A Promise to his Mother: Killed in the West Woods, Part 2.

This is the second in my three-part series, “Killed in the West Woods.” This post briefly describes the death of a color-bearer attached to the 34^th New York, a man who upheld a solemn promise to his mother.

Few regiments in Maj. Gen. Sedgwick’s division suffered as badly as the 34^th New York, the regiment that held the left of Sedgwick’s first line-of-battle. Because of its position, the 34^th New York was the first unit in the division to be struck by the Confederate counterattack. When hit, the regiment came undone rapidly, the panicked soldiers flying hither and yon. During its short half-hour battle, the 34^th New York lost 154 of 311 men, a 49% casualty rate.

Of course, not everyone in the 34^th New York gave way. A knot of soldiers rallied around the regiment’s two color-bearers, Sergeant Charles Barton and Sergeant Chester S. Rhodes.

We will never truly know what went through the mind of Sergeant Rhodes, the color-bearer who died that morning, but his messmate, Private Philo H. Bell, claimed to know. Years later, Private Bell recalled a scene when the ladies of Crown Point, New York, presented the flag to its bearer back on May 1, 1861. In fact, Sergeant Chester Rhodes’s mother, Lois Rogers Rhodes, put the new flag into her son’s hands that day. With tears rolling down her cheeks (so Private Bell specified) she said, “Chester, the ladies of Crown Point have put great confidence in you; they have placed that banner in your hands. Go to the front, bear it aloft, and never turn from the enemy.” Accepting that condition, Sergeant Rhodes hugged his mother, bade her goodbye, and took the banner.

At Antietam, sixteen months later, Sergeant Rhodes saw his regiment collapsing around him and remembered the promise he had made. Turning to his comrades in Company H, he vowed, “I will run no farther.” Holding the line, he stood in the face of the Confederate onslaught. Seven bullets struck him. Five bullets struck the other color sergeant, Charles Barton. Other soldiers picked up the fallen flags and bore them aloft. Barton survived his wound. Rhodes did not.

After the battle, grave diggers buried Rhodes on the field. Currently, his remains lie in Antietam National Cemetery, Grave 778.

At the West Woods, it was easy for a Union soldier to consider the possibility of running away. Sedgwick’s division was so badly flanked there was little else any stout-hearted blue-coated soldier could do. Somehow, Sergeant Rhodes summoned determination that compelled him to run no more. He did everything he could to fulfill his promise to his mother.

This image depicts the color-bearers of the 34th New York Volunteers. Although identification is uncertain, Sergeant Chester S. Rhodes is most likely standing at right and Sergeant Charles Barton is standing at left.

This sketch by Alfred Waud depicts the fight at the West Woods. The Confederates are in the foreground. Maj. Gen. Sedgwick's troops--with the 34th New York in the front line--are in the distance.

“With No Friend Near”: Killed in the West Woods, Part 1.

The next three posts are part of a series, one that profiles the Army of the Potomac at Antietam’s West Woods. The story of the West Woods is well-known to Civil War buffs. At 9:00 A.M., September 17, 1862, a combat-tested division entered the fray, Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick’s 2^nd Division, 2^nd Corps, which consisted of 5,200 officers and men. Moving ahead in three lines-of-battle, Sedgwick’s division crossed the Hagerstown Road and briefly penetrated Confederate defenses. Sadly, two Confederate divisions slammed into Sedgwick’s division’s left flank, turning the whole command on its heels. For the Union troops, the engagement in the West Woods turned into a veritable slaughter. In under one half-hour, the division counted up 2,100 casualties. Unhappily, after Sedgwick’s division retreated, many of those casualties remained caught inside a grim “no-man’s-land,” with no friend near.

One of those casualties was Major William Dwight Sedgwick, the division’s assistant adjutant general. Major Sedgwick (who was, in fact, a distant relative of the division commander) was born in Lenox, Massachusetts, on June 27, 1831. In 1851, he graduated from Harvard, then went to Germany to study law, but later returned to Boston to finish up his studies at Harvard Law School. Before the war, he had established a legal practice at St. Louis, but when the war broke out, he returned to Boston yet again to acquire a commission as first lieutenant in the 2^nd Massachusetts Infantry. Four months later, Lieutenant Sedgwick received a promotion to the staff of his kinsman, Brig. Gen. John Sedgwick. By August 1862, he held the rank of major.

Nearly all of Major Sedgwick’s contemporaries remembered him as a kind, jovial man. For instance, on the afternoon of September 16, the day before the battle, Sedgwick rode over to his old regiment, the 2^nd Massachusetts, and engaged in a short conversation with the officers. Captain Robert Shaw remembered it fondly: “I talked with him for two hours; he was always an interesting talker, he went off finally merry and jolly.”

The next day, when the Confederate counterattack ripped apart the division’s lines, hell broke loose among the field and staff. General Sedgwick suffered two wounds and had to leave the field, forcing the staff to seek out the new divisional commander. Immediately, the staff put themselves under the direction of the senior brigade commander, Brig. Gen. Oliver O. Howard. As Howard collected his inherited staff and attempted to formulate a plan—which amounted to a careful extraction of his engaged troops—Major Sedgwick spurred his horse to one of the disordered regiments then fighting on the front line, the 34^th New York, and attempted to rally it. Scarcely had Sedgwick reached the position, when a bullet struck him in his back, dismounting him. Unconscious, he fell to the ground. The New York soldiers who saw him fall believed him to be dead. As they fled to safety, they left him behind.

