Bunch of Biddles, Part 3

In the last two posts, I profiled members of the famous Biddle family of Philadelphia. My series isn’t over yet, so here’s another Biddle for your reading pleasure.

This Biddle frightened one of his men nearly to death.

Alexander Williams Biddle was born on April 29, 1819. Like most Biddles, he came from a wealthy, illustrious family. Biddle’s grandfather, Clement, had served as quartermaster general for George Washington’s army. After the Revolution, he worked as a U.S. Marshal and a broker in Philadelphia. One of Clement’s thirteen children was Thomas, who became a trustee for the University of Pennsylvania. When Alexander came of age, he went to his father’s university, from which he graduated in 1838. Later, Alexander Biddle served as a partner for a shipping firm, Bevan and Humphreys, and like his cousin, Chapman, he traveled the world, going to Australia, China, and Manila. Also, like his cousins, Charles and Chapman, Alexander Biddle joined a militia company. In 1849, he joined the illustrious 1^st Troop, Philadelphia City Cavalry.

When Alexander Biddle’s first cousin, Chapman, received authority to recruit the 121^st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, he eagerly joined in the endeavor, becoming the regiment’s major. Already, Alexander had a personal reason to fight. His older brother, Henry, had been killed during the Peninsula Campaign (the subject of a future post) while serving with the Pennsylvania Reserve Division. Eager to take up the fight where his brother left off, Alexander Biddle went to the front with his regiment in September 1862, and he participated in the Battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. In April 1863, he received a promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Similar to his cousin, Alexander Biddle was also slightly wounded at Gettysburg (as was his horse), but he stayed on the field until the battle was decided.

We know quite a bit about Biddle’s life and personality, largely because he preserved his vast collection of wartime letters (written almost daily) to his wife, Julia Williams Rush, the granddaughter of Declaration signer Dr. Benjamin Rush. In general, Lieutenant Colonel Biddle was a soft-spoken man. He was proud of his position, but he longed for the war to end. He repeatedly called the conflict, “this cruel war,” and he spoke openly about his desire to return to Julia. “How I wish I could be back to you never to part,” he wrote to her one day in the autumn of 1863, “I have been in hopes that this war was soon to end but I am fearful. . . . Strange that we should have these continually recurring fears without so much warning for preparations. May God protect and guard us from all evil and give us a sense of our duty and guide us in the right path.”

Like other Biddles who served in the Civil War, Lieutenant Colonel Biddle’s inner struggle involved an epic quest to live up to his name, to become the man society expected him to be: a confident, tough-as-nails commander, someone respected and admired like his famous grandfather who had served at Washington’s side. As a regimental commander, Biddle frequently had to step outside his comfort zone, applying his stentorian voice, leading his men sternly and uncaringly, as only a grizzled veteran might. In this, he succeeded, but he never stopped second-guessing his approach. 

To prove my point, I’d like to offer an incident from Lieutenant Colonel Biddle’s life to illustrate the way he struggled to find a proper “commander’s tone.” In November 1863, Biddle’s brigade (1^st Brigade, 3^rd Division, 1^st Corps) was deployed at Cedar Run, a small stream that coursed through Fauquier County, Virginia. Every day, Union troops deployed as sentries along the steam. They received instructions to stop and question all civilians who traveled through Union lines, and if necessary, to shoot at all suspected guerrillas. It was fairly boring work, as you might imagine, but it was vital. Guerrillas eagerly waited a chance to seize the Union cattle housed at nearby Culpeper, a stopping point on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. Like most commanders in the area, Lieutenant Colonel Biddle did his best to make sure his sentry line was tight and alert.

One day, Biddle found a weak link. Before dawn, November 22, 1863, he began walking from post to post, inspecting his sentries’ positions. It was a cool, wet morning, “the ground being so soft with the rain that it gave no resonance to a footstep,” or so he narrated to his wife. Moving in silence, Biddle came upon a carefree sentry sitting under a tree with his gun across his feet. The sentry was innocently “singing away with great satisfaction.” Furious at seeing one of his sentries off his feet and not holding onto his rifle—a dangerous position, indeed—Biddle felt obliged to teach him a lesson. With little ado, he creeped up to the idle picket, and despite cracking a few branches on the way, grabbed the soldier’s bayonet and put the barrel of his revolver underneath the soldier’s right eye. Biddle narrated what transpired:

I said nothing. He sat for about three seconds [and then] sprung to his feet jerking his musket away saying[,] “I can blow you anyhow.” I believe he was desperate and would have taken the chance had I been a Reb. I don’t think he knew me for it was a gray morning and I had my black India rubber coat over my uniform. He came to a charge with his musket and I believe then . . . [he] clearly recognized me. I said to him, you see what sort of a sentry you are. He held up the little book in his hand whilst a big tear of . . . partial fright, agitation, & desperation rolled down his face and said it was . . . the soldier’s devotional song book and he had been whiling away his hour of duty on post by singing his morning hymn of praise. I could not say anything more to him but cautioning him to let no one come so close to him. It was my duty to scold him but I know I scared him about as much as was possible and felt half sorry for it as he really[—]though frightened[—]would have taken the chances [of fighting me] rather than give up. 

So, Biddle felt guilty about frightening the poor soldier. After all, the unnamed private was only taking a moment out of his day to sing God’s praises. But something lingered in Biddle’s mind. He couldn’t let go of the notion that it was abstractly right to teach the idle sentry a lesson, even if it meant startling him half to death.

A week later, Biddle had his moment of vindication. A soldier in his brigade went missing. Private John P. Deibert (Company E, 142^nd Pennsylvania) had left camp to chop wood. He had taken his gun and loaded it, but foolishly laid it aside and too far away to be of any help to him if trouble came his way. In a scene that closely mirrored Biddle’s lesson to the singing sentry, three Confederate guerrillas approached Deibert from behind, grabbed his rifle, and ordered him to surrender. They carried the poor Union soldier for two miles, until near Catlett’s Station, where they summarily executed him. When the noise of the gunshot resounded across the countryside, the 142^nd Pennsylvania sent forward a line of skirmishers. Eventually, they came across Deibert’s corpse. It was still warm and oozing blood from his chest. It had been stripped of its overcoat and trousers and robbed of about $8. Deibert’s rifle—which had been deliberately broken by the Confederates—lay discharged not far away. They had shot him with his own weapon.

Later in the day, after the morose Union soldiers brought back Deibert’s body for burial, Biddle stopped to console them. He described the atmosphere of the camp to his wife, saying, “We are all pretty indignant today for a more devilish atrocious murder on an unoffending man was never committed.”

Surprisingly, in his letter, Biddle never connected the similarity of this incident to that of the lazy sentinel he had chastised a week earlier. But he must have thought about it. Maybe he had saved that man’s life by warning him to keep alert, or at least, that’s what I think. Truly, Biddle hated scaring his pickets, but he had to do it. That’s the great lesson of war; to be good at it, we must act against the better angels of our nature. I’d say Biddle succeeded in acting against his own compassionate impulses, but he regretted every second of it.

