Overwhelmed, But by a Smaller Force: The Army of the Potomac at Rappahannock Station, Part 2.

In the previous post, I examined the Union attack at Rappahannock Station from the perspective of an officer in the 6^th Maine, a regiment that formed part of Col. Peter Ellmaker’s brigade. In this post, a Union officer from the other brigade involved in the attack, Col. Emory Upton’s, shall narrate.

As dusk settled on a bright, cloudless day, November 7, 1863, Upton’s brigade formed up at the front-right of Brig. Gen. David A. Russell’s 1^st Division, 6^th Corps. Colonel Upton lined up his four regiments, the 5^th Maine and 121^st New York in the first line and the 95^th and 96^th Pennsylvania in the second. As the soldiers stood poised in golden twilight, they could see the successful charge of Ellmaker’s brigade occurring off to their left, carrying the earthworks held by Col. Archibald Godwin’s North Carolina brigade.

Soon, Col. Upton came galloping along the line, telling his soldiers that they must charge the earthworks in their front, which contained the infamous Louisiana Tiger Brigade from Stonewall Jackson’s old division. Captain Cleaveland J. Campbell of Company C, 121^st New York, remembered that when the news passed down the line, murmuring went up from the men. He wrote, “But the long line of rifle-pits is still filled with the famous (in southern hearts) Louisiana Tigers, carrying on their banners, the name of every battle field from West Point to Bristol, in which the Stonewall Division has taken part, for they were the pet brigade of the misguided enthusiast Jackson. They knew the ground thoroughly, until now they supposed themselves able to hold a position against twenty thousand men; almost total darkness has fallen upon the scene.” Indeed, the situation looked daunting. The two lead regiments contained only 568 officers and men. If they charged, they would have to overtake 1,400 Louisianans, all of them secure inside  the walls of a well-made fort.

At a distance of 275 yards from the Confederate line, Upton’s brigade loaded their muskets and changed their pace to the double-quick. One hundred and forty yards beyond that, the men unslung their knapsacks and fixed bayonets. They moved swiftly. In about five minutes, the two lead regiments, the 5^th Maine and 121^st New York, had taken the outer Confederate rifle pits without firing a shot, and wrote Captain Campbell, “thanks to the darkness with [only] slight loss.”

When it became clear that the Louisiana brigade intended to shift to its right and retake the earthworks lost by Godwin’s men, Upton decided it was time to attack. Turning to the soldiers of the 121^st New York, Upton shouted, “don’t fire a shot; if they fire at you, lie down; there are three lines of battle behind; let them march over you, and storm the works.” Captain Robert P. Wilson, of Upton’s staff called out, “Forward, every lover of his country.” Major Andrew E. Mather of the 121^st cried out, imploring the soldiers to remember the dead from a previous battle:  “Remember Salem Chapel!”

Thus encouraged, the two regiments surged across the last bit of deadly ground. They stormed the parapet, and much like Ellmaker’s brigade, found themselves amid swarms of angry rebels. Captain Campbell narrated the assault in a November 20, 1863, letter to the Cherry Valley Gazette:

This time they were crowded with the enemy, but confused by their recent change of front, supposing as they afterwards strongly expressed it, that ‘all hell was corning,’ and thinking that their only chance for mercy, lay in non-resistance to our over­whelming force, over fourteen hundred rebels surrendered to five hundred and  sixty-eight loyal men, and throwing down their arms begged for that quarter, which the Louisiana brigade is charged with having often refused to the unfortunate prisoners they have taken. The left of the 121^st was swung around to the river, cutting off all retreat, and nothing remained but to gather the spoils. They were even beyond expectation. As the result of less than an hour’s engagement, the 3d brigade had captured a fort, four pieces of artillery, a battle-flag, and many prisoners.