Initially, false reports circulated that Major Sedgwick had been killed. Although these were later invalidated, everyone who saw him fall agreed that Sedgwick had attempted a brave thing. Brig. Gen. Howard reported, “Major Sedgwick, division assistant adjutant-general, was most seriously wounded while in the execution of his duties, and left suffering upon the field till afternoon. No one’s conduct was as cool and brave, and no soldier, it is said by his comrades, deserves higher commendation.”

The awful wound did not kill Sedgwick, not immediately. After a few minutes of unconsciousness, Major Sedgwick awoke, but discovered that one of his legs was paralyzed. Unable to walk or crawl to safety, he remained where he was, hoping that a Union counterattack might recover him. While lying on the field, Sedgwick had the wherewithal to pull out his pocket diary and start writing, a last entry, of sorts, in the agonizing anticipation that his wound would prove mortal. Here is what he wrote under the entry, “September 17”:

While trying to rally our men, a musket ball struck me in the small of my back, and I fell from my horse. As I write this I have been lying here more than an hour, powerless to move my right leg. I think that the wound must be mortal. I have been praying to God to forgive my sins, to bless and comfort my darling wife and children, my dearest mother and sisters. As I have been lying here in very great pain, shells have been bursting close to me, almost constantly. I wish my friends to know that I have fallen while doing my duty as well as is possible, which I can truly assert, and that I have not uttered groan as of yet, lying alone on the hard ground in the hot sun, with no friend near.

Sedgwick remained on the field—with no friend near, as he put it—for eight hours. Finally, toward evening, Union soldiers ventured onto the scene where the debacle had occurred and recovered him. Recognizing the wound’s seriousness, the litter-bearers put Sedgwick onto an ambulance that carried him to a nearby field hospital, the Samuel Christian Deaner farm in Keedysville. While lying there, Sedgwick wrote to his mother, Elizabeth Buckminister Dwight Sedgwick, informing her of his condition:

Battle Field

Keedysville, Sept 18 /62

My Dearest Mother,

I was wounded yesterday very painfully but the surgeons think not mortally. I lay on the battle field from half past 8 o’clock in the morning till half past 3 o’clock—the afternoon on hard ploughed ground in the hot sun the shells constantly falling and bursting around me and three times the rebels came behind the crest of the little slope within sixty feet of me and fired and on each occasion being driven back by the shells from our guns my wound is in the small of the back it appears to have escaped the spine. One of my ancles is also very badly sprained caused by the fall from my Horse. The Dr. intends to send me to Hagerstown or Frederick tomorrow morning with Gen. Sedgwick who is wounded in the neck and wrist. we shall get me home as fast as we prudently can.

Best,

 Love to All,

Will

W. D. Sedgwick

Naturally, Sedgwick’s letter sent alarming news throughout his family. Elizabeth Sedgwick made arrangements to reach Keedysville as soon as possible, informing one of his older sisters, Grace, who was then serving as a volunteer nurse, telling her that she should join them on the Deaner farm. Unfortunately, Sedgwick’s wife, Louisa, could not be contacted. She had already embarked on a trip to Germany to visit relatives, and she could not be recalled in time. Knowing that his mother and sister were on their way, Major Sedgwick wrote what proved to be his final letter.

Keedysville, Md. Sept.

My Dearest Mother,

I have just got your letter from New York and one from Bess. I am suffering a great deal of Pain owing to the extreme difficulty of moving and the impossibility of getting a comfortable position. I do not think it necessary that you should come to me because my man Henry takes such excellent care of me and if necessary a Surgeon will be detailed to go with me when able to start—still if you or some one of the family desire to come perhaps it may be as well, especially as my recovery tho’ probable is not certain~

Best Love,

Your faithful

Will—

Sadly, Major Sedgwick did not live much longer. He died on September 29. Thankfully, his mother and sister arrived in time to be by his side. His wife, Louisa, did not learn of her husband’s fate until after she landed in Europe. Major Sedgwick left behind three daughters—Grace, Amelia, and Mary Elizabeth. He never had an opportunity to see his youngest. She had been born in July 1861, two months after Sedgwick left for the front.

Sedgwick endured the pain of the West Woods alone. He was lucky, perhaps, that he spent his last hours alongside his loving mother and sister.

Here, you can see Major William Dwight Sedgwick (shown here in 1861 as lieutenant). 

This image, taken in May 1861, depicts the officers of the 2nd Massachusetts at Brook Farm. Lt. Sedgwick is standing at the far right.

This is a close-up of Lt. Sedgwick, taken from the Brook Farm photograph.

James Hope's famous painting of Sedgwick's division attacking at the West Woods correctly depicts the division advancing in three lines of battle.

Killed by his Beans

“No man has seen it but all men know it. Lighter than air, sharper than any sword. Comes from nothing, but will fell the strongest armies.”

This tale is about hunger. In 1864, it killed a Massachusetts soldier in a rather strange way.

This story begins on the blustery night of December 1, 1863, amid the Union retreat from the Battle of Mine Run. That night, the weary infantrymen of the 1^st Corps trudged east, vacating their entrenchments. Although the bluecoats felt the sting of defeat, a more pressing issue arose in that many of them felt the gnawing pangs of hunger due to their depleted rations. Hunger, rain, cold, and wind culminated in a night of sheer misery. Further, it was a “stop and go” march. Every few miles, the column halted in the darkness, giving the soldiers enough time to fall out and attempt to get comfortable, but only to have their brief, fitful relaxation interrupted by officers who regularly called upon the men to douse their campfires and get moving again.