Biddle didn’t remain in the army for much longer. On December 11, 1863, he received a promotion to colonel, but then resigned on January 9, 1864. He returned to his father’s business in Philadelphia. In 1874, he became director of the Pennsylvania Railroad. After that, he served as a director of several other prominent companies, expanding his family’s wealth and influence. He died on May 2, 1899, at age 80.

I don’t know if Biddle ever gave that lazy picket another thought, but I prefer to believe the picket forever remembered that cool autumn day in Fauquier County when Alexander Biddle, scion of the famous clan of Biddles, scared him nearly to death.





Here, Lt. Col. Alexander W. Biddle sits atop his faithful steed, Transportation.

 

Bunch of Biddles, Part 2

In my last post, I profiled one of the Biddles, the massive family of Philadelphia elites that had its mitts all over the Army of the Potomac. The last post examined the brief Civil War career of “Charles the Valiant,” the widely-reviled Charles J. Biddle, ex-commander of the Pennsylvania Bucktails. In this post, we will look at his distant cousin, the exalted and widely-respected Chapman Biddle.

Unlike Charles, Chapman Biddle came from the other branch of the Biddle family, the one connected to John Biddle, grandson of the first Quaker settler. Also, unlike his cousin, Chapman Biddle was well-liked by his men, who continued to praise and honor him even after he resigned his commission with the war still unfinished. A lieutenant said that Chapman Biddle was “as firm a rock to lean on; as firm and true a friend in civil life as in the military.” This praise was typical.

Chapman Biddle was born on January 22, 1822. Like so many other Biddles, he enjoyed the advantages of wealth and prestige. He studied law at St. Mary’s College in Baltimore and was admitted to the bar in 1848. For years, he traveled the globe, going on trips to South America, the West Indies, and to Europe. According to a biographer, he was erudite, cosmopolitan, and possessed fluency in multiple languages.

Like many young men from elite Philadelphia families, Chapman Biddle joined a city militia regiment. In 1844, he helped establish Company I, 1^st Pennsylvania Artillery, a militia company organized in the wake of the anti-Irish Bible Riots. Within two years, Biddle became a first lieutenant. During the Civil War, he rose to the rank of captain. During the war’s first year, Biddle’s company stayed behind, but when Lincoln made his call for “300,000 more” after the disastrous Peninsula Campaign, Biddle called upon his fellow militiamen to raise a regiment of volunteers to augment the weakened Army of the Potomac. With the aid of his first cousin, Alexander Biddle, he recruited about 600 men in Philadelphia. By the end of the month, Governor Curtin consolidated Biddle’s Philadelphians with men from Venango County, and together, they formed the 121^st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Biddle received a colonel’s commission and command of the regiment. The 121^st left the city on September 5, 1862, and it joined the Army of the Potomac’s 1^st Corps. Biddle and his regiment fought at Fredericksburg in December and participated in the depressing Mud March in January.

However, the moment that captured his men’s respect came on July 1, 1863, when Colonel Biddle took command of the brigade to which the 121^st Pennsylvania belonged (1^st Brigade, 3^rd Division, 1^st Corps). Deployed west of Gettysburg, atop McPherson’s Ridge, Biddle’s brigade (1,361 officers and men) held the crucial left flank of the 1^st Corps. At 2 P.M., two North Carolina regiments stormed out of the low ground near Willoughby Run, commencing the hellish afternoon engagement that constituted Gettysburg’s first day. Biddle well understood the importance of the occasion. His men had to hold the line stubbornly. A captain in his regiment, remembered the scene vividly:

The coolness of Colonel Chapman Biddle, commanding the brigade, was remarkable. Throughout this tornado of fire he rode back and forth along the line of his brigade, and by his daring, by his apparent forgetfulness of his own danger, accomplished wonders with his four small regiments—cheering his men and urging them through that fiery ordeal, his words unheard in the roaring tempest, but, as well by gesture and the magnificent light of his countenance, speaking encouragement to the men on whom he well knew he could place every reliance. A modest, unassuming gentleman in the ordinary walks of life, suddenly transformed into an illustrious hero, the admiration of friend and foe. Even his devoted horse seemed to partake of the heroism of the rider, as he dashed along the line between the two fires, daring the storm of death-dealing messengers that filled the atmosphere.

Biddle nearly paid a dear price for his bravery. The Confederates from the 47^th North Carolina saw him riding along the line of battle and tried to take him out. Captain Joseph J. Davis of Company G spotted Biddle riding back and forth and called on a sharpshooter from his company to do the deed. He told him, “Bring down that general!” With a crack of his rifle, Private Frank Escue took aim and fired. Biddle seemed to disappear. (After the war, Davis consulted with John Batchelder, the battle’s foremost historian, telling him he believed he had ordered the death of Major General John F. Reynolds. Batchelder said it was impossible. “Well, what general officer was killed on my front?” asked Davis. “I saw him, colors in hand, dash into his disordered ranks to rally his troops. . . .  I directed the shot and saw him fall.” Batchelder, who knew the story of Gettysburg better than anyone, set the matter straight, telling Davis that the daring officer he had ordered to be shot was Colonel Biddle.)

Private Escue did not kill Biddle; he only wounded him. In fact, two balls came in his direction. One struck Biddle in the head and the other struck his horse. As Biddle recalled, “My horse was shot; I was struck by a round ball on the back of the head, but only slightly wounded. When the horse was struck, he reared and threw me and fell over himself, but fortunately, fell on the side of me.”

Biddle’s horse righted himself and panicked, bolting to the brigade’s left flank. Interestingly, Biddle’s cousin, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Biddle, found the frightened horse and caught it. Alexander Biddle wrote, “Soon I saw a black horse which I recognized to be his [my cousin’s] galloping towards me riderless–I caught him by the bridle, succeeded in stopping him, and sent . . .  one of the men to find the Colonel.”

Dismounted, Colonel Biddle brushed himself off, and despite his head wound, continued to direct his brigade. As the afternoon progressed, Biddle’s men made a final stand behind a log and furniture barricade on the west side of the Lutheran Theological Seminary. For another hour, Biddle’s men endured an assault delivered by two Confederate brigades. When the corps commander, Major General Abner Doubleday, ordered the 1^st Corps to withdraw to the south end of town, Biddle’s men came off in relatively orderly fashion, an amazing feat, since the brigade had lost 898 officers and men, 66% of its strength. A newspaperman who covered the doings of Biddle’s brigade said, “There is probably no instance showing more complete discipline and masterliness of management than bringing back of such a command after such a contest, in such a perfect condition without a semblance of disorder.” Although wounded, Biddle kept fighting. He commanded the brigade for the rest of the battle.

Biddle didn’t last the entire war. His health had suffered because of an illness he contracted during the Mud March. He stayed with the Army of the Potomac for six more months, but when the weather soured, he admitted he could no longer command his men to the best of his ability. He resigned his commission on December 10, 1863. Although he left the army long before the war came to a close, no one blamed him for it—quite a contrast to the situation involving his cousin, Charles, who faced criticism for leaving too early. One admirer said of Chapman Biddle, “His energy in raising the 121^st, his ability to discipline it, his gallantry in leading it in battle, his zeal and endurance in its hard service, have made his reputation as a soldier one that can never be forgotten by his comrades. . . . Even after ill-health forced him to resign, he maintained his interest in them, and he watched over their welfare and their widows and orphans, and long after the regiment was mustered out he was always ready to help its members or their families.”