The trickiest part of the whole affair was getting the Louisianans to throw down their weapons and surrender. A few minutes earlier, Ellmaker’s brigade had penetrated Godwin’s line only to face a bloody hand-to-hand fight complete with stabbings and bludgeoning. The Louisianans put up considerably less resistance. The brigade commander, Brig. Gen. Harry Hays, fled as soon as Upton’s men entered the works. As Campbell humorously put it, “The rebel General Hayes, unfortunately escaped, having important business to transact on the other side of the river, just after the commencement of the attack.” The next senior officer, Colonel David P. Penn, lacked the stomach to put up a fight.  Col. Clark S. Edwards, commanding the 5^th  Maine, invited Penn to surrender. “In manner somewhat peremptory,” explained Campbell, Penn asked time for deliberation. Edwards refused his request. “Not a moment,” he said, and called up his provost guard to take Penn into custody whether he liked it or not. “Then here is my sword,” replied Penn, handing it to him. Edwards asked Penn if the other Louisianans were surrendered on account of their commander raising the white flag. Being as unhelpful as possible, Penn replied, “I am no longer in command. You must ask the new commanding officer.” In any event, Upton’s brigade captured the remainder. Campbell, who helped corral the Louisianans, wrote, “So each surrendered for himself, and very anxious each was to do it,—and very much mortified was each, the next morning, to learn that they—the invincibles—behind entrenchments, had surrendered to a force of less than half their number.”

Although effuse with praise for his regiment, his brigade, and for Col. Upton, Captain Campbell marveled at the unpredictability of the whole affair. Two small regiments had captured a brigade three times their size and with minimal losses. He opined:

There can scarcely be a question but that the two regiments were saved from annihilation by Col. Upton’s masterly handling of his small force, and by the skillful manner in which he conveyed to the enemy the idea that they were to be overwhelmed. No words of praise are too strong to be applied to the gallant men, who, that night, so distinguished themselves by their cool, determined courage. The loss so slight, (about two hundred in the 3d Brigade, and only sixty in the 2d,) in comparison with that, in so many hard-fought, but fruitless struggles, does not obscure the victory of the living with the blood of the dead. Those who survive will cherish the memory of that proud moment of their lives, and those who fell will be still more honored for having taken part in the glorious struggle in which they met their deaths.

More amazing, Upton’s men had spared their foe a grisly fate by convincing them to surrender. Indeed, a small force could, at times, be overwhelming.

 

Captain Cleaveland John Campbell commanded Company C, 121st New York Volunteers, at Rappahannock Station. He is shown here as colonel, 23rd U.S.C.T. 

 

Here is the Civil War Trust map from the previous post. You can see the assault by Upton's regiments along the west side of the map.

 

Colonel Clark S. Edwards, 5th Maine, negotiated the surrender of the Louisiana Brigade at Rappahannock Station.


 

 

“The Only Relief Seemed Our Continuous Yell”: The Army of the Potomac at Rappahannock Station, Part 1.

This post is about screaming, swearing, and killing. In battle, those things tend to go together. A Union officer from Maine tells us why. Here is his story.

On November 7, 1863, Adjutant Charles Amory Clark was having a rather bad day. In the morning, he was nearly captured by Mosby’s Rangers. At the time, Clark’s regiment was encamped at Warrenton, Virginia, and while there, a friend of his, Captain Solomon Wright Russell, Jr. of the brigade staff, wanted to visit a woman he was courting, Anna Ashton Dixon, who lived outside of town. Shortly after the two officers visited the Dixon farm, Mosby’s men showed up, catching them far from their regiment. Clark and Russell beat a hasty retreat, with Clark remembering, “We had a narrow escape from Moseby’s men, one of whom in a blue uniform, stood looking into our faces as we rode away.”

The day continued to get worse. Next, Clark’s horse was killed under him. After a thirteen-mile march from Warrenton to Rappahannock Station, his regiment, the 6^th Maine, deployed as skirmishers. While directing the skirmishers into the fray, carrying out the orders of Brig. Gen. David A. Russell, Clark was abruptly dismounted by a Confederate bullet and had to make his way back to the line on foot, “only too glad” to do so, he later wrote.

Finally, at dusk, Clark learned that high command wanted his brigade to spearhead an attack against a Confederate bridgehead at Rappahannock Station. About 2,000 Confederate soldiers from Maj. Gen. Jubal Early’s division sat entrenched on the north side of the Rappahannock River, defending a pontoon bridge, the only stable structure for miles in any direction capable of supporting the Army of the Potomac’s heavy equipment. The army commander, Major General George Meade, wanted to get across the river and reach Brandy Station. Some Union troops would have to clear the path and seize the bridge. It fell to two brigades, Col. Peter Ellmaker’s and Col. Emory Upton’s, to do it.  Clark knew that his no-good, very bad day was about the get plenty worse.