This stop and go aspect of the withdrawal angered many enlisted men, but none took the retreat as badly as Private William F. Emerson of Company D, 12^th Massachusetts. He was a spare man with an active stomach. As a rule, Emerson grew famished with surprising suddenness and intensity, and on this particular night, as one comrade described him, he was “wild with hunger and moaned piteously over his hard fate.” Even more frustrating, Emerson had recently acquired a pint of raw beans, but because none of the pauses lasted for any significant duration, he had no opportunity to cook them. Every time the regiment halted, Emerson immediately went to work lighting a fire, only to have his cooking interrupted by the officers. Each time, he reluctantly regained his place in ranks, his beans still raw. One of his friends, Corporal George Kimball, later related, “[The] occasional halts . . . were of short duration and offered meager opportunities for culinary operations. Emerson, however, improved each shining moment during these brief cessations of the tramp by building fires and making desperate attempts to boil his beans.”

Indeed, the scene even became comical. Kimball continued:

Sometimes the water in his dipper would merely become warm and at others it would show actual signs of boiling, but the inevitable cry of “Forward!” from the colonel would salute Emerson’s unwilling ears at the crucial moment and set him to grumbling louder than ever. Then he would pour on the water and trudge on. The boys, of course, did not neglect to chaff him unmercifully.

Finally, at one stop, which was longer than the others, Emerson got a decent fire going and his beans began to crack open. The inevitable order came to fall in, but Emerson refused to budge. He intended to sit and eat his beans, no matter what the rest of the army did. Sternly, his lieutenant reminded him of the proximity of the Confederates, while his comrades kindly entreated him to shoulder his rifle and join the column. But Emerson would hear none of it. Kimball related, “Hunger had made him desperate. He turned a deaf ear to everything and everybody, exclaiming in a tone which showed that reason no longer held sway over his mind, ‘I’ll eat them now if I have to eat them in hell!’” With that, the column trudged on, leaving Emerson hunched over his fire like a gargoyle. Slowly but surely, his lonely silhouette receded into the dark, squally night.

The soldiers of the 12^th Massachusetts never saw Emerson again. The soldiers of the regiment made their back to the encampment at Brandy Station and some of them watched intently the roads as the stragglers from that arduous march ambled their way into camp, but Private Emerson was not among them. The last anyone had seen of him was his stooped form hunkered around this sullen campfire eating his beans.

Eventually, the soldiers in the 12^th Massachusetts learned of Emerson’s fate. A report arrived from Georgia confirming that he had died in Confederate captivity. As it happened, Confederate soldiers captured Emerson on the night of December 4 and he became one of the first inmates to enter Andersonville prison when it opened for business in February 1864. The abnormally hungry Massachusetts soldier did not last two months in the awful prison pen, dying of malnutrition on April 7. Emerson’s comrades had to have known that given his aggressive stomach, no place on earth could have presented Emerson with more suffering than the food-scarce wasteland of Andersonville. Indeed, Emerson’s last message to his friends—his prophesy that he would eat his beans in hell, if need be—had become reality in the truest possible way.

The main point of this tale is that although Emerson died on April 7, 1864, his hunger had condemned him to death on the night of December 1, 1863. His decision to fall out and eat his beans set into motion the chain of events that killed him four months later. This concept was not lost on Corporal George Kimball, who remembered the loss of Emerson for the rest his life. Twenty years later, Kimball reminded his readers: “Let us hope that what poor Emerson did to bring about a restoration of the Union and a better order of things and what he suffered in the cause of his country and mankind, may weigh in his favor in that great day when God shall judge us all for the deeds we have done in the body.”

Sharper than any sword, hunger comes from nothing, but will fell the strongest armies.

The Army of the Potomac marches during the Mine Run Campaign, Nov.-Dec., 1863.

 

Let Slip the Dogs of War, Part 3

This is a tale about growing up, going from puppyhood to doghood. It begins on a hot day in eastern North Carolina.

At daybreak, April 19, 1862, the 1,952 men who belonged to Colonel Rush Hawkins’s brigade reached a small village called Shiloh, which sat near the beaches of the Pasquotank River. Several hours earlier, at 3 A.M., these Union troops had slogged their way ashore, disembarking a fleet of poorly-anchored U.S. Navy transports. Hawkins’s brigade possessed orders to reach the main road on the peninsula and march north to Norfolk, passing through the town of Camden. Somewhere beyond that point, the bluecoats expected to meet Confederate resistance, and as it later transpired, a battle did indeed erupt. At 3 P.M., Hawkins’s brigade and another Union brigade slammed against a defensive position at the  canal village of South Mills, resulting in a two-hour battle that cost the bluecoats 120 casualties.

But that is another story. As of daybreak, Hawkins’s men were still hours from their destination, seasick, and hungry. Somewhere near Shiloh village—or perhaps beyond it—soldiers belonging to Company I, 6^th New Hampshire Infantry, scoured the area looking for water and forage. An unnamed soldier from that company found a farm house. Underneath the porch, in the shade, he found a dog and her litter of three-month-old puppies. The unnamed soldier coaxed the three puppies to come to him, and when one of the dogs took a liking to that attention, the soldier determined to take the little fella along. Not long after, the drums roared the call to “fall in,” and the New Hampshire soldier realized his dilemma. Somehow, he needed to carry the puppy along with his other gear. “How to carry him was a puzzle,” the soldier later wrote. “I had on a pair of boots which I wore from home; these I took off, and tying the straps at the top, [I] put the puppy into one boot, and throwing the pair over my shoulders went thus into battle, . . . puppy and all.”