After the war, Biddle served as counsel for the Pennsylvania Railroad, joined the Fairmount Park Association, helped organize the 121^st Pennsylvania’s veteran association, and served on the Society of the Army of the Potomac (First Corps Association). He died on December 29, 1880, at age 59. Six years after his death, another Pennsylvania veteran delivered the dedicatory remarks that Biddle had written before the completion of the 121^st Pennsylvania’s monument at Gettysburg. Even in death, his words echoed across the now-silent battlefield.

A eulogizer said of Biddle: “His courage in battle was characteristic of the name he bore.”  How true. The world expected a lot from the Biddles. Because of their surname, they had to ask the best of themselves.

I prefer to believe that Chapman Biddle lived up to that imperative.





Colonel Chapman Biddle (postwar)

 

Bunch of Biddles, Part 1

Have you ever said to yourself, “I wonder which family had the most influence in the Army of the Potomac?” Well, I have. So, fellow Army of the Potomac fanatics, worry no more, I have an answer for you. Undoubtedly, the Biddle family of Philadelphia should receive that distinction. Every so often, in my research, I’m reminded of the presence of the Biddles and all they did during the Civil War. So for the next six posts, I’m going to remind you, too, of what they did, profiling some of the noteworthy Biddles and their various contributions to the history of the Union’s most magnificent army.

First thing’s first. Who were the Biddles? The Biddle family started when two Quakers, William Biddle and his wife, Sarah, arrived in Pennsylvania in 1681. As you might imagine, they were part of William Penn’s first wave of English settlers who intended to occupy the newly-founded proprietary colony of Pennsylvania. For generations, the Biddles survived and prospered within the “City of Brotherly Love,” and today, there are numerous buildings, roads, and awards named for them. By the nineteenth-century, the Biddles had formed into two distinct branches, one that descended from William Biddle III (b. 1698) and another that came from his brother, John (b. 1707). Both branches of the Biddles lived lives of wealth and self-importance; their sons and daughters held prominent political positions, ran lucrative businesses, and led famous social activist groups. There are lots of famous Biddles who left their mark on American history, but most of you probably know about Nicholas Biddle (1786-1844), the Whig politician who became president of the Second Bank of the United States.

Anyway, enough about that; let’s talk about a Civil War Era Biddle, perhaps the most controversial of the storied clan.

Charles John Biddle was born April 30, 1819. (In case you are interested, he was a member of the William Biddle III branch). Born into luxury, Charles Biddle attended Princeton University, graduating there in 1837. He studied to become a lawyer, joining the bar in 1840. Although he made law his profession, Biddle dabbled in the military. In his twenties, he served in a city militia company and even participated in the disruptive Bible Riots of 1844. During the Polk administration, he served as a captain in the Mexican-American War, commanding a company assigned to the U.S. Voltigeur regiment. Biddle fought at Contreras, Churubusco Bridge, and Molino Del Rey. According to a popular tale, Biddle was sick during the climactic assault on Chapultepec Castle—as were many Americans during that rigorous campaign—but he managed to crawl out of his bed just prior to the assault and stormed the walls with his company. He later claimed he was the first to surmount the parapet—again, as did many Americans who participated in that battle.

When the Civil War broke out, Biddle gave up his profession and went to war with a three-year volunteer regiment. In June 1861, he joined Colonel Thomas L. Kane’s “Wildcat Rifle Regiment,” the unit destined to become known as the “Pennsylvania Bucktails.” Hoping to fill all of Pennsylvania’s regiments with experienced officers, Governor Andrew Curtin offered Biddle the regiment’s vacant lieutenant-colonelcy. True to his family’s reputation, Biddle did not settle with a post that made him only second-in-command. After only a few days in camp, Biddle convinced everyone who would listen that he was a better commander than Kane. It’s not exactly clear how he managed it, but Biddle convinced Kane to resign his commission, and then he convinced the captains to elect him as their new colonel, ordering them to report their election to Curtin. Accordingly, Governor Curtin sent new commissions to the regiment, appointing Biddle to the colonelcy and Kane the lieutenant-colonelcy. (Essentially, through this conniving, Kane and Biddle swapped positions.) As a Democratic newspaper explained it, Kane and the regiment accepted the change selflessly: “The former [Kane], appreciating the superior military qualifications of Major Biddle, with a magnanimity that did him credit, promptly proposed a change of positions and insisted upon Major Biddle taking command of the regiment. After repeated and urgent solicitation, the generous proposition was accepted, and the arrangement heartily approved by the entire regiment, which is now one of the best-officered in the State.”

You may be wondering whether Biddle lived up to that hype. Well—surprise, surprise—he never saw combat. It’s possible the war actually stirred in him a desire to fight for his country. In describing the outbreak of the conflict, he took pride that after Fort Sumter, “the North rose like one man.” But if selfless devotion motivated Biddle in the beginning, it did not last long. Probably, Biddle had no intention of leading his regiment into a long, bloody campaign. He wanted the reputation of going to war at his country’s call, but he refused to sacrifice any blood to gain it. In short, he did not want to stay at the front and fight in what he called the “Republican Party’s war.”

Now, Biddle wasn’t just a Democrat. He was a Copperhead, a Democrat who derided the war effort and the Lincoln administration’s prosecution of it. He frequently consorted with the Ingersols (the most notorious Copperheads of Philadelphia) and with George W. Woodward (later the Copperhead candidate for governor). Although Biddle had willingly taken up arms against the Confederacy in June, by the end of the war’s first summer, he began to have second thoughts. Union forces had been trounced at Bull Run, and already, the Democrats spied an opportunity to win the upcoming election by criticizing the party in power. Further, one of Philadelphia’s congressmen, Edward Morris, had resigned his seat to become Lincoln’s minister to Turkey. In October 1861, Biddle decided to run in the special election to fill Morris’s vacant seat for Pennsylvania’s 2^nd District. Despite being away from Philadelphia for most of the election season, Biddle won easily.

Although Biddle had gone to great lengths to take command of the 1^st Rifle Regiment and make it the “best-officered in the State,” once Biddle secured his Congressional seat, he wanted to get out of the army, quick as he could. When he announced his resignation publicly in early December, he said it was in the best interest of the country. Theoretically, although he could have held both the colonelcy and the Congressional seat simultaneously, he argued, “I could not perform the duties of both,” particularly since the Commander-in-Chief, Abraham Lincoln, might exert his corruptive influence over him while Biddle held the commission—or so he feared. Biddle derided the Union’s war effort as a “Black Republican job,” and he refused to allow one of Philadelphia’s representatives to be “thus trammeled” by Lincoln’s military authority. As a Copperhead representative, Biddle intended to use his power to criticize the President at every step. He vowed to “exercise the right of free speech” liberally, and he could not do that as a member of the U.S. Army. Biddle’s letter explaining his resignation launched into a loud attack against the Republican Party:

My political opinions are what they have always been. I am a Democrat—never more one than at this hour. I rejoiced that it was with my name upon your banners that you [the Democrats of Philadelphia] overthrew the Republican Party in this city.

