Captain Dennis Dailey and the Capture of Hagood’s Brigade at the Battle of Globe Tavern, Part 3: The Struggle for the 27th South Carolina’s Flag

This post is part of a series. Check out the Introduction, Part 1, and Part 2.

Johnson Hagood’s men were trapped! Due to poor intelligence from their division commander, they had foolishly charged into a moat at the base of a reentry angle in the Union line. Union infantry fire hit them from front and left flank, and Union artillery blasted canister from their right. How would they get out of this?

At this crucial moment, a Union officer offered Hagood’s men an olive branch. Amid the chaotic exchange of gunfire, Captain Dennis Burke Dailey of Brig. Gen. Lysander Cutler’s staff rode between the lines. (Capt. Dailey served as Provost Marshal for the 4^th Division, 5^th Corps.) Mounting his bay horse, he galloped toward the nearest sally-port, ordering the nearby Union infantry to cease firing. Dailey came out in front of the 27^th South Carolina, and seeing the enemy color bearer in front of him, he demanded the surrender of the flag. It was a timely request. Hagood’s men had just reached their breaking point. In the center of the line, a cluster of men from the 27^th South Carolina raised their hands as a token of surrender. So remembered Confederate staff officer Thomas J. Mackey, “The color-sergeant, seemingly dazed, or perhaps paralyzed by the sublime effrontery of the demand, surrendered the colors.”

This photograph depicts Dennis Dailey as captain. This is probably how he looked during the Battle of Globe Tavern.

Promptly, Dailey grabbed the emblem, which happened to be a state flag with the arms of South Carolina emblazoned on it. With the captured flag in hand, Dailey shouted to all the rebels in the vicinity. If they surrendered, the Union troops behind the earthworks would cease firing and spare their lives. Dailey recollected, “A number of both officers and men, deeming their plight a hopeless one, obeyed the order almost mechanically.” They tossed their weapons aside. Slowly but surely, they forded the moat and began filing up the escarpment.

Brig. Gen. Hagood was only 75 yards away from this scene. He had other ideas. Believing he could still extract his brigade from the deathtrap into which it had charged, he shouted from his position behind the 21^st South Carolina that someone needed to shoot the intruding Union officer and reclaim the 27^th South Carolina’s flag. Unfortunately for him, no one listened. Recollected Hagood, “They either did not hear me or bewildered by the surrender of part of their number, failed to obey.”

Hagood was beside himself with shame. He was a diehard rebel with a vicious hatred of abolitionists; he couldn’t bear to witness his whole brigade march into enemy lines as prisoners. He recollected, “It was a critical moment and demanded instant and decided action. In a few minutes the disposition to surrender would have spread and the whole brigade [would] have been lost.”

With a wounded orderly—Pvt. Dwight Stoney—behind him, Hagood pushed his way through the ranks, turned right, and began running along the front of his brigade. The Union soldiers, who were still inside the parapet, and who were only 30 yards away, began firing at the fleet-footed general, but they failed to bring him down. As he ran along the line, Hagood drew his pistol and began firing at Dailey, but at such a great distance, his first shots had no effect. Eventually, Hagood came face to face with Dailey, who was superintending the movement of the Confederate prisoners into the Union earthworks. It was then that they had their parley.

There are several postwar versions of the conversation that followed. They are all basically the same, but there is a little variation between them. By combining these accounts, I’ve cobbled together the most plausible exchange of words. So please keep in mind, the dialogue that follows is a composite version of what happened.

As soon as he came on the scene, with his free hand, Hagood seized the bridle of Dailey’s horse. In his other hand, Hagood held his cocked revolver, which he leveled at Dailey’s chest. Meanwhile, Dailey had one hand on the reins and another hand on the furled flag, which he held upright, ferrule resting on the pommel of his saddle.

Angrily, Hagood barked, “Give me that flag, sir!”

A bit shocked, Dailey asked, “Who are you?”

Hagood replied, “I command this brigade. I admire your bravery. Give me the flag, and you shall return unmolested to your own lines.”

Dailey did not see any reason to believe Hagood’s bluster. He replied, “Your command has surrendered and you are a prisoner.”

Hagood rejoined, “No one but myself has any authority to surrender and I do not propose to do so. Return the flag and you are at liberty to return to your own lines!”

Hagood’s posturing still had no effect. Dailey replied, “You have made a brave fight, General, but if you will look behind you, you will see that you are lost.” Nodding, Dailey gestured to the west.

Hagood looked behind him and could see a crowd of Union troops—men from Griffin’s division—had exited from the protruding earthwork that encased Martin’s battery. They were now cutting off Hagood’s retreat.

Before Dailey could say anything else, Hagood cut him off. Peremptorily, he demanded, “Will you surrender that flag, sir, immediately, yes or no?”

Hagood had drawn his proverbial line in the sand.

This is the way Hagood later remembered what happened next:

Daly [sic] was a man of fine presence and sat with loosened rein upon a noble-looking bay that stood with head and tail erect and flashing eye and distended nostrils, quivering in every limb with excitement, but not moving in his tracks. In reply to [my] abrupt demand, the rider raised his head proudly and decisively answered, “No!”

