“The Gates of Hell Were Closed on Us”: The Capture of the 7th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry, Part 2

In the last post, I profiled a prisoner of war from Company A, 7^th Pennsylvania Reserves, Private Samuel Elliot, a man who endured the horrors of Andersonville Prison and Florence Stockade. In this post, I intend to profile another member from that unit, one who remembered Andersonville vividly, even forty-two years later.

In April 1864, Sergeant John Ignatius Faller of Company A, 7^th Pennsylvania Reserves, was a light-hearted sentry on duty in Alexandria, Virginia. Every day, he patrolled an uneventful beat up and down Washington Street. Although Faller was a veteran of a half-dozen battles—including the Seven Days, South Mountain, Antietam, and Fredericksburg—he had no desire to stay in the army any longer than necessary. His brother, Leo, had been killed at Antietam, so he felt it incumbent to return home as soon as possible to save his parents from the chance of losing two sons in the war. Although many men in Faller’s regiment had re-enlisted over the winter, adding three additional years to their term of service, Faller chose to let his contract expire. He expected to go home sometime in May; accordingly, he believed he had already fought his last battle. Indeed, as spring drew nigh, his thoughts drifted to home. As of January, his parents had purchased a new house in Carlisle, and Faller expected that he would have a chance to live in it after he mustered out. He wrote his sister, Anastasia, telling her, “I want you to have a room fixed up for me when I get home next summer.”

Sadly, the Army of the Potomac did not heed Faller’s wish. On April 18, Maj. Gen. George Meade reassigned the 7^th Reserves to the Army of the Potomac’s winter encampment at Brandy Station. Then on May 4, the Army of the Potomac commenced marching into the Wilderness, one day before orders arrived granting the 7^th Reserves the opportunity to muster out. As it happened, Sergeant Faller and 272 other soldiers from the 7^th Reserves were captured near the Permelia Higgerson Farm on May 5. (Essentially, if Ulysses Grant had postponed his Overland Campaign by one day, Faller and dozens of others would have avoided capture!) On May 16, eleven days later, Faller had a chance to mail a short note from Danville, Virginia, telling his family that he was now a prisoner of war. Still reasonably light-hearted, he saw no reason to worry his parents and sisters about his fate. He wrote, “We have been treated first rate since our capture.” All he had to do was survive in a rebel prison, he thought. The war would be over soon. It would be easy.

Faller’s optimism didn’t last long. On Sunday, May 22, he and the other enlisted men arrived at their new home, Andersonville. Never forgetting his first day there, he recalled how Captain Henry Wirz ordered them to form into detachments of 270 men. As a sergeant, Faller helped lead the 51^st Detachment. “We were then marched up to the big gates,” remembered Faller. “Soon the gates of hell on earth were closed on us. Many a poor soul never passed out again—except to be carried to the dead house.”

In a short memoir written in 1906, Faller remembered many of the horrible sights of Andersonville—cruel guards, raider gangs, starvation, lack of shelter—but the aspect of Andersonville that I’d like to emphasize in this post was the primary killer of the inmates, the Stockade Branch, the small stream that brought refuse into the camp, spreading disease far and wide. Like many inmates, Faller knew that the Stockade Branch was the most dangerous enemy in the prison. Not only did it bring disease, but it brought swarms of maggots. He recalled:

A small stream of water, about twelve inches deep and eight feet wide, entered and ran through it (the enclosure). This stream had its origin in a swamp a short distance from the stockade. The water was warm and impure. To add to its natural filthiness, the rebels had built their cook house across the stream on the outside and the water was always covered with filth and grease; they also washed their dirty, filthy clothes in the stream and also used it for bathing purposes. We were obliged to drink it or do without. . . . On each side of the stream the ground was low and swampy and the filth that accumulated during the long summer months can neither be imagined [n]or described. Most of it collected in and about this swamp, and I have seen these three acres of swamp [become] one animated mass of maggots, from one to two feet deep, the whole swamp moving and rolling like waves of the sea.