This, at least, we may say for the Democratic party—it rated at their true value the fantastic theories, the whims, the ‘isms,’ the question of mere phraseology that men, calling themselves statesmen, have preferred to peace, to union, to the gradual progress and development of each section, and all races in due relation to natural causes. This, too, we may say for the Democratic party—while it maintained its sway, ‘Secession’ was a little, baffled clique; as the Republican Party rose, ‘Secession’ became ‘an army with banners.’

Nor was the foresight of the Republican leaders wider than their patriotism. The false prophets of the party promised their followers that three months should see the end of all the trouble, and when war came upon them even then they wanted only three months’ volunteers to end it. They created and fostered that intoxicating self-confidence that was the cause of our earlier reverses. They had so persistently abused that part of the American people that lived across a geographical line, that they had come, at last, to underrate and despise them, and Republican oratory summoned its hearers to stern encounters, but only to pays and pillage.

Naturally, Philadelphia Democrats were happy to have a Union veteran enter Congress and commence his unfettered criticism of the President. However, Republicans scornfully expressed their own happiness to see Biddle leave the army. Only days after Biddle resigned, the 1^st Rifle Regiment engaged Confederate forces at Dranesville, Virginia, losing twenty-nine men killed and wounded. Lieutenant Colonel Kane led the regiment that day, and Republicans were quick to point out that it benefited from Biddle’s absence. One newspaper asked, “Would Biddle have faced the enemies of his country as fiercely as he attacks the friends of the government on the floor of Congress? These questions are answered in the negative by the nation in thunderous undertones, and the congratulation is universal that Charles J. Biddle was not at the head of his regiment when it so gallantly faced the enemy at Drainesville.” Another newspaper, the Philadelphia Press, barked, “He [Biddle] was elected [to Congress] because he wore an American uniform. . . . In resigning his commission in the American Army he has paid the highest tribute to his sincere opposition to the constituted authorities, and we trust his example will be followed by all officers entertaining the same opinions.”

Republicans continued to mock Biddle as the war continued. He lost re-election in November 1862 and refused to go back into military service. The Republicans reminded newspaper readers that Biddle was an example of Copperhead cowardice. When the war broke out, he was all bluster and bravado, and when it appeared he might have to bleed, he left the army and took to criticizing the nation’s leaders. When Emancipation came, Biddle loudly played the trumpet of white supremacy, calling slavery “an artificial cause” of the war, something fabricated by abolitionists. In June 1863, Biddle became chairman of the Democratic State Convention, which nominated fellow Copperhead George W. Woodward as the party’s frontrunner. At the time, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was bearing down on Harrisburg (where the convention was taking place). Just one day’s march (and one burned bridge) prevented Lee’s soldiers from reaching Pennsylvania’s capital and occupying it. To help the beleaguered Army of the Potomac, Governor Curtin called up 60,000 emergency militiamen, imploring all patriotic citizens to serve until Lee’s army had been repulsed. At the Convention, Biddle announced that he’d resign his position as chairman and serve in the militia, even as a private soldier, if he had to. Apparently, he even promised to raise a regiment in Philadelphia and lead it to the nearest battlefield.

But it never happened. When Lee’s army retreated after Gettysburg, Biddle remained ununiformed and without a regiment. A Republican newspaper mocked him, calling him “Charles the Valiant.” Biddle had missed his last chance to be the war hero he often proclaimed to be:

Hon. Charles J. Biddle, whose people voted him into Congress because they believed him to be a patriot, and afterwards decisively voted him out because they found out he wasn’t, has turned up alive—a fact we announce with pleasure to our Democratic friends, especially those of the Copperhead stripe. . . . For weeks we supposed he had fallen in some sanguinary struggle, and found a grave in some secluded spot, unwept and unsung, where he would lie monumentless and unepitaphed, because his dying valor spared no foe to record his achievements.  . . . But Charles neither marched, nor fought, nor died; neither commanded, nor was commanded; but ‘still lives,’ as he did during the invasion, in peace and security in Philadelphia, as his immense address to the Democracy of the State assures us. For that we rejoice, for he might have fallen, and more sense and patriotism might have appeared in Democratic addresses to defraud the voters of the State; but that he insisted upon rushing to battle, and called the world, Judge Woodward, and the ‘rest of mankind’ to witness his bloody purpose, and then quietly squelched out while thousands marched to the field without making public proclamation of their bravery, might be called by the unappreciating home-spun world a mingling of fraud, falsehood, and cowardly bravado.

All the insulting did its work. Biddle never held public office again. He continued to influence politics, however. He became editor-in-chief of the Age, Philadelphia’s only appreciable Democratic newspaper. During Reconstruction, fellow Democrats routinely called him a “hero” for his service early in the war. They conveniently forgot, of course, that he paid his political opposition higher tribute.

Charles J. Biddle died on September 28, 1873, at age fifty-four.



Colonel Charles John Biddle

Shot in the Neck

Here’s another installment of my on-going series, “Shot in the [blank],” a series about soldiers from the Army of the Potomac who received gunshot wounds to uncommon pieces of their anatomy. Today, we’re going to explore a neck wound.

Neck wounds are horrifying things. They emit lots of blood, they disable their victims through asphyxiation, and they take away any means of communicating the nature of their injury. In essence, sufferers of neck wounds lose their breath and their voice in one cruel blow.

For our story today, a bizarre quirk of fate happened whereby a soldier’s neck wound saved his life. Had this federal soldier been able to speak normally, he would likely have been killed by his Confederate captor.

The unfortunate soldier in question—the one who received an awful neck wound—was Sergeant Franklin H. Evans, Company E, 121^st Pennsylvania. He received his injury on July 1, 1863, just as his regiment commenced combat with Confederate infantry at the south end of McPherson’s Ridge, an acclivity west of Gettysburg. At 2 P.M., Brig. General Abner Perrin’s South Carolina brigade surged against the left end of the Union 1^st Corps. This was where the 121^st Pennsylvania held the line.

Evans was among the first soldiers o fall. The commanding officer of the 121^st Pennsylvania, Major Alexander Biddle, had just given orders to his men, telling them to rise up from the tall grass and volley into the attacking Confederates. Obediently, Evans rose to one knee and cocked his rifle. Before he could pull the trigger, a minié ball struck him in the neck. The ball whizzed through him. It entered one side of his neck and came out the other. Evans recalled the sensation. He wrote, “When the bullet struck me, it jarred my body as a blow on the neck with a fist. I felt it enter my neck but I did not feel it go out, so I thought it was still [in] there.”

Knowing his wound might be dangerous—perhaps even mortal—Evans rose to his feet and started hobbling to the rear, a desperate bid to get out of the danger zone. After traveling only 100 yards, he collapsed, unable to move. He tried calling for help, but to his horror, discovered he could not speak. The shock of the blow and the blood filling his trachea made it impossible to talk. Closing his mouth, he focused on breathing through his nose. In a few minutes, a wounded private from his company—his tent-mate, in fact—came along, holding his mangled arm. Seeing Evans prostrate and bleeding, the soldier—Private Harry Gouldy—urged Evans to endure the pain and “come out of this.” Evans shook his head. Choking and weary, Evans felt his life slipping away. It was an odd sensation. He remembered:

I had difficulty breathing. The affairs of this world seemed to lose their importance. I had a dim thought that mother would be sorry. I ceased to care which way the victory went. My thoughts were concentrated on the hereafter; I wanted to see how it went to die.