Nine hours (and many miles) later, when the 6^th New Hampshire struck the Confederate line near South Mills, the unnamed Union soldier and his puppy endured the ferocity of combat together (with the dog still slung blissfully on the soldier’s back). As it happened, both man and dog narrowly dodged a cannon ball. A solid shot struck the sand in front of the regiment, causing most of the soldiers to duck. The unnamed private hit the dirt, but the man in front of him, Private Curtis Flanders, remained standing, taking the brunt of the projectile, falling dead over the soldier and his canine companion. (Flanders was, incidentally, the first soldier from the regiment to be killed in battle.)

The soldier and his puppy came out of the battle unscathed, and in fact, along with three other New Hampshire soldiers, they stole a buggy from a nearby home and rode it back to the Pasquotank River during the Union retreat, taking with them a number of pilfered chickens.

After that, the dog became a permanent member of the regiment. The soldiers named him Jep, and he stood in line with the regiment every day at morning roll call, barking when the orderly sergeant called his name. One soldier later wrote, “The boys were very much attached to him, because he showed so much courage and such true loyalty to the regiment, notwithstanding his ‘Southern birth’.” No one ever specified what breed of dog he was, but the few accounts that described him suggested that Jep was possibly a mix of blood hound and Yellow Labrador retriever.

Jep served with the 6^th New Hampshire for more than two years, campaigning with the regiment as the war took the regiment to North Carolina, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Virginia. The regimental historian remarked, “Dogs generally fear firearms when discharged in volleys, but this one went into battle and stuck by to the end.” Circumstances are not clear, but it appears that Jep was killed in action on September 30, 1864, at the Battle of Poplar Springs Church. The morning after the battle, Jep failed to put in his usual appearance at roll call, and as regimental historian Lyman Jackman asserted, “it was always supposed that he was killed the day before, as he was seen in the hottest of the fight.”

The veterans of the 6^th New Hampshire felt tremendous sadness at the loss of their beloved dog. It needs no repeating from me a truism, that most dogs, when treated well, become like family. Dogs adore having both place and purpose. In the 6^th New Hampshire, Jep had both. (Also, he had about 300 friendly soldiers who could give him a good belly rub at a moment’s notice, which is all any dog really wants.) He spent a preciously short period of time on this earth. It warms my heart to know that for his two years of doghood, Jep spent it with a good set of men. It isn’t the duration of our time alive that determines the quality of our existence, but how often we spend it doing what we love, and with whom we love.

This is "Old Jep," the 6th New Hampshire's regimental mascot. He was born in Eastern North Carolina in February 1862, but was killed-in-action, September 30, 1864.

A Pennsylvanian’s View of Fort Stedman

In honor of the 150^th Anniversary of the Battle of Fort Stedman, I’m posting a short letter written by a survivor of that engagement. It was written by Israel Lauffer, a twenty-one-year-old son of a Westmoreland County deacon. During the closing months of the war, Lauffer enlisted in Company K, 211^th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, becoming a member of Brigadier General John F. Hartranft’s division, which included six Pennsylvania regiments. After Lt. Gen. John B. Gordon’s Confederates seized the fort during the morning hours of March 25, it fell to Hartranft’s men to retake the position. Forming up in darkness, the Pennsylvanians made their way to the breach, formed into a massive line-of-battle. Surging forward in the open, they took Confederate fire, although they did not suffer heavily. They performed a valuable task, helping to end the last offensive ever undertaken by the Army of Northern Virginia.

Private Lauffer’s letter describes the battle quickly, but accurately. His estimation of the number of Confederate casualties is a pretty close guess—a surprise given that Lauffer was only an enlisted man. I find his description of the wounded men trapped inside Fort Stedman particularly interesting, as well as his propensity to plunder corn bread and buttons from the dead.

Camp of the 211^th Reg’t., P. V.

Near Hancock Station, Va.

March the 26^th, A. D. 1865.

Dear Parents:

Brothers and sisters, I[,] this Sabbath morning[,] once more take the pleasure of writing you a few lines to inform you that I am still spared and have good health. I will now inform you of a battle which was fought yesterday, from half past eight o’clock until half past ten o’clock, in the forenoon. The rebels came on our pickets early in the morning and told them that they were coming into our lines. They soon had the pickets taken without firing a shot. They rushed on two of our forts and took them and some prisoners. We left our camp at daylight and had about five miles to march. We run about one-half of the way, as the rebels were fast making their way for the railroad. Our regiment was drawn in line and the 205^th on our left and the 207^th on our right. This made our brigade. When we were ordered on we went about half way to the forts which had been taken and then fixed our bayonets, and all gave a yell, and the ‘Jonnies’ broke from the forts like sheep, and the stars and stripes were once more placed on the fort. The name of this fort is Fort Steadman. This is the fort that our regiment took. The name of the other I don’t know. These forts and the rebel fort are only about 200 yards apart. Our batteries poured the grape into the forts while the rebels were in them, which soon made them scatter. The shells were flying fast and the minnie balls whizzed past our heads, but the loss in our regiment was very small. I got through without a scratch, and Andrew Wineman and Josiah Maxwell the same. The rebel loss in killed, wounded and prisoners is about 3,000—most prisoners. As soon as we got to the fort about 1,000 prisoners came in with their flag. They told us to go on[,] that we were all right. They said they had been marched about 12 miles the night before. I got a piece of their corn bread. It is corn meal mixed with water and only dried. It was a hard sight to see when we got in the fort. Some had their legs torn off by shells, some shot in the breast, others through the head and almost every place a person can think of. I only saw 5 or 6 of our men inside the fort that were killed. They didn’t get any of our guns. We stayed in the fort until about half past four o’clock, when we went back to camp. This morning I feel all right except my legs are a little tired. I will close, hoping to hear from you soon. I will put a button in this letter, which I got off a dead rebel at the fort.