By August, the Stockade Branch became overrun with vermin. Rats and maggots swarmed the edges, devouring the inmates who dwelled along its edge, those too weak to move elsewhere. Remembered Faller, “Many of the prisoners who had become too weak to help themselves were covered up with them [maggots] and were literally eaten alive.” He lamented, “To look upon these poor creatures and not be able to give them assistance was a sight so sickening and horrible that it was enough to make one insane with terror.”

Typically, when inmates wanted water (and lacked the provisions for digging wells), they crowded around the west side of the prison, trying to get the water as soon as it passed underneath the stockade wall. That water, claimed Faller, was always a bit more palatable. Sadly, this always caused a mob to form along the deadline, the imaginary barrier which the inmates could not cross without facing the threat of being fired upon by a sadistic guard. As the inmates clambered for water, the guards took the opportunity to shoot at any who might accidentally trespass. Faller remembered one of these shootings. In August, an inmate dipped under the deadline, and a guard, “who had been watching and waiting for such a chance,” opened fire. The ball missed its intended target, but instead struck the head of another man standing near him. His skull cracked open and he died instantly. His body fell into the stream, polluting it with blood and brains.

The incident incensed Faller more than anything else he ever witnessed at Andersonville. “With horror and indignation,” he wrote, “I could not run but turned and stood looking at the monster who could murder a fellow being for so slight an offense.” The guard coolly reloaded his weapon, as a cluster of prisoners loudly condemned the shooting. The guard raised his gun and threatened, “Scatter thar or I will blow some more of you over!” Faller boiled with rage. Before departing, he screamed, “My God how long must we endure this?” Giving the guard the evil eye, he remembered, “I really believe that I would have given my life for one chance at him.”

Faller survived Andersonville (and Florence Stockade). In March 1865, Confederate authorities finally released him. He had been a prisoner of the Confederacy for eleven months. Had all gone as he expected, he should have mustered and returned home in May 1864. Instead, the gates of hell closed on him, chaining him to a vicious plot of Georgia sod, where even the water did its very best to kill him.
 

 

In 1906, Sgt. John I. Faller, Co. A, 7th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry, wrote a graphic account of his Andersonville prison experience.

 

Here, you can see an image of Andersonville's sinks. The small cluster of tents at middle distance is "the Island," where the most far-gone soldiers lived. This the area where the swamp overflowed and maggots literally ate men alive.

This is another view of Andersonville taken along its east wall. The deadline can be seen running along the right side of the image, and the Island is in the left foreground.

 

 

“Death! Nothing but Death!”: The Capture of the 7th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry, Part 1

For the next few posts, I plan to tell the tale of a once proud regiment, the 7^th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry, an Army of the Potomac unit that faced wholesale capture and a slow, agonizing death in several Confederate prisons. Today’s tale will be told by a private from Carlisle who endured seven horrible months inside two ghastly prison camps, Andersonville and Florence Stockade. Amazingly, he lived to tell it.

Here’s how it all began.

At 6 P.M., May 5, 1864, amid the Battle of the Wilderness, Colonel William McCandless’s brigade surged onto the Permelia Higgerson farm field, taking heavy fire from Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon’s Georgia brigade. One of McCandless’s regiments, the 7^th Pennsylvania Reserves, found itself surrounded (by only two companies from the 61^st Georgia, of all things) and it took fire from front, left, right, and rear. A lieutenant from the 7^th Reserves jotted in his diary, “[We] attempted to escape to the right and left, but were fired into from all sides.” Eventually, Colonel Henry C. Bolinger ordered his men to stack arms, and nearly the entire regiment, 273 officers and men, became prisoners of war.

For the next seventeen days, the forlorn captives made an uncomfortable journey south, passing through Orange Court House, Gordonsville, Lynchburg, Danville, and eventually to Andersonville prison.

On May 22, 1864, the 7^th Pennsylvania—and the other Union prisoners taken at the Wilderness—arrived at their new home.