Evans fainted. He awoke several hours later, long after the battle had passed over him. It was two hours to sunset, so he must have been unconscious for nearly three hours. Evans first laid eyes on a nearby fence, and concluded rather matter-of-factly that he must be alive. He wrote, “I had never heard that fences were used in Paradise, and as I knew they were used on earth, I concluded that, at any rate, I was not dead yet.” Within a few minutes, a plump fifteen-year-old Confederate straggler came by and asked Evans if he could offer any assistance. Evans begged for water, trading his penknife for a generous swig from the teenager’s canteen. The water stimulated Evans, and it returned his voice, though it remained weak. More importantly, Evans vowed to live on. He wrote, “I had changed my mind about dying.”

After the helpful Confederate straggler passed by, another gray-clad soldier arrived. This one had a mean look on his face. Evans called him “a devil of the Wilkes Booth type, only infinitely worse,” a man who looked “like Mephistopheles in Faust.” According to Evans, the Confederate soldier readied his weapon, eager to execute him at the first sign of provocation.

Hoping to get Evans to say something derogatory against the Confederacy, the “Wilkes Booth”-looking Confederate asked, “Ain’t you ashamed of yourself, coming down here to drive us from our homes?” Under normal circumstances, Evans might have retorted with disdain or sarcasm, pointing out the Confederate soldier’s idiocy. They were in Pennsylvania! But as Evans later explained, had he attempted to answer flippantly, it would have provoked the Confederate to evil mischief. He reflected, it would have “called forth his missing courage to deliver the fatal cut and leave one more [Yankee] to be reported as ‘killed in action;’ when the truth would have been ‘murdered’—murdered by a cowardly, cold-hearted, blood-thirsty villain.”

Evans’s neck wound prevented him from blurting out a hasty rejoinder. He could not answer because he could barely speak. He mumbled, “I don’t know.” Furious that Evans would not take the bait, the Confederate launched into a tirade, demanding an answer to his question. Why had the Yankees invaded his country? Again, Evans replied, “I don’t know; I don’t care to talk politics with a bullet through my throat.” The Confederate snarled, asking Evans if the bullet really was lodged in his neck. Evans nodded. The Confederate soldier kicked him in his cartridge box, boasting how his army had enough bullets to kill all the Yankees, and soon they’d whip the Army of the Potomac permanently. Unable to get Evans to debate with him, the vicious-looking straggler fetched two members from the Confederate ambulance corps, who, in turn, moved Evans to an aide station where the Confederates had collected other wounded prisoners. Evans was relieved to be rid of his captor. Through silence, he remembered, “I had escaped the tiger’s jaws.”

No Confederate medical personnel operated on Evans, even though he insisted the bullet was still inside him. (Only hours later did Evans discover his error. He found an exit wound, proof the bullet had passed clean through.) The next day, July 2, Evans reached a field hospital, although he had to beg a gray-clad staff officer to take him there. (I’m not sure to which farm he journeyed, but I would guess he stayed at the Harman or Bream farms; however, I would not stake money on it.) He slept along a fence, and on July 3, he reported to the surgeon-in-charge. The farmhouse contained six to eight wounded Union soldiers, but the Confederates did not operate on any of them. A sergeant with a shattered ankle even begged to have his leg cut off, but the Confederates ignored him. They were “working like bees,” Evans remembered, “cutting off the limbs of their own wounded.” On July 4, a Confederate provost asked if any of the Union prisoners were able to walk. None of them admitted to it. Frustrated that he could not carry off any more prisoners, the provost vacated the hospital. The next day, the Confederates abandoned the area, leaving the Union wounded behind. As Evans recalled, he felt a “happy sensation” watching the last few Confederates gallop down the Fairfield Road, trailing after their beaten army. In a few hours, he and the other wounded prisoners were safely back in Union lines.

Sergeant Evans survived his neck wound and returned to duty. After recovering in Philadelphia, he acquired a commission as first lieutenant in the 8^th U.S.C.T. By war’s end, he had risen to the rank of captain, mustering out with his regiment in November 1865. He died on December 30, 1913, at age seventy. He is buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

Neck wounds are horrifying things. They take our breath and our voice. Thankfully, for Evans, by losing the latter, he kept his life.

This is Sgt. Frank H. Evans, Company E, 121st Pennsylvania, the victim of an ugly, but non-fatal neck wound, suffered on July 1, 1863.

 

Capture the Flag

People who know me probably know I’m a something of a cynic when it comes to Civil War “flag captures.” (Yes, I know, it’s kind of a weird thing to be cynical about.) You see, most Civil War soldiers believed that losing a regimental standard was a great dishonor. To them, any capture of an enemy banner was a cause for celebration. In reality, in my humble opinion, the captures of enemy flags were hardly spectacular things. (For those interested, I explored this in greater detail in a previous post about the Medal of Honor and the Civil War.) Generally, capturing a flag was an easy thing. After a battle, scattered colors littered the field. The instant the fighting stopped, the soldiers who held the field went looking for these trophies and many of them received medals for it. Any skulker with two hands and a bit of determination could snag a fallen standard from the death-grip of its deceased bearer. Keep in mind, I speak as a person who has never seen combat, but I can’t imagine there is much glory in taking an enemy flag from a dead corpse right after the fighting has ended.

That being said, I freely admit that some flag-captures required a tremendous amount of daring. Occasionally, soldiers seized flags from living color-bearers. As you might imagine, when that happened, epic violence accompanied the confrontation. In my opinion, there was a particular moment when the Army of the Potomac experienced more heroic flag captures than any other time, with each moment justifiably glorious in its own right. That time was early-morning, May 12, 1864. The place was the Mule Shoe Salient.

If humankind’s collective nightmares ever decided to manifest into the shape of the Civil War, it would look like the Mule Shoe, a crush of 20,000 men grappling hand-to-hand in mud and rain for fourteen hours. Horrors of all kinds—some of which I’ve already profiled on this blog—played out left and right. Yet in the midst of this inhuman carnage, fifteen soldiers from the Army of the Potomac’s 2^nd Corps rose out of the fog and grasped at enemy standards, pulling them from the Confederates’ grip. Few events during the war were more worthy of praise and acclamation. For this post, I’d like to profile one of these incidents.

This story comes from an officer who witnessed a spectacular flag-capture at the Mule Shoe. His recollection emphasized a key point. The sight of a blue-clad soldier wrenching away a Confederate flag was an unforgettable thing. The account comes from First Lieutenant Robert Stoddart Robertson, a staff officer attached to Colonel Nelson Miles’s 1^st Brigade, 1^st Division, 2^nd Corps. The flag-capture he witnessed proved so amazing that he mentioned it twice. He mentioned it first in a short narrative about the Overland Campaign written in 1883. It was called, “From the Wilderness to Spottsylvania,” a paper read before the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion. It was later published in collection of essays in 1888. Robertson repeated the same story in his personal memoir of the war published in 1896.