As Dailey remembered it, his reply was: “By the living God, NO!”

This is the only known illustration of the Dailey-Hagood incident (of which I am aware). Dailey is depicted at left. Hagood is depicted at right. Incorrectly, Hagood is shown mounted. At the time of the battle, he was on foot.

With that, Hagood fired his pistol, just once, at close range. The ball entered Dailey’s right side, passed through his abdomen, but stopped inside his backbone. Dailey toppled over backwards, his hand still clutching the 27^th South Carolina’s flag.

Turning to the Confederate soldiers in his vicinity, Hagood shouted, “Run for it, men!”

Pvt. Stoney pulled the 27^th South Carolina’s flag from Dailey’s grip. Both he and Hagood assumed the pistol shot had killed him. Meanwhile, Hagood mounted Dailey’s horse, and putting spurs to him, dashed off to his own lines. Some of his soldiers obeyed his orders, turning about and attacking Dushane’s Marylanders, who were in between them and freedom. Shrapnel from an exploding shell likely fired by Hart’s battery mortally wounded Captain Dailey’s horse.

The horse—whose name is lost to history—received a wound in the loin. It went down in a tumble, trapping Hagood beneath him. Another officer—Second Lieut. William J. Taylor of the 7^th South Carolina Battalion—arrived to help Hagood, pulling him from beneath the dying animal. In the horse’s last gasps, he kicked Taylor in the head, which concussed him so badly that an enlisted soldier had to lead him to the rear. According to a postwar source, Taylor suffered a permanent brain injury from the kick. In 1894, Hagood’s staff officer, Mackey, said that Taylor “never entirely recovered.”

Only a portion of Hagood’s brigade managed to escape. When it collected near the Vaughn Road, 449 officers and men (60% of the original complement) were missing. Union forces reported the capture of 517 prisoners. Most of these came from Hagood’s brigade, but a few belonged to other units in Mahone’s division. The 5^th Corps infantry captured six enemy flags from the field and they buried 211 enemy soldiers. Although the 27^th South Carolina’s flag got away, thanks to the efforts of Captain Dailey, many of Hagood’s brigade did not.

What happened to Dailey and Hagood after the battle? Find out in the last part!

Captain Dennis Dailey and the Capture of Hagood’s Brigade at the Battle of Globe Tavern, Part 2: The Attack of Hagood’s Brigade

 

This post is part of a series. The Introduction is here and Part One is here.

After dawn, August 21, 1864, the Army of Northern Virginia executed a poorly coordinated attack against the Union line at Globe Tavern. The Union infantry and artillery easily blunted this rebel assault. However, one Confederate brigade suffered more than the others.

Mahone’s southern-most brigade, the one at the far right of the Confederate line, had the worst luck. Brig. Gen. Johnson Hagood commanded it. It consisted of five regiments from South Carolina and it numbered 741 officers and men altogether. Hagood’s men had been marching since 2 A.M., taking a circuitous route along the Squirrel Level Road, but they didn’t arrive at the front until well after dawn (and after all the other brigades had already gone into the fight). Mahone briefed Hagood, telling him that his brigade held the right flank of the Confederate line. Mahone said that if Hagood advanced steadily eastward, he would find the enemy flank and roll it up. Looking ahead from his brigade’s position along the Vaughn Road, Hagood could see only woods and swamp. Mahone assured him that, once his troops cleared the trees, he would find the enemy only 300 yards further on. Further, Mahone stated, “they are not entrenched.”

Hagood’s brigade began its advance at about 9 A.M. It passed through heavy woods and then it crossed a meandering swamp (now called Cernys Pond). After that, it broke into a clearing. The rebels pushed back a cloud of Union skirmishers, and then, after ascending a small hill, the primary Union line came into view. Of course, Mahone’s prediction did not hold true. Instead of finding an unprotected enemy flank, Hagood beheld a “strongly entrenched line, crowded with men and artillery, extending right and left as far as [I] could see.” Even worse, none of the other brigades from Mahone’s division could be seen. It appeared as if Hagood’s brigade was on its own. Hagood took position on foot behind the 21^st South Carolina. He ordered his men to carry their arms at “Right Shoulder Shift.” With that, his 740 South Carolinians advanced at the double-quick, straight ahead, moving across 250 yards of cleared, level farm fields.

Brig. Gen. Johnson Hagood (seen here) received poor instructions from his division commander, William Mahone.

From their earthworks, the soldiers from the 5^th Corps had an unobstructed view of Hagood’s attack. A 5^th Corps artilleryman recollected, “When near enough for execution, the flank batteries opened first, our infantry hugging the ground closely, the artillery shots passing over their heads, the rebels all the while pressing up nearer as our advanced line fell back on their supports. The ruse worked well. At a given signal the whole line of artillery opened, using up the enemy fearfully.”

A member of Hagood’s brigade staff agreed. The Union small arms and artillery savaged the South Carolinians as they made their run for the earthworks. The staff officer wrote, “Where the dead fell, the living stept; and their levelled bayonets soon sparkled within twenty feet of the line of intrenchments.”

As the South Carolinians approached the enemy works, they descended into a deep moat. Involuntarily