look identical.

What’s going on?

Obviously, there are several options to explain this:

1)      The first (and most likely) possibility is that these images depict only one of the two brothers, not both. Someone must have mislabeled one of the images and since then all subsequent historians have perpetuated the error.
 

2)      The second possibility is that the two men are identical twins. All evidence suggests that they were born two years apart, so unless someone recorded their birthdays incorrectly, this possibility is not likely.

3)      It’s also possible that the two brothers looked really, really alike, but I can’t imagine that two men born of the same parents two years apart could appear so identical in facial structure.

Anyway, which of the brothers are we looking at in these two images, Boyd or Isaiah? It is a mystery.