Israel Lauffer

After writing this letter, Lauffer did not have live long. On April 2, he participated in the 9^th Corps attack against Fort Mahone. He was killed in action and buried on the field. Certainly, for the remainder of his short life, he must have remembered his division’s epic counterattack against Fort Stedman, a perfect demonstration of “two o’clock in the morning courage.”
 

Here is Israel Lauffer photographed prior to his enlistment.

This painting by Sidney King depicts the retaking of Fort Stedman. In this image, the viewer is looking west toward Petersburg. Hartranft's men are charging in the foreground.

 

This map depicts the mid-morning attack rendered by Hartranft's Division. The 211th Pennsylvania held the middle of the line.

This is Pvt. Israel Lauffer, photographed in uniform.



 

“I Guess the Tables are Turned.”

Few Civil War soldiers had the distinction of capturing 300 enemy soldiers by themselves. Indeed, the thought is almost unthinkable. Yet, late in the war, one young Union captain found himself in that position, capturing an entire Confederate regiment at the Battle of Fort Stedman.

Here’s how it happened.

At 4:15 A.M., March 25, 1865, Lt. Gen. J. B. Gordon’s Confederates tore a hole through the Union defenses east of Petersburg, seizing Fort Stedman and several adjoining batteries, numbers X, XI, and XII. The Confederates’ success did not last for long. Although Gordon’s 10,000 soldiers had penetrated Union lines, they were somewhat bewildered by their own triumph and failed to continue the assault. Ideally, they should have advanced to the U.S. Military Railroad—which was only one mile ahead of them—and if they had done so, they might have cut off the Union supply line to Petersburg’s western front. However, in the rising sunlight, the assault failed to regain its momentum.

This delay enabled quick-thinking Union commanders to mount a counterattack, one that retook the entrenchments only a few hours after the initial breakthrough. The most significant riposte came from Brig. General John Hartranft’s 3^rd Division, 9^th Corps, a unit of six brand new Pennsylvania regiments. Roused from their bivouacs in the pre-dawn darkness, Hartranft’s 9,000 men suited for battle, retaking Fort Stedman and the surrounding earthworks by mid-morning. In addition to the Pennsylvanians, two additional 9^th Corps regiments attacked the Confederate breach from the south: the 100^th Pennsylvania and the 3^rd Maryland Battalion. Both of these units had been stationed at nearby Fort Haskell, repelling two brigades of rebel soldiers that tried to widen the rupture.

Twenty-three-year-old Captain Joseph Franklin Carter commanded the 3^rd Maryland Battalion, a unit of Baltimore veterans that had been with the Army of the Potomac through many of its toughest engagements. Carter’s Marylanders aided in the retaking of Fort Stedman and spent much of the late-morning rounding up prisoners as the smoke cleared. Carter, however, claimed the largest capture, accepting the surrender of some 300 Confederates.

Capt. Joseph F. Carter commanded the 3rd Maryland at Fort Stedman. In 1891, he received the Medal of Honor.

This map depicts the Union counterattack at Fort Stedman. Carter's regiment, the 3rd Maryland Battalion, advanced from Fort Haskell (to the south) while Brig. Gen. Hartranft's division attacked from the east. Note the mystery Virginia regiment standing on the road near the covered way.

As the Union emblem once more floated triumphantly above the parapet at Fort Stedman, Carter spied a Confederate unit to the northeast. Somehow, one gray-clad regiment had gone ahead with the plan to seize the U.S. Military Railroad; it was the only rebel unit with enough cohesion to attempt such a brave act. Following an old wagon road, the regiment passed over a Union covered way and then descended into ravine. As it did so, the 9^th Corps artillery opened fire on it, causing the regiment to seek cover. (The identity of this regiment is a bit of a mystery. Carter later claimed that it was the 51^st Virginia, but no such regiment participated in the attack. Most likely, it belonged to Brig. Gen. James A. Walker’s brigade. It was either the 13^th, 31^st, 49^th, 52^nd, or 58^th Virginia.) Sensing an opportunity to take the whole unit while it was ensconced in its hole, Carter called for his men to follow him, and with sword in hand, he rushed for the ravine.

Comically, Carter made his advance all on his own. His men were too busy rounding up prisoners and did not notice that their commander had given them orders to follow him. Likewise, Carter made no attempt to look behind him to see if any of his soldiers had heard. He remembered, “I did not notice their absence, but kept right on.” Coming to the bank of the road—which was ten-feet high—he looked down upon the cluttered Confederates and parlayed with their captain, entreating with him to surrender.