Private Samuel Elliot, a 22-year-old Carlisle resident who served in Company A, wrote in his diary that day. Obviously, this was his first encounter with Andersonville, which by then had been in operation for three months, and he never forgot it. Elliot wrote:

The camp contains about fifteen thousand men, most of whom have been prisoners from eight to ten months [but kept in other prisoners before this one], and were once strong, able bodied men, but are now nothing more than walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin, and can hardly be recognized as white men. The horrible sights are almost enough to make us give up in dispair—the ground is covered with filth, and vermin can be seen crawling in the sand. In the centre of the camp is a stream of dirty water so warm and greasy we can scarcely drink it. The sights I saw on this, my first day in Andersonville, so filled me with horror that I can give but a poor idea of this prison den.

The next day, May 23, was Elliot’s birthday. He wrote in his diary, “[This is] a miserable place to celebrate one’s birth day.” The next several months passed in agony. Elliot described the abysmal food at Andersonville:

Friday [June] 2. The majority of the camp drew fresh meat which the rebel Quartermaster calls beef, but he can’t fool “old soldiers” with his mule and horse flesh. It might have been pretty good had they brought it in within a week after its death, or had given us a large enough piece to allow for the maggots; we were too hungry to consider long about eating it, also drew “chicken feed,” and a small piece of wormy pork—quite a variety for one day; went out for wood: the first time I have been outside the stockade since here. What a relief it is to see the outside world and get a breath of fresh air.

One month later, Private Elliot cataloged the sight of an inmate dying a horrible death:

Wednesday, August 3. On different battle fields I have witnessed many horrible sights, but none to compare with what I saw today—a man lying on the bank of the stream being eaten to death by maggots. They could be seen issuing from his eyes and mouth, and his body was eaten completely raw in several places. We could do nothing with him but let him alone to die a miserable death.

Every so often, a member of the 7^th Pennsylvania Reserves died in captivity. Like other inmates who belonged to the 7^th, Elliot remembered one of the highest-ranking deaths, Sergeant Van Buren Eby, a 23-year-old tinner from Carlisle. He also mentioned the death of Private Charles Jarimer, age 34, who died of scurvy:

Wednesday [August] 10. This evening we were called upon to witness the death of another of our comrades, Van B. Eby. He bore his prison life bravely, but has at last fallen a victim to ill treatment and starvation. He was loved by all who knew him, and his loss is mourned by many friends. . . .

Thursday [August] 25. Charles Jarimer, a recruit of our company, and a bunk-mate of mine, died today, after a long and painful illness; helped to carry his body to the “dead house”—a house built in the rear of the hospital, outside the stockade. There were about twenty-five other bodies, most of which had been stripped of all their clothing, and were so black and swollen they could not be recognized. While I was there I saw them piling the bodies one on top of the other, into the wagon, to be hauled to their graves or ditches. I passed through the hospital on my way back, and the sights I saw there were enough to make one sick: the tents were filled with what could once have been called men, but were now nothing but mere skeletons. The short time I was there I saw several die. A man is never admitted to the hospital until there is no hope of his recovery, and when once there it is seldom, if ever, he returns.

Mostly, Elliot witnessed death in all forms. He hated seeing his regiment whittled away, one at a time. On September 4, Elliot attended the funeral services of a member of Company F who died during the night. He opined, “It is terrible to see how our regiment is thinning out; every day brings the sad news of the death of one or more of our comrades. Death! nothing but death!”

Eventually, in mid-September, to deal with the problem of overcrowding at Andersonville, the Confederates transferred Elliot and hundreds of other inmates to Florence Stockade, a prison camp that held about 18,000 inmates. Elliot suffered worse inside this awful pen, so he claimed. On October 31, he drew a comparison between his experiences at Andersonville and Florence: “While at Andersonville I did not suppose the rebels had a worse prison in the South, but I have now found out that they have. This den is ten times worse than that at Andersonville. Our rations are smaller and of poorer quality, wood more scarce, lice plentier, shelters worn out, and cold weather coming on. I have stood my prison life wonderfully, but now I am commencing to feel it more sensibly, and am getting too weak to move about. To add to my misery I have the scurvy in the gums.”