Adjutant Clark’s regiment, the 6^th Maine, formed the front rank of Ellmaker’s brigade, its left flank anchored along the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. As the golden autumn sun began to set, the divisional commander, General Russell, rode along the line, causing the Maine soldiers to raise a cheer, all of them apparently eager to try their hand at besting Early’s rebels. Russell’s regimental commanders gave out specific instructions. The men were allowed to load their rifles before the charge but were not allowed to cap them. The officers told their men not to fire a shot until they had penetrated Early’s entrenchments. It was a chilling proposition. The bluecoats had to cross no-man’s-land by a single gallant rush, with no way to return fire. Although numbering only 321 officers and men, the Maine regiment’s cheer reverberated loudly. Clark recalled, “Probably so small a number of men never before made such an uproar.” After a short cannonade, General Russell sent the infantry forward.

Immediately, four Confederate artillery pieces began throwing projectiles into the tightly-packed Union brigade. Clark remembered the nail-biting moments of the 6^th Maine’s charge:

The fire which was opened upon us as we swept forward was simply terrific. It is impossible to describe it. The sensation with me was, that the air was so filled with bullets that it was heated to a high degree of temperature, and scalded my throat and lungs when inhaled. Men were seized with the wildest transports of rage and frenzy. We seemed to me marching against a blind, inscrutable force, which defied all of our efforts to reach it or grapple with it. The only relief seemed our continuous yell, which every man kept up until the fortifications in front of us were reached.

The men of the 6^th Maine broke over the Confederate earthworks like a crashing wave, followed closely by the regiment behind them, the 5^th Wisconsin. Unfortunately, the two regiments had lost their cohesion in crossing the field. Further, Confederate artillery and rifle fire had felled many bluecoats. The 6^th Maine lost thirty-eight killed and 101 wounded. To Clark, the situation looked dire: “We entered the enemy’s lines attenuated and scattered, a handful here and there, among swarms of the enemy.”

There was only one way to win this fight. The soldiers had to scream and curse loudly. Shrieking like a banshee, with sword drawn, Clark plunged his weapon through the bowels of a Confederate soldier. Everywhere, hand-to-hand combat became the order of the day; one soldier from the 6^th Maine stabbed two Confederate soldiers with his bayonet and brained another with the butt of his musket. Clark witnessed one terrible clubbing up close. As several Confederate soldiers moved to stab him, over the parapet emerged the gigantic form of one of the 6^th Maine’s sergeants. Although Clark never identified the man, he called him “the most devout Christian I have ever known. He was our ‘praying sergeant,’ and every night before he slept, no matter where he might be, or who might be present, he never failed to address the throne of grace in solemn and earnest prayer.” On this occasion, the religious sergeant forgot his Christianity and began skewering and braining Confederates left and right, punctuating his eviscerations with a host of epithets. As Clark described it, “he came up with an infuriated yell, and with profanity which was fierce and appalling, he aided with bayonet and clubbed musket in speedily dispersing the enemy around us.”

In all, the shock of the 6^th Maine’s charge did the trick. After only a few minutes—although it seemed like ages to Clark—the Confederate line gave way to a precipitous rout, with Early’s troops scrambling south across the pontoon bridge to safety. The other regiments from Ellmaker’s brigade, the 49^th Pennsylvania, the 119^th Pennsylvania, and the 5^th Wisconsin, added their weight to the assault, and in short order, Clark was beside himself with joy. Having experienced so much bad luck earlier in the day, he was surprised to see a Union victory occur so suddenly. He wondered, “Why they recoiled from their entrenchments none of us have ever been quite able to understand.”