“Well, where are your men?” came the reply.

Carter looked behind him. He recalled, “Then came a surprise on my side. Looking back of me I made the embarrassing discovery that I was alone. Surely this was a tight fix to be in, but there was no other way out of it except by strong argument and explanation.”

Undaunted, Carter told the Confederates that he did not need his men to execute the capture of all 300 of them. They were in a ditch and could not escape it, lest they risk getting pummeled by the 9^th Corps artillery on nearby Dunn’s Hill. This logic made sense to the Confederate captain in command, and he ordered his men to thrown down their arms. Nearly all of them did so; however, a stubborn Confederate lieutenant, a color-bearer, and five other men decided to ignore those instructions and began walking west, back toward Confederate lines.

Realizing that he could not let these seven men ignore the orders to surrender, as it might set a precedent for the others, Carter accosted them, demanding that they relinquish their flag.

The Confederate lieutenant called Carter’s bluff. He said, “I’ll be damned if I’ll give you that flag! And furthermore I want to tell you that you are my prisoner. Give me your gun!” The six-man color-guard raised their guns, and as Carter explained it, they “made a most expressive show of resistance.” Carter was not unmindful of how quickly the tables had turned on him. He wrote:

Here I was in a pretty mess. The rebel guns were raised at my head. If I pulled my trigger [on my pistol] I would sound my own death-knell. Surrounded by rebels, beyond the help of my own troops, it would have been folly to carry the bluff farther, so I made a virtue out of necessity and handed the lieutenant my gun. And thus I, who only a few minutes ago had captured a whole regiment, was made a prisoner myself. All my arguing as to him and his men being cut off brought only the curt reply, ‘Come along, we’ll see.’

Carter’s Confederate captors marched him toward Confederate lines, but they did not make it over the Union breastworks. As the party approached the Union earthworks from the east side, the captors seemed unsure of their location. This delay helped Captain Carter. He saw three Union soldiers from the 100^th Pennsylvania walking leisurely by at a distance of sixty yards. Calling over to them, he shouted, “Boys, I am a prisoner here!” The amused Pennsylvanians came over on a run, saying, “All right, Captain, we’ll save you.” Turning to the Virginia lieutenant, one of them said, “Lieutenant, what say you now? I guess the tables are turned. You are our prisoner.”

Crestfallen, the Confederate lieutenant said nothing but, “I surrender.”

Gleeful, Carter grabbed the enemy flag and ran with it back to the Confederate regiment still trapped in the road cut. To get the Union artillerists to cease fire, Carter tried to get their attention by waving his sword at them. This caused him to drop the Confederate banner and trample it underfoot. The following account by Carter completed the narrative:

Throwing down the flag, I trampled upon it and waved my sword over my head. This had the desired effect. Our men rested their guns, but on the other hand my action had been watched by the Confederates from their works about 200 yards away. Incensed at the indignity to their colors they poured a most terrific fire in our direction, rendering our position as critical as before. I finally picked up the colors from the ground and started on a dead run with my prisoners for our works, being forced to go for sixty yards towards the enemy, and expose myself to their concentrated fire, before I reached the cover of our own works. The rebel regiment was shortly afterward brought in as prisoners by Hartranft’s men.

This is the only artistic depiction of Carter's action. It shows him stepping on the Virginia regiment's banner, while waving his sword at nearby Union artillery. There are a few inaccuracies in Carter's uniform and Dunn's Hill (the rise in the background) should not be so steep.

 

Here, I've mapped out the movements of Capt. Carter during his attempt to capture the mystery Virginia regiment. At this point, Union troops have retaken the earthworks around Fort Stedman. The 9th Corps artillery was off the map to the northeast.

 

Carter wrote this account many years after the war. His after-action report, which he completed two days after the Battle of Fort Stedman, he said nothing about the incident, except that he had taken an enemy flag. Carter’s modesty did not endure forever, and in the last decade of the nineteenth-century, he applied for a Medal of Honor, citing his actions at Fort Stedman as sufficient reason for recognition. On July 9, 1891, the War Department awarded him a Medal of Honor for “Captur[ing] the colors of the 51^st Virginia Infantry (C.S.A.). During the battle he was captured and escaped bringing a number of prisoners with him.” At the time, he was forty-nine-years-old.

As delighted as Carter was to receive the award, he never made any claim that he had captured the mystery Virginia regiment single-handedly. Indeed, his account made it abundantly clear that he owed everything to the soldiers from the 100^th Pennsylvania who rescued him when he was temporarily captured by the Virginia color-guard. Further, Carter he pointed out that the 9^th Corps artillery on Dunn’s Hill had done the hard work, forcing the enemy regiment into hiding. Carter just happened to be the first one to approach the Confederate captain and request his surrender.

This story speaks to a universal truth about war. In general, war heroes rarely complete their acts of valor without a helping hand, and Carter’s account demonstrated that he benefited from plenty of assistance. Additionally, the confusing circumstances of battle caused the tables to turn minute-by-minute. At one point, Carter was the captor, then the captive, and then the captor again. The tables turned rapidly. In a general sense, that is the story of Fort Stedman.

“So Quietly Laid on the Shelf.”

This tale is about some quarrelsome New York officers. It begins at Gettysburg.