In mid-December, Union and Confederate authorities finally agreed to a limited prisoner exchange, and Elliot was among the first to leave Florence. On December 26, 1864, he finally arrived at Harrisburg. He wrote, “Arrived at Harrisburg some time in the night and took lodgings at the ‘White Hall.’ After breakfast I went to the depot and met my brother, who passed me without knowing me. It is not necessary for me to tell of the joy it gave me to meet my friends, or of the joy it gave them to see me, after so long an absence.”

Private Elliot survived his ordeal. He recognized, however, that no regiment had experienced the war as the 7^th Pennsylvanian Reserves had experienced it. Captured whole at the Wilderness, for the next seven months, it witnessed a constant parade of death. Unlike other regiments, it beheld no victory. It saw nothing but death.

 

 

This sketch by Alfred Waud depicts the main gate at Andersonville. New prisoners--such as those from the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves--see the inside of the stockade for the first time.

 

This impressive watercolor by Robert K. Sneden, an inmate at Andersonville, depicts the vast sea of humanity inside Andersonville prison. During the summer, more than 26,000 inmates huddled inside the stockade, which encircled only 25 acres. This image is looking south, toward the Stockade Branch (middle distance). Captain Henry Wirz's headquarters can be seen atop the hill in the distance.

 

This drawing by James E. Taylor depicts Union soldiers about to leave Florence Stockade, the prison that Union soldiers dubbed ten time worse than Andersonville.

This is White Hall School, the building where Private Elliot encountered his first good meal since leaving Confederate captivity.

 

 

 

Shot in the Heart

Once, I read a Civil War letter written by a man in love. This is the tale that goes with it.


Charles Wilkins was born on July 7, 1835, in the town of Henniker, New Hampshire. On June 1, 1861, shortly after the Civil War broke out, he enlisted in Company B, 2^nd New Hampshire Infantry. On July 21, during the Battle of Bull Run, he received a severe gunshot wound through the shoulder. He spent the remainder of the year recovering from his injury and mustered out of his regiment on February 20, 1862, accepting a commission in another unit.

Wilkins became a second lieutenant in the 1^st U.S. Regular Infantry, which was then stationed in Missouri. By January 1863, his regiment had been moved to Corinth, Mississippi, in preparation for joining Maj. Gen. Ulysses Grant’s Army of the Tennessee for the Vicksburg Campaign.

I’d imagine that Lieutenant Wilkins had many things on his mind that January, but nothing vexed him quite so much as his thoughts about a woman. He addressed his letters to: “Dearest Friend Sarah.” (Sadly, I cannot tell you anything about her, as I have no clue to her identity.) Apparently, he agonized over Sarah and wanted to marry her, but he did not know if she felt the same way. After due deliberation, Wilkins decided it was time to go for it. He executed the timelessly awkward male ritual of putting himself out there:

In my last letter I promised to tell you the subject of my thoughts while writing. I hardly dare tell you and I am also at a loss how to commence. The subject of my thoughts was yourself. Dear Sarah, I love you. Do you? Can you love me in return?

In a world without texts, or cell phones, or skype, Wilkins faced a grand challenge indeed. He had to woo a woman at long distance but without the help of verbal communication. His medium was the written word. Let’s see how he made his case:

I know not how to express my feelings in suitable language. May I hope that the day is not far distant when I shall call you my own. I know that in my present position I am exposed to many dangers and that perhaps I ought not to have asked this question at present. But you know not how much I should feel to know that you loved me. I should feel that I then had something to live and fight for through life. I am now twenty seven years old—and it seems almost as if I had loved without an object, but have tried to do my duty. If I have failed think it is through no fault of mine.

According to the above, the war’s danger compelled him to break his silence and ask a question that he felt he “ought not to have asked.” Finally, he concluded with a rather obvious line: “Hoping soon to get a favorable answer.” I chuckle at that whenever I read it.