But just as the shouts of battle died down, Clark’s bad luck caught up to him. As he was standing upon a rifle pit, a Confederate ball struck him on the left leg, rolling him off his perch. Stung by the sudden pain, he admitted that he fell to the bottom of the pit, “with a confused feeling of rage and utter helplessness.” Some soldiers from the 6^th Maine came to Clark’s assistance and placed him on a stretcher, but while being carried to the rear, they found Captain Russell, the officer that Clark had accompanied to the Dixon farm that morning, lying wounded. Clark insisted upon giving up his stretcher, telling the men to place Captain Russell on it instead. With another man to act as a crutch, Clark proposed to hobble his way to the field hospital. Clark survived his wound, although it led to his eventual discharge from the 6^th Maine in February 1864. He recovered and returned to the service as a brigade staff officer for Brig. Gen. Hiram Burnham. Clark died in 1913.

As of November 8, 1863, the day after the battle, Clark’s road to recovery was just beginning. But unlike the previous day, November 8 started auspiciously enough. While Clark was lying wounded in the field hospital, the Christian sergeant who had scattered the Confederates so vigorously during the battle came by to apologize. Apologize? Clark was confused. The sergeant was deeply contrite, he remembered, “[he] implored me to forget the awful frenzy that had taken possession of him when he fought the foe at such close quarters.” Affably, Clark accepted the apology, but he had to have known that the sergeant’s profanity was the right thing at the right time. Like the sergeant, Clark had also screamed and yelled during the attack. When faced with the awful task of killing Confederates face-to-face, loud obscenity was the only thing that got the 6^th Maine out of its sticky situation.



Lt. Charles Amory Clark, 6th Maine Volunteers, stabbed a Confederate with a sword at Rappahannock Station. He was shocked when his sergeant apologized for using an obscenity at the same battle.

 

 

This sketch by Alfred Waud depicts the Union troops from David Russell's 1st Division, 6th Corps, overrunning the Confederate earthworks. The scene is looking east. The river and pontoon bridge can be seen at right in the background.



 

This map from the Civil War Trust depicts the Union deployment at Rappahannock Station. Take note of Ellmaker's brigade along the west side of the railroad. The 6th Maine spearheaded that attack.

This Alfred Waud sketch depicts the aftermath of Rappahannock Station, Nov. 8, 1863. Note the Confederate earthworks in the background and the Union soldiers from Ellmaker's brigade parading around their captured battle flags.



Swallowed Whole: The Capture of the 7th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry, Part 4

For the past three posts, we’ve heard from survivors who belonged to the unfortunate 7^th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry, the regiment captured at the Battle of the Wilderness. This last post will be told by one of the officers who avoided capture (at least for a time).

On May 5, 1864, Second Lieutenant William H. Dieffenbach, a 24-year-old machinist from Perry County, found himself in a tight situation. Dieffenbach commanded Company B, the company deployed on skirmish duty. During the confusing engagement near the Permelia Higgerson farm, Dieffenbach’s skirmishers became separated from the rest of the brigade. As the battle heated up, Col. William McCandless charged forward with the 2^nd, 7^th, and 11^th Reserves, but before Dieffenbach’s skirmishers could catch up with the line-of-battle, a Confederate unit interposed between them and the rest of the brigade. The 2^nd and 11^th Reserves collapsed and broke for the rear. Those regiments cut their way out of the trap, but in retreating, they left the 7^th Reserves surrounded. Dieffenbach’s men were nearly caught as well. As Dieffenbach told it, “I tried to rally the battalion, but it was no use. About 11 of my men were lost before I got out of the Wilderness, which piece of strategy I accomplished about 4 PM after some of the gayest maneuvering ever heard of in this army.”

That evening, as the Union 5^th Corps reformed west of the Lacy House, Lieutenant Dieffenbach called the roll; he discovered that only 44 men from his regiment were present and accounted for. Some of these men belonged to Company B, but a few others had been with the main body of the 7^th Reserves and fled when the regiment surrendered. In any event, the enlisted men pointed out that Dieffenbach was now the only surviving officer. The small battalion looked quite pathetic when McCandless called it into line the next day, yet the band of survivors gamely stuck to the mission at hand, to battle the Confederates until they surrendered. Although 86% of the regiment was now captured, Dieffenbach’s men fought every day from May 6 to May 13. Writing to his uncle, Dieffenbach reported, “For ten days we had been under fire during the day, and either under fire or marching at night. I lost eight gallant boys wounded out of the few I brought out of the first engagement, and as for myself, I was completely ‘played out’.”