Robertson was part of the first wave of Union soldiers to strike the Confederate salient on May 12. Despite the horrors of the battle, he stayed with his brigade even as the number of bluecoats swelled, cramming men against the earthworks like sardines. In places, Union troops held one side of the trenches, while the Confederates desperately clung to the opposite rampart. From a distance, it was hard for the corps commanders to tell what was happening. Both sides were hugging the ground, occasionally rising up to fire, which created a massive cloud of white smoke that hung over the Mule Shoe. Only the shadowy battle-flags could be seen whipping back and forth, an indication that the fighting had stalemated, even though the opposing troops were within spitting distance of each other.  Needless to say, anyone who attempted to capture a flag risked death. A potential captor had to leap atop the earthworks, expose himself to pointblank gunfire, and then wrest the trophy from the hands of a determined foe.

Believe it or not, one Union soldier attempted that very act. When he grabbed a Confederate flag, he and the bearer began choking each other! Here’s what Robertson saw:

Once, the rebel colors floated out of the wind, until it could be grasped by one of our boys. The brave color-bearer rose to his feet clinging to the staff. Our brave boy rises clinging to the flag, and with disengaged hands they seek to grasp each other’s throats, in a deadly struggle for the flag. Thus they stand over the very rampart, both determined to win the flag. By common consent the firing ceases at that point, and both sides eagerly watch and encourage the fray. Finally, the flag is torn from its staff, and its proud captor, with shattered arm, is hailed with shouts of applause.

Yikes! What a scene! Robertson considered it the bravest act he had ever witnessed. Of the captor, he wrote, “I wish I knew his name, that I might hand it down to the future, to be honored in history.”

Although Robertson never had a chance to know the identity of the courageous captor, as a modern historian, I get that luxury. The captor’s identity is fairly simple to deduce. In October 1864, the Army of the Potomac’s headquarters asked its regimental commanders to identify all soldiers who individually captured Confederate flags at Gettysburg, Bristoe Station, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania. The 2^nd Corps listed a slew of names, fifteen of whom had captured flags at the Mule Shoe Salient.

The soldier who Robertson so admired was 17-year-old Corporal Archibald Freeman, Company E, 124^th New York Volunteers (who had enlisted underage in 1862), and the flag he captured belonged to the 15^th Louisiana. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Weygant, the regimental commander, remembered hearing about the incident from a wounded man who belonged to Company E. You will notice the similarity in the way Weygant’s informant described the incident:

“The Rebs,” said he, “had charged almost up to the works twice before, but this time they came clear up and planted their stars and bars on the other side of the works right opposite the Union flags. The Louisianans were facing our regiment and had thrust their standard in the earth directly opposite and were not more than three feet from ours. But it did not float there more than a minute when Arch. Freeman, of my company, sprang on the works and quick as a flash jerked up the traitor rag and was back in his place without getting a scratch—and, well now, you ought to have just heard our boys yell.”

The tale told by the wounded man from Company E made a slight error. Freeman did not get away “without getting a scratch.” Although he was not wounded during his confrontation with the Confederate color-bearer, a bullet struck Freeman in the face a few minutes later. The ball caused only a slight wound. Of course, it was also contrary to what Robertson said. Freeman’s arm was not “shattered.”

Freeman was one of a handful of Army of the Potomac soldiers who received a Medal of Honor during the war. (Most Medal of Honor recipients won their awards years later.) On November 28, 1864, after considering Freeman’s case, the War Department decided to issue him the highest award it could bestow. Army of the Potomac headquarters circulated Special Order No. 309, ordering Freeman’s brigade (1^st Brigade, 3^rd Division, 2^nd Corps, under Brig. Gen. Regis de Trobriand) to form up on December 15, 1864, and present Freeman his award in front of his entire command. Colonel Weygant remembered, “The presentation was duly made and Sergeant Archibald Freeman became, for the time being, the envied hero of de Trobriand’s command.” Freeman stayed with his regiment until its muster-out in 1865. He died in 1918.

I hope Lieutenant Robertson eventually learned Freeman’s identity; however, I worry he didn’t. I am in agreement with what he wrote. Freeman’s name needed be handed down to the future, “to be honored in history.” Freeman (and others like him who also captured flags at the Mule Shoe) accomplished an act that few people will ever duplicate.

 

 

This is 1st Lt. Robert Stoddart Roberston, shown here in August 1863 as an officer assigned to Co. K, 93rd New York Volunteers. During the Overland Campaign, he served on the staff of Colonel Nelson Miles, and on May 12, 1864, he witnessed an incredible flag capture, the seizure of the colors of the 15th Louisiana by Corporal Archibald Freeman.

 

 

I'm a sucker for panoramic Civil War art. Here is an illustration by Richard Schlecht showing the Mule Shoe at Spotsylvania. Imagine Freeman's amazing flag capture happening right in the middle of the image, at the breastworks, where the smoke is thickest.

 

 

 

Listen to the Wise Sergeant

So,  . . . there is a Presidential Election here in the United States, and as we count down the hours to Election Day, naturally, our anxiety and animosity increases. To help readers through this restless period, I thought I’d share a short story about the one Presidential Election witnessed by the Army of the Potomac. We must remember, of course, that the soldiers from that army had to consider carefully the two controversial candidates who ran in the pivotal Election of 1864, Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan.

How did the soldiers weigh the candidates’ abilities?

Well, one soldier wrote a letter describing a political debate in the field. In early October 1864, while the 6^th Corps was encamped at Front Royal, Virginia, a cluster of Yankees gathered around a spring, initially to collect water for their canteens. While there, a debate arose concerning the two Presidential candidates. One of the participants in that conversation, Private Wilbur Fisk of the 2^nd Vermont, wrote home that he “never enjoyed a better discussion.” As they filled their canteens, the bluecoats voiced their opinions. Although Lincoln had the most supporters, “The McClellan men were noisy and defiant, and their arguments were of the old, stereotyped order, the sum and substance of which usually is, ‘Damn the niggers’.” Fisk wrote that it wasn’t worth his time to record what the McClellan men said, but he attempted to describe the loudest of them, saying, “One of them would vote for McClellan because he was the best General the world had ever produced, and had been so shamefully abused. The President, his General in Chief, his Secretary of War, and the greater portion of Congress, he said, had been ‘down’ on him, because they were afraid of him, and it would do his soul good to see him raised to the supreme control of our affairs.” Frighteningly, the McClellan man suggested prosecutorial retributions as soon as McClellan came into office. Fisk related, “The first thing he wanted to see him do then, was to put old Abe and Stanton and Horace Greeley, and a few other abolition criminals into Fort Lafayette. A long list of other grievances were enumerated, which he hoped McClellan’s statesmanship would discover some way to punish, and he wanted he should do it with a vengeance.”