All right, you’re all wondering: did Wilkins get a “favorable answer” from Sarah, the object of his affection? Near as I can tell, he did not. As of February 2, 1863, when Wilkins wrote Sarah again, she had not replied. He generously assumed that she had not seen his letter, but knowing what I know about the efficiency of the nineteenth-century postal service (and the fact that the letter existed—I even held it), I’ll bet she received his letter and refused to reply to it. Why she chose not to reply is anyone’s guess.

If the absence of Sarah’s love injured Wilkins’s heart, the pain did not last long. In June, a Confederate sharpshooter picked him off during the Siege of Vicksburg. A Union hospital ship transferred him to St. Louis where he died on June 20, 1863. He was twenty-seven-years-old. He had the honor of being the first person buried in the New Henniker Cemetery on Old Concord Road. (As a side note, Wilkins’s older brother, George—who was a lieutenant in the 16^th New Hampshire—died of disease two months later and was buried in the same cemetery. It was a sad season for his parents, to be sure.)

I don’t have much more on this story. I have no idea of the identity of “Dearest Friend Sarah.” I have no image of Lieutenant Wilkins. Although I know where Wilkins’s grave is located, I have no image of it.


I know one thing: Wilkins was shot in the heart.

Sad Romance.

 

Shot in the Brain

Occasionally, I have been known to watch the HBO series, Band of Brothers. In the final episode, there is a scene where one of the characters, Sergeant Charles E. Grant, gets shot in the head. The scene is based on real life events. In July 1945, during the U.S. occupation of Germany, Grant took a bullet to the brain (shot by a drunken GI from the same regiment). Amazingly, the men in his company found a brain surgeon in Saalfelden who performed an operation that saved Grant’s life. Grant lived on for thirty-nine more years, mostly recovered, excepting a minor speech problem and a paralyzed arm. It interests me that even though Grant took a bullet to the brain, his comrades held out hope that he might survive such a grievous wound.

Did Civil War soldiers hold onto similar hope when they dealt with brain injuries? I have an example that offers us an answer.

On June 4, 1864, while the Army of the Potomac sat deadlocked at Cold Harbor, a Union officer elected to deal with a troublesome Confederate sharpshooter. This was Lieutenant Aaron K. Blake, Company A, 13^th New Hampshire, whose company occupied the forward rifle pits. Blake grabbed a rifle and darted forward, hoping to spy his adversary. Sure enough, after some careful observation, Blake caught sight of a Confederate rifleman and took a shot. He brought down his target, but lingered too long in observing his handiwork. A rifle crack followed, and a bullet whizzed in. Another Confederate sharpshooter—who had gone unseen by Blake—had taken a shot at him. The projectile struck Blake in the head, breaking open the top part of his skull. The bullet came to rest inside his brain, and he slumped over, unconscious.

Several soldiers from Company A rushed to Blake’s side and dragged him out of harm’s way. They tried to revive him, but it was no use. Blake just sat there, breathing, sometimes reacting to noise, but never coming out of his coma. Private William B. Luey, a soldier attached to the 13^th New Hampshire, recounted the awful incident in his diary:

Aaron K. Blake, of [Company] A, is shot through the upper part of his head to-day, a rebel bullet entering and exposing the brain. He is laid near the Pine at first, close to the north side of it, and breathes almost all day. He is utterly unconscious, making no sign when spoken to or touched—every effort being made to revive him—and can suffer no possible pain; yet he is strangely nervous, breathing more quickly when a shell strikes the tree, or near him, or the noise of the firing increases. Later in the day he is moved to the covert way, a few feet to the south of the Pine, where about 5 p.m. he quietly ceases to breathe; and dies without showing any sign of consciousness or of suffering from the time when he was struck.