Lieutenant Dieffenbach commanded the 7^th Pennsylvania Reserves for eleven days. On May 16, Captain Samuel B. King, an officer who had been on recruiting duty, arrived with a handful of men. By virtue of seniority, King assumed command of what was left of the regiment. Dieffenbach was glad when it happened: “I tell you, I was pleased to see him come, for I am really tired of being Colonel, Quartermaster, Doctor, and everything else myself.” Later on, two other officers arrived, both of them having fled the Confederate provost guards. Bravely, they swam the Rappahannock River below Fredericksburg to make their escape. This brought the officer contingent in the 7^th Reserves up to four.

The loss of his regiment and the rigors of the Overland Campaign forced Dieffenbach to question the tactics of the general-in-chief. Dieffenbach lamented, “For my part I am tired, and want rest. I approve of Gen’l Grant quelling the rebellion this summer, but he has been quelling it entirely too fast for me during the last two weeks. I would rather he take several bites at the cherry than try to swallow it whole.”

Thirteen days after writing those lines, on May 30, Dieffenbach was captured at the Battle of Bethesda Church. As it turned out, he ended up confined at Camp Oglethorpe, reunited with the other officers from the 7^th Pennsylvania Reserves, those who had been captured twenty-five days earlier.

If only Dieffenbach had managed to last one day longer. On May 31, Maj. Gen. G. K. Warren read farewell orders to the division, and on June 3, it left the front lines. Dieffenbach was captured in the 7^th Reserves’ very last battle.

On June 16, the 7^th Reserves returned to Philadelphia for muster out. It numbered only 53 officers and men.

The exact number of 7^th Reserve soldiers who died in prison is unknown. As stated earlier, 273 officers and men were captured on May 5. Andersonville prison claimed the lives of 67 of those men, but 135 others died of non-battle causes. Presumably, many of those men died inside Florence Stockade or other various other prison pens that held members of the regiment. If so, incarceration may have killed 49% of the number captured on May 5.

Dieffenbach worried that Grant had tried to do too much, trying to swallow the rebellion whole. In the process, the 7^th Pennsylvania Reserves got swallowed whole instead.

 

 

This image depicts Company F, 7th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry. The officer in front is probably LeGrand Speece, who was captured on May 5, 1864.

 

 

This is Company H, 7th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry. Lieutenant Jacob Heffelfinger can be seen standing in front holding his sword.

 

Although there is some debate about this image (some authors contend that it is the 96th Pennsylvania), this is most likely an image of the 7th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry, taken in the winter of 1863.

This is Lieutenant William H. Dieffenbach, who commanded the 7th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry for 11 days after the entire field, line, and staff, were captured on May 5.

 

 

 

“Hell Will Have Swallowed Hell”: The Capture of the 7th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry, Part 3

In the last two posts, I profiled the prison experiences of two enlisted men from the 7^th Pennsylvania Reserves. In this post, I intend to follow the experiences of an officer. Unlike the enlisted ranks, this man experienced an easier time in captivity, and even witnessed several escape attempts.

Lieutenant Jacob Heffelfinger was a 24-year-old teacher from Cumberland County. Interestingly, he had been captured twice already. He had been wounded at Gaines Mill and Fredericksburg, and both times, the Confederates overran the position where he fell. On May 5, 1864, Heffelfinger was among the contingent from the 7^th Reserves that surrendered to the 61^st Georgia. On May 8, three days after his third capture, Heffelfinger wrote in his diary, comparing his three prison experiences: “This is a blue day to me. Although this is my third imprisonment, yet it seems to me that I have never realized untill now, what it is to be a prisoner. Before I was wounded and disabled—felt like a useless thing picked up by the rebels—a burden instead of a prize. But now it is mortifying to ones feelings in the extreme—hearty, strong, disarmed and guarded by the rebels.”