After two McClellan supporters had railed against Lincoln and the abolitionists for a few minutes more, a “well dressed, fine looking” orderly sergeant belonging to the 139^th Pennsylvania stepped into the cluster of soldiers and started speaking on behalf of Lincoln. Particularly, the unnamed sergeant hated the Democratic Party’s “peace plank,” its plans to call for armistice talks to force a reunion of the states under negotiated conditions. Fisk recorded what the sergeant said. Here’s what he wrote. (Keep in mind that Fisk switches between his own voice and that of the sergeant’s):

If we are willing to stop the war for the sake of talking this matter over with the South, we recognize them at once. If we are willing to negotiate with Jeff Davis, England will claim the same privilege, and so will France, and what can suit the rebel President better than that[?] His government will then be fully recognized, and we can’t help ourselves. . . . A convention of all the States now, he thought, was the greatest absurdity of the age. He believed the South, unless their case was entirely hopeless, would scorn to have anything to do with it. At best, it would only be a scene of crimination and recrimination, of jargon and confusion, and end in a grand fizzle, leaving our ship of state without chart, or compass, or principle, or purpose to guide her. South Carolina would want redress of Massachusetts for the indignity she suffered when black men stormed her forts on Morris Island, and Jefferson Davis would probably ask to have ‘Beast Butler’ hung as a guaranty of our good faith in calling a convention. All the results that could be obtained now might have been obtained four years ago. Now, after we have lost 500,000 men slain by this rebellion, he would not call it a joke and come back to that, and nobody but a coward would think of it.

After ridiculing the peace plank thoroughly, the Pennsylvania sergeant cut to the heart of the matter. He explained why an armistice would allow the dangerous principles of secession to stand:

No sir, said he, there is no use in talking of armistices and conventions. We have got to fight this thing out. There is no other way. The North and South must find out who is master. . . . The South had rebelled against our common Government, and the Government must compel them to cry Enough, or it would be no Government at all. A Government that couldn’t vindicate itself, wasn’t worth having, and he didn’t believe the people of the North was [sic] quite ready yet to vote for any such.

At this point, the sergeant pointed out that his family had already sacrificed blood in the war, telling listeners that he had already lost two brothers. He hated to think that the Democratic Party would dishonor their memory by refusing to see the war through to its conclusion. Fisk explained, “It made him provoked, he said, that men of the North, who ought to know better, should encourage the South to hold out by talking of propositions for peace. It was only prolonging the war, and killing so many more of our men.” He said that every man who would vote for the Chicago platform “ought to be made to go in front of the whole length of our army drawn up in line, with a board strapped to his back marked COWARD in big letters, and every soldier ought to hiss at him as he passed.”

The debate at the Front Royal spring went on for a few more minutes, but the Pennsylvania sergeant closed the discussion. Fisk argued that he was the most impressive speaker at the unplanned deliberation. “His ideas appeared to be well digested,” he wrote, “and being the ranking man, his opinions had greater weight with us than those of any other one in the crowd.” Happy with the way the dialogue turned out, Fisk wrote home to his local newspaper, concluding, “What I have written is a true index of ‘what the soldiers think’ of the great political contest now pending.”

Who was the eloquent sergeant? Fisk never caught his name, but he gave us a few clues which helped me pin him down. Most likely, he was First Sergeant Samuel B. Thompson, age twenty-four, from Company G, 139^th Pennsylvania. Thompson’s two brothers were Cyrus and William. Cyrus died of disease at Downsville, Maryland, on October 18, 1863, and William was killed at the Battle of the Wilderness, May 5, 1864. Although wounded at the Wilderness, Sergeant Thompson survived the war and mustered out with his regiment in 1865.

When it came to the election, Fisk and his comrades made the right choice. They went to the polls on November 8 and re-elected Abraham Lincoln and history applauds them for it. As Fisk would have us believe, Lincoln’s victory among the 6^th Corps soldiers came from the words of the wise sergeant. Perhaps we should take that advice. To those caught up in the throes of this 2016 contest, to those who are noisy and defiant, to those who are eager to see vengeance meted out after electoral victory arrives: perhaps you should reconsider your choice and heed the wisdom of the Sergeant Thompsons of the world.

This is Pvt. Wilbur Fisk, 2nd Vermont, who recorded the persuasive language of Sergeant Samuel B. Thompson, a grizzled veteran who chose to stump for Abraham Lincoln in 1864.

Shot in the Eyes

As my diligent readers know, I have an on-going series called “Shot in the [Blank].” In this series, I examine casualties from the Army of the Potomac, soldiers who were shot in an interesting piece of their anatomy. So far, I’ve written such posts as “Shot in the Brain,” “Shot in the Shoulder,” and “Shot in the Lung.” Today, this series gets grim. This is “Shot in the Eyes,” the story of a Union soldier who lost his sight forever thanks to an unlucky Confederate musket ball. It’s a heart-rending story for several reasons. Not only did the young soldier in question have the glory of sight taken from him, but the wound and his resultant surgery proved especially painful. Finally, everyone who saw the wound gave the wounded man slim odds at survival. Onlookers believed his life could be counted in hours. In short, “Shot in the Eyes” is the story of one of the most depressing wounds of the war.

 

The ugly wound in question occurred on August 15, 1864, when the Army of the Potomac’s 2^nd and 10^th Corps landed at Deep Bottom, Virginia, a bend in the James River a few miles south of the New Market Crossroads. Marching through brutally hot weather, the beleaguered Union troops hoped to find a weak point in the Confederate earthworks that protected the east side of Richmond. It was not to be. The ill-coordinated Union attack faltered and the exhausted bluecoats failed to keep up the pressure. After five days of battle, the so-called Second Battle of Deep Bottom ended in a decisive Confederate victory. The two Union corps counted 2,900 losses, including 327 killed.

Among those 2,900 men, the Second Battle of Deep Bottom claimed 18-year-old Private William H. Sallada of Company B, 57^th Pennsylvania. A few weeks earlier, Sallada had been detailed to act as orderly, responsible for delivering messages between brigades and for handing out the regimental mail. At 10:30 A.M., as the Union column made its way north from the landing zone, Sallada was riding his horse in an effort to overtake the column of the 10^th Corps. When he reached the front of the 10^th Corps’ column, he passed Maj. Gen. David Bell Birney (commander of the 10^th Corps) and his staff marching north on the Kingsland Road. Sallada remembered, “These were the last Union soldiers I ever saw.” Riding ahead of Birney’s column, Sallada reached the New Market Road, expecting to find the rear of the 2^nd Corps. Unfortunately, Sallada found no Union troops. A gap had opened up between the two Union corps as they headed north, the 2^nd Corps marching too fast and the 10^th Corps marching too slow. Instead of friendly troops, Sallada found only rows of “slashing,” felled trees left behind by the Confederates to hamper the Union advance. Eager to catch up to his regiment which accompanied the 2^nd Corps, Sallada maneuvered his horse to find a gap in the Confederate obstructions, and after entering a cluster of trees, he came face-to-face with a Confederate squad.

The Confederates rose up from their hiding spot and volleyed into the teenage orderly. One bullet struck Sallada’s horse in the neck and another ripped off the horn of his saddle. Next, a “giant-like rebel” rose up and called for Sallada to surrender. Knowing that surrender might equal a death sentence at Andersonville, the young orderly chose to make a break for it. He wheeled his injured horse, hoping to gallop back to the 10^th Corps lines before the Confederate squad could reload. In that same instant, the Confederate sentry who had called for his surrender raised his gun and fired. A blast of buck and ball shot burst from the barrel, hitting Sallada in the left temple. The ball entered Sallada’s head between his left ear and eye, passed through his skull, and then exploded out the bridge of his nose. The ball shattered both cheeks—the left in three places, the right in two. One of the buckshot hit Sallada’s left eyebrow, mashing it horribly. But worst of all, the ball gorged out Sallada’s right eye, causing instant blindness in that organ. “I was most horribly mangled,  . . .” Sallada recalled simply. “My head was completely benumbed, and my clothes were being saturated with blood.”