On July 1, 1863, as the 147^th New York Volunteers battled near Gettysburg’s Railroad Cut, a bullet struck its commander, Lt. Col. Francis Miller, hitting him on the top of the head. Miller’s horse bolted, carrying the injured rider to the rear. Subsequently, command of the 147^th fell to Maj. George Harney, who did not immediately know that Miller’s wound had now made him the senior officer. As it happened, at that moment, Harney had to carry out a crucial order. His brigade commander, Brig. Gen. Lysander Cutler, ordered the regiment to fall back to a new defensive position. With Lt. Col. Miller nowhere in sight, Harney delivered the orders, pulling the 147^th New York out of its exposed position. Yet, because of the crucial delay caused by Miller’s wounding, the regiment incurred a high casualty rate. It had lost 296 men out of 380, a whopping 77% of those engaged.

Yet, even after July 1, the regiment’s turmoil did not end. The Battle of Gettysburg produced a lengthy dispute among the officer corps, a dispute arising from whispers, doubts about Lt. Col. Miller’s ability to command. To complicate matters, this rift stemmed from partisan politics. When the regiment had organized for service in the summer of 1862, New York State’s Republican governor, Edwin D. Morgan, had appointed all the officers to the regiment. Miller and a majority of the line officers had received their commissions based on political favoritism. Now, it was 1863 and New York possessed a Democratic governor, Horatio Seymour. A small faction of Democratic officers—which included Major Harney—wanted to use this opportunity to advance themselves in rank. As governor, Seymour was responsible for signing all new commissions sent to officers assigned to New York regiments. If the Democratic officers in the 147^th could cast doubt upon Miller’s abilities—and his sudden disappearance during the Battle of Gettysburg provided the necessary suspicion—they might find a way to supplant him. The stage was set for a showdown, one that would determine who commanded the 147^th in the next campaign.


Here’s what happened:

After Gettysburg, Miller received a furlough to recover from his wound. He received temporary duty, operating as commandant of a conscript rendezvous in Elmira. With Miller absent, Major Harney began the process of applying for the colonelcy (which was then vacant). He canvassed the regiment, asking his fellow Democrats for an endorsement. Next, he asked his division commander, Brig. General Cutler, for an endorsement. It would have been unusual for Cutler to recommend Harney over Miller—since Miller was the duly-appointed senior officer of the regiment—but Harney staged some theatrics, arranging a scene whereby the regimental adjutant, Dudley Farling, presented a sword to him on behalf of the regiment.  Indeed, the sword presentation served as a vehicle to run down Miller’s reputation, as one officer stated, “by [use of] . . . little words—‘when our leaders were all absent but yourself.’—About the same time, it began to be whispered about Oswego that Lieut. Col. Miller had improperly left the field at Gettysburgh.”  The sword presentation had its desired effect. To Cutler, it appeared as if the entire regiment preferred Harney to Miller.

Quite possibly, Harney might have succeeded in his quest for the colonelcy, but he overplayed his hand. He guessed that his promotion might cause some of the Republican officers to gripe. Thus, in October, Harney went to his new brigade commander, Brig. General James C. Rice, asking him if his adjutant could discharge ten officers at will. Of course, Harney did not say that he wished to cull the regiment of its most vocal Republicans. Instead, he asked if he might apply General Orders 100, which stated that any regimental officer could discharge a company-grade officer under his command if that officer had been absent for more than sixty days. Rice—who was also a Democrat and perhaps privy to the scheme—agreed to the request, and thus, on November 5, 1863, ten officers found themselves discharged: Capt. Patrick Slattery, Capt. Edward D. Parker, Capt. George Hugunin, Capt. Delos Gary, Capt. Nathaniel A. Wright, Capt. Patrick Regan, Asst. Surgeon Simon G. Place, 2^nd Lt. John F. Box, 1^st Lt. William R. Potts, and 1^st Lt. Charles Robe. Most of these men were on furlough, recovering from wounds received at Gettysburg.

News of the mass dismissal stirred up anger from Republican newspapers in the 147^th New York’s hometown, Oswego. So fumed a writer for the Commercial Herald:

We learn with astonishment that some ten of the very best officers of the 147^th regiment have been dismissed from the service. . . . It is said that the dismissal has been accomplished by the intrigue of Adjutant Farling with a certain Brigadier General [Rice], and has for its object the control of the politics of the regiment, and also the appointment of Major Harney to the position of Colonel, over the head of Lieut.-Colonel Miller. The officers removed were supposed to be friendly to Col. Miller, whom Oswegonians know is one of the best and bravest officers in the regiment. It is presumed that with these officers removed, there will be plain sailing in jumping Major Harney over the head of Col. Miller. This act of gross injustice can and must be remedied. Proper representations must be made to the War Department to induce it to reverse its action founded upon perverted statements of the intriguers. The citizens of Oswego should not stand calmly by and see their best officers treated in this manner.

The outrage from the newspapers prompted a response from Adjutant Farling, who, it seems, had been complicit in the scheme. He replied to one of the newspapers, calling the accusation of his impropriety utterly groundless. “The statement you make and publish in your paper,” he declared, “is outrageously false and slanderous, in almost every particular.” He explained that the dismissal of the ten officers had been for their own benefit. He explained that General Order 100, “makes it the duty of the commanding officer of the Regiment, in case of the absence of an officer, sick or wounded, over sixty days, to ‘report’ him to the War Department for ‘discharge,’ in order that his place may be filled by others able to do ‘duty in the field’.” In short, Farling explained, Harney had to discharge his wounded officers, or else report them absent—which would subject them to punishment. Farling continued, “Major Harney declined to ‘report’ any of them, until he was peremptorily ordered so to do by the commanding General of the Brigade. Of course he obeyed orders. . . . Major Harney informed others, among them Capt. Slattery, who, in return, thanked Major Harney for thus informing him, by letter.”