When Lieutenant Blake suffered his death wound, the men of Company A summoned his cousin, Private George P. Blake of Company F. Private Blake had the unenviable task of writing to his aunt and uncle (Lieutenant Blake’s parents) and giving them the particulars of their son’s death:

June 19, 1864

Dear Uncle & Aunt

I wrote to father the sad news of Aarons death, the particulars of which I could not at the time enumerate. His company and regiment were in the advance holding a line of rifle pits in close proximity to the enemy. Watching carefully the doings of the enemy, he advanced bravely to the line and having seen that there was a sharpshooter whose unerring eye had picked off many of our boys, brought his rifle to bear on him and fired. After firing he remain[ed] to[o] long to watch the effect and another sharpshooter fire[d] his rifle, the fatal bullet of which caused the death of one of our countrys bravest sons, who through all the privations of a soldiers life was never heard to grumble and whose sense of duty was highly commendable.

He was much liked in his company both as an officer and as a companion, always endeavoring to cheer the hearts of those who were weary of a soldier’s life and had forgotten their duty to their country. His fate has been like that of many others in winning for the 13^th N. H. Regt. laurels which it will ever be proud of, and a name as unperishable as has ever been gained since this cruel war commenced. He was noted for cleanliness, never being seen in a filthy condition, even when under great adversities. His place in the ranks has been but very seldom vacant. In fact he was a perfect soldier, being admired by both officers and men. It hardly seems possible to me that he is dead, for whenever I visited the regiment, he was sure to call me, and whenever I had any news from home he took great delight in telling me of it.

His effect[s] were taking care of a part of which I have in my own possession and will send to you at the first opportunity. Lt. [Charles B.] Gafney has his watch and one or two other trinkets which he will send you. He was buried near Coal Harbor by the side of many of his regiment and a slab was erected to denote his final resting place.

The loss of him is I am well aware a very severe blow to the heart of his parents and the fact of his being so watchful to promote your ever[y] interest seems to hold his memory more dear. He never [k]new what hit him, being senseless from the first. George G. Ricker watched by him until he was dead and then marked his place of burial. George Ricker is reported killed. Your affliction is I am well aware more grievous than I can imagine and you have my heartfelt sympathies in enabling you to be up against this dire misfortune. But he is dead and his grave which is all that is left remains for future generations to look upon as altar upon which was slain one whose many bright hopes are blasted and who is I trust in that place of rest where wars and rumours of wars can never disturb his holy slumbers. My love to all and may the Almighty in his infinite goodness enable you to bear with Christian fortitude your affliction and assist you in this time of earthly woe.

Adiew and may God Bless You

Your Nephew,

Geo. P. Blake

Some Civil War soldiers survived their head wounds. A brain injury was not necessarily a death sentence, as battlefield neuroscience had taken great strides in recent years. However, a wound to the head more often led to death than not. Wounds to the head and neck comprised 42% of all battlefield fatalities. Of all non-fatal battlefield wounds, gunshots to the head and neck constituted only 10%. Thus, the story of Lieutenant Blake provides us with the general experience. Further, it tells us how Civil War soldiers felt when they saw one of their friends wounded in this manner. As both George Blake’s and William Luey’s accounts make clear, comrades felt utterly helpless when they saw Lieutenant Blake unconscious with a bullet to his brain. Luey wrote that he was “utterly unconscious, making no sign when spoken to or touched.” His cousin wrote, “He never [k]new what hit him, being senseless from the first.”

Once hit, no one held out hope that his head could be repaired. I can only imagine what that sense of helplessness must have felt like.

I could have chosen any number of images of ghastly Civil War head wounds to go here, but I decided to show an image that represented the area of the incident, not what the wound looked like. This sketch depicts the entrenched Union position after the fighting at Cold Harbor had subsided.

“This is Not the Way We Bury Folks at Home”: Killed in the West Woods, Part 3.

This is the third and final part of my three-part series. It describes the death and burial of the soldiers of the 15^th Massachusetts, in particular, Private Henry W. Ainsworth, a twenty-five-year-old clerk from Millbury, Massachusetts. To one soldier, Ainsworth’s burial was unforgettable.