The shot dismounted Sallada, who fell to the ground with an ungraceful “thump.” Driven by adrenalin, he hopped up on both feet and looked around with his left eye, which still functioned. He could see his horse galloping for the safety of Union lines, the last image he ever beheld. Starting after it, Sallada ran three or four steps, jumping over the embankment at the New Market Road. As he did so, the blood from his wound rushed into his left eye, blinding him totally and permanently. Even without sight, he kept running, trying to reach the Union lines off to the south. He traversed a few additional steps until he slammed against a tree, throwing his arms around it in a bizarre hug, just to keep from falling over.

Now immobilized, Sallada waited for fate to intervene. The Confederates who had shot him reached him first. One of them came over to him, and after a short interview, proceeded to rob Sallada of his personal items. Although it annoyed Sallada that his captors decided to relieve him of his possessions while he was so enfeebled, he rationalized their behavior this way: “With the blood pouring out both sides of my head, to all appearance I could live but a short time; I could not expect any attention from my captors, and in all probability would be left alone in this forest to die.” In a few minutes, the situation changed. A U.S.C.T. brigade from the 10^th Corps entered the area and surrounded the squad of Confederates. Sallada was rescued, his captors taken prisoner, his horse recovered, and his possessions returned to him (although Sallada ultimately gave them to the U.S.C.T. soldier who had taken them from the Confederate thief.) Sallada’s head began to swell and he could no longer speak. His final words, before his mouth swelled shut were, “If I could only get into our lines.”

Although none of the 10^th Corps troops expected Sallada to live, they put him on a stretcher and carried him to a field hospital near the Deep Bottom landing zone. The day was hot and thousands of troops marched along the Kingsland Road, raising an enormous dust cloud. As Sallada recalled, “It is difficult to imagine a more desolate and melancholy spectacle than my condition presented that day. My features were so disfigured by the rebel shot; they were beginning to swell, and the dust and blood mingling together in a horrible mass, gave me, I know, a revolting appearance.” At the field hospital, Union surgeons paid Sallada little to no attention. They were overloaded with wounded from the 2^nd New York Heavy Artillery, which had been mauled in an assault near Fussell’s Mill, and they decided that Sallada was not worth the time or the energy to save. The surgeons told him that he had only hours to live and he had best make his peace with God. They assigned a chaplain to him to give him last rites. Unable to speak, Sallada could only sit and listen to the morbid prognosis. In incredible pain and realizing that his right eye had been horribly gouged out, he moaned piteously, hoping that someone might use a pistol to put him out of his misery. When the Union surgeons ordered the wounded men from the battle be loaded onto medical transports, they determined that Sallada should be left to die. “The boy cannot go,” they said firmly. Amazingly, a helpful chaplain violated the orders of the chief surgeon and loaded Sallada onto the steamer State of Maine, and on August 17, he arrived at Carver Hospital, Washington, D.C.

Sallada’s case attracted widespread attention from many of the chief surgeons, for few had ever seen a head and eye wound quite like Sallada’s. Essentially, the Confederate bullet had bored a large tunnel right through Sallada’s face, taking out his cheeks, nose, and eyes. Sallada couldn’t speak, taste, smell, or see, but he could hear. Believing Sallada to be unconscious, many of the surgical staff expressed their opinion freely. “Poor fellow!” exclaimed one. “He is past all help. He is done with his campaigning forever!” Indeed, even the most educated practicioners doubted his chances.

Sallada was assigned to a capable surgeon—a man remembered only as “Dr. Wynants”—who performed the surgery to clean out Sallada’s wound, remove the fragments of bone, and close up the entry and exit wounds. Acutely aware of these proceedings, Sallada recalled the sensation they produced:

The ordeal was keenly painful, for, before the entire operation was concluded, a piece of silk was drawn three times through the wound, each time enlarged to meet the demands of the occasion. My sensations while passing through this treatment  were those of unmixed agony. The needle was too short for the purpose for which it was required, making it necessary for the operator to introduce, to a slight extent, his finger into the wound, thus pushing the instrument along its course. Fragments of bones were in this manner disturbed, and the irritation caused in this way was a most torturing experience.

When it became clear that Sallada might, perhaps, recover from his wound, the surgeons began treating him with sedatives. The next few weeks passed by in a delirium. “I lay in a sort of apathy,” Sallada remembered, “or rather in a condition of animal enjoyment, the grave thoughts of death, the judgment scene, and eternity, seemed not to demand any fixed attention. This part of my life comes back to me with a kind of vagueness, like a dream, which, in spite of its general impressiveness, is but half-remembered.”

As Sallada’s wounds improved and he emerged from the fog of the various anesthetics used on him, he became aware of the horrible truth that his eyes were gone and his blindness was permanent. Naturally, the news disheartened him. Later in life, when he penned his account of the distress he felt, this is what he wrote:

Sight was gone forever! Never again was I permitted to look out, as I had been wont to do, on the familiar scenes of nature; never again would I look on the green earth, or the blue sky, glittering with its retinue of sun and stars; never again would I have the unspeakable privilege of looking into the faces of those home relatives who were dearest to me in life.

Sallada’s situation did not get any easier, as he learned that his mother had died at his parent’s home in Greenville, Pennsylvania. Thankfully, Sallada had a dutiful volunteer nurse, Harriet Douglas Whetten (who is frequently quoted by modern historians who study Civil War nurses), who counseled him through the sad news of her death. By January 1865, Sallada was well enough to travel, although he remained in the army until August 1865 when the surgeons considered him fit to be discharged. During his year-long period of recovery, Sallada adapted as most blind people do, learning to hone his other senses to make up for his loss of sight. In so doing, he ended up hearing one of the most famous moments in American history. On April 11, 1865, he stopped by the White House to hear Abraham Lincoln deliver his last public address, a privilege that Sallada treasured until his dying day.

After his discharge, Sallada returned to Pennsylvania and became a retail fruit dealer. He married a woman named F. D. McGinnis and raised three children with her. In the 1870s, he moved to Iowa and got into politics, winning election as a Republican member of the city council of Monroe. He died in 1935 at age 89.

There is no doubt that eye wounds stood among the most ghastly of the Civil War. What I find most disturbing about Sallada’s experience was the lack of humanity he received from those around him. Confederate soldiers attempted to rob him, surgeons refused to allow him transportation to a general hospital, practitioners spoke openly about their belief that he had no chance of survival, and others poked and prodded inside his head with no sedative to dull the pain. In plucking out Sallada’s eyes, the Confederate ball that wounded him had plucked out a part of his humanity as well.

Cherish your eyes. We who have sight do not know how lucky we have it. 

 

 

Private William H. Sallada is seen here, later in life.