In defending the decision to raise Major Harney to colonel, Farling stated somewhat defensively:

I will add one word more. You seem to intimate that it is akin to criminality for an officer to ask promotion, even after it is well earned. It is not so regarded in the Army. I believe Major Harney has asked from the Governor of New York, the appointment of Colonel of this Regiment. I do not know but Lieut. Col. Miller has done the same. Both have a right to ask for promotion. Gen. Cutler of this Division, and General Rice of this Brigade, both say, in their endorsement of Major Harney’s petition, that he has well and nobly earned promotion to the Colonelcy—that if ‘any officer in this Army has earned promotion Major Harney has done so.’

The Republican officers in the 147^th New York called Farling’s explanation utter hogwash. Captain Delos Gary was one of the officers who lost his position. He rejoined the regiment on October 22, only to meet Adjutant Farling, who informed him that he need not have returned at all, as the paperwork had already been submitted to dismiss him. Captain Gary announced: “These [ten] . . . officers  . . .  were somewhat surprised to find themselves pronounced physically disabled by wounds received four months before. . . . I never knew a case, until this, where a wounded officer who had fair prospects of recovery within six months, was discharged within that time. . . . None of the ten discharged officers whom I have seen, not even the four who were present with the Regiment, were informed of the fact that a recommendation for their discharge had been sent in. Had the four officers present with the Regiment been informed of this fact, they could easily have prevented being discharged. But this knowledge was not for them.”

Gary believed that intrigue lay at the heart of the matter. For one thing, none of the other regiments in the brigade had discharged their wounded officers as the 147^th New York had done. Gary asked, “But why was this order made for the 147^th and not for the 95^th N. Y., and the 56^th Penn., or either of the other Regiments in Gen. Rice’s Brigade, all of which were similarly situated? Was there any intrigue here? Did any field or staff officer of the 147^th say to Gen. Rice, ‘I think these absent officers had better be discharged,’ and was the order made on this suggestion?” When it came down to it, Gary believed that Harney and Farling were the source of the scheme. Gary never overtly accused them of fomenting a scheme based on politics, but he came close to it:

I have stated before that Major Harney was to be an applicant for the position of Colonel, subsequently it appeared that Adjutant Farling was to be an applicant for the Majority, to be made vacant by Maj. Harney’s promotion. Major Harney supported Adjutant Farling’s claims for the Majority, and Adjutant Farling supported Major Harney’s claims for the Colonelcy. It was also understood that Capt. Wright and myself would be applicants for the Majority, in case of a vacancy. Of the ten officers discharged, all, with perhaps one exception were in favor of Lieut. Col. Miller, for Colonel of the Regiment. These officers being discharged their wishes as to who should be Colonel were entitled to no more weight than those of any other private citizen, and Col. Miller’s strength was thereby to that extent weakened, and Major Harney was proportionately strengthened. . . . How fortunate, then, was it for the promotion of the plan of Major Harney and Adjutant Farling, that Gen. Rice ordered this recommendation made, that Major Harney made it without note or commend; that none of these officers learned that it was made until after they were discharged; and finally that these officers, who would have made it very lively for Major Harney and Adjutant Farling in their race for promotion, were so quietly laid on the shelf. It is so fortunate as to bear even a suspicious appearance.

Spurred by Gary’s message, the Republican newspapers in Oswego howled in protest, but it did no good. Nine of the ten officers accepted their dismissal. (Only one, Capt. George Hugunin, fought for his reappointment and won back his captaincy.) Governor Seymour chose to elevate Major Harney to the lieutenant colonelcy and Adjutant Farling to majority, but in the end, the scheme failed in one aspect. Lieutenant Colonel Miller stayed in the regiment, assuming the rank of colonel.

Miller, though, did not hold his new rank for long. On May 5, 1864, at the Battle of the Wilderness, he received a grievous wound to the left side and fell into the hands of the enemy. He spent the next year in a series of Confederate prisons, returning to his regiment just before the surrender at Appomattox. In the meantime, Harney commanded the 147^th New York. For a second time, a rebel bullet had achieved what Harney’s ploy had failed to do—it had removed Miller from de facto command. It might be justice, then, that Miller got to command his regiment one last time at Appomattox, but certainly justice did not come to the nine line officers who faced dismissal in November 1863. Their fellow officers had quietly “laid them on the shelf,” never again to share in the glory of the Army of the Potomac.

It is a shame, I think, when the plotters of the world get their way.

Near as I can tell, there is only one artistic depiction of the 147th New York at Gettysburg--this image, Desperate Stand, by Mark Maritato. I presume the officer at the far right is meant to be Lt. Col. Francis Miller.

This is Lt. Col. Francis Miller, the Oswego carpenter who commanded the 147th New York at Gettysburg.

 

This is Maj. George Harney, the second-in-command of the 147th New York. In November 1863, using the help of his skillful adjutant, he plotted to take command of the regiment, dismissing ten line officers in the process.

 

This is Capt. George Hugunin, one of the ten officers who faced dismissal on November 5, 1863. He was the only one of the ten who managed to overturn his dismissal and win back his position.