Unlike his previous imprisonments, in 1864, Heffelfinger did not expect an immediate exchange. After the massacre of surrendering soldiers at Fort Pillow, Ulysses Grant brought a halt to the prisoner-exchange system. Further, Heffelfinger did not travel with the enlisted men. At Lynchburg, the Confederates weeded out the officers and put them on a different train. Instead of going to Andersonville, Heffelfinger went to Camp Oglethorpe, in Macon, Georgia. He arrived there on May 24 along with the other officers taken at the Wilderness. Like Andersonville, a wooden stockade surrounded the prison, but the 1,600 inmates had shelter in the form of abandoned fair grounds buildings.

Life was easier at Camp Oglethorpe, but it was no picnic. The inmates received decent rations, but nothing in which to cook them. Dust infested everything. The prison commandant threatened death to any inmate for failure to arrive at morning roll call. The guards shot at soldiers randomly. Heffelfinger had been there only a few days when a cruel guard killed a lieutenant in an Ohio regiment for no apparent reason. 

Despite all the horrors they faced, the Union officers were a feisty bunch, and took every opportunity to tunnel their way to freedom. On June 27, several officers escaped by burrowing through the sink. When Confederate guards searched the camp, they discovered three other tunnels nearly ready for use. By late July, when the escape attempts became more numerous, the inmates were transferred by rail to Savannah Prison Camp. On July 31, at this new prison pen, several inmates tunneled under the walls and escaped. On August 12, an officer almost escaped by passing out the main gate by wearing rebel clothing. Then, on August 8, the officers attempted another tunneling scheme, but again came up short. Heffelfinger got a good look at this one:

A tunnel had been opened in a tent near our squad and completed to the outside of the enclosure. It only remained to open the further end and the means of Exodus would be complete. Dozens of officers were ready to take their departure. All being ready one of the number opened the hole, and on raising his head above ground discovered a sentry pacing his beat not three feet from the hole. It was afterward discovered that a line of sentries surrounded the wall on the outside, in addition to those on top of the wall. Thus a nicely laid scheme was brought to nought. 6 PM. This afternoon Maj. Wayne, commanding the prison, entered the camp with a few men and commenced tearing down all tents not raised from the ground. This was done without any previous order of notice, and can only be termed a mean, contemptible trick. Many of the officers are without shelter.

Despite the profusion of escape attempts, Heffelfinger never participated in any of them. However, in March 1865, he participated in a large-scale officer prisoner exchange, joining Union lines in Eastern North Carolina. Heffelfinger wrote:

The happy day has at length arrived. Prison life is ended, and we are free again beneath the stars & stripes. . . . The scene was indescribable, and the exuberance of our feelings, it is beyond our power to narrate. Cheer upon cheer rent the air, cornmeal was thrown to the winds, and corn bread was trampled underfoot.

However joyful he felt, Heffelfinger could not silence feelings of guilt. As an officer, he had endured a less gruesome prison experience than the enlisted men of his regiment. Further, he had been exchanged. Tens of thousands of enlisted men were still in captivity. Heffelfinger wrote, “We have only one thing to mar our joy, and that is the knowledge that many of our brave enlisted men are left back to die, just on the eve of the day for which they have long hoped and prayed.” Heffelfinger knew that the enlisted men endured worse trials than he did. He could not imagine what the hell of Andersonville or Florence Stockade felt like, but he probably spoke for many members of the 7^th Pennsylvania Reserves when he wrote, “Hell will have swallowed hell when this Confederacy receives its just doom.”

Lieutenant Jacob Heffelfinger, Co. H, 7th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry, was captured and endured 11 months in Confederate prisons.

 

This image depicts Heffelfinger as a sergeant. He is the man in the center.

 

Here is yet another image of Heffelfinger, this time as lieutenant, standing in front of his company.

 

This sketch depicts Camp Oglethorpe, the first prison pen that held Heffelfinger. According to him, it initially housed more than 900 Union officers, but the population eventually grew to 1,600.

In late-July 1864, Heffelfinger and dozens of other officers received a transfer to Savannah Jail. This illustration by Robert K. Sneden depicts the Savannah stockade prison as it appeared about October 1864, when it was filled to capacity.

 

 

 

 

“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.