Of all the units that suffered with Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick’s division in the West Woods, the 15^th Massachusetts endured the heaviest losses. When the regiment emerged from the fighting, it counted up a loss of 318 officers and men (out of 582), the highest numeric loss of any unit that served in the division. Similar to the other regiments in the division, the 15^th Massachusetts had to leave most of its dead on the field. Further, the regiment could not recover its wounded men, who, lacking proper medical attention, soon died. As the survivors huddled around their campfires just west of Antietam Creek, they wondered what had become of their friends. Were they among the nerveless dead, or were they still alive—and suffering—trapped in the no-man’s-land between the lines?

Such ominous thoughts troubled the mind of Private Roland Bowen, Company B, who went strolling through the camp to see if his friend, Private Henry W. Ainsworth, had survived the fighting. On the night of September 17, Bowen journeyed to the bivouac of Company H and began asking around, but, as he wrote, “all any one knew of him was that when we had the order to fall back he was not hurt but started back with the rest.” Figuring that Ainsworth had merely gotten lost during the retreat, Bowen held out hope that his friend would make his appearance by morning.

However, by the evening of September 18, Ainsworth had still not appeared. Bowen grew worried. “Now the question arose,” he wrote, “is he Killed, is he Wounded, or is he Lost?” The possibilities tumbled over and over in Bowen’s mind. Writing down his thoughts, Bowen explained: “Ah, it can’t be the latter for he would have come back before now. My only hope was that he might be wounded. I could not believe he was Dead. Yet in order to believe that, I must know it.”

Soon, Bowen did know it, but the bad news arrived much later than he wanted. It came at 10 o’clock, September 19. A portion of the 15^th Massachusetts’ burial party returned to camp, informing Bowen that they had found Ainsworth lying among some rocks, dead. The burial party explained that Ainsworth had been dead only a few hours when they found him, and they deduced this because Ainsworth’s body had barely decomposed. The announcement hit Bowen like a thunderclap; he did not want to believe that Ainsworth had been alive the entire time, lying alone in the woods, passing away in agony two days after the battle. Indeed, when Bowen wrote to Ainsworth’s father, Elam, telling him about the discovery of his son’s corpse, he discredited the burial party’s theory. Henry Ainsworth could not have been dead for only a short while, Bowen explained, citing several far-fetched reasons for his belief. Bowen wanted to believe that Ainsworth had died within twenty-four hours of the engagement.

In any event, Bowen rushed to the Locher cabin, where the burial party of the 15^th Massachusetts had completed its work. Bowen accosted the leader of the burial detail, Lieutenant Samuel J. Fletcher, asking to see Ainsworth’s corpse and to receive permission to bury it separately. Fletcher replied that it could not be done, as he had just covered the corpses with dirt. Bowen took a long look at the gravesite and the scene filled him with disgust. In writing to Elam Ainsworth, Bowen described what he saw:

Perhaps you don’t know how we bury the dead. Let me tell you about this particular trench and it will suffice for the whole. The trench in w[h]ich Henry is buried is situated near a log cabin just out side the garden fence. I believe its on the West side. The trench was 25 feet long, 6 feet wide and about 3 feet deep. The corp[s]es were buried by Co., that is the members of each Co. are put together. Co. H was buried first in the u[p]per end of the trench next [to] the woods. They are laid in two tiers, one [on] top the other. The bottom tier was laid in, then straw laid over the head and feet, then the top tier laid on them and covered with dirt about 18 inches deep. Henry is the third corpes from the upper end on the top tier next to the woods. Mr. Ainsworth, this is not the way we bury folks at home. I am sorry, but I was too late to have it different. Then there is a board put up at each end of the trench with the simple inscription, ‘15^th Mass. buried here.’ There is 39 men in the trench with Henry.

As he walked away, the sight of the burial trench seared itself into Bowen’s memory. Bowen wrote that he felt sure he could identify the spot “a Thousand years hence as well as [I can] to day.” It nearly killed Bowen to think of his friend, Henry Ainsworth, had been buried near a garden stacked together with other corpses, with no casket, no gravestone, and no funeral service. It was a far cry from home.
 

Pvt. Roland Bowen served in the 15th Massachusetts. Unable to bury his friend, Henry W. Ainsworth, he at least wrote Ainsworth's father, describing his son's resting place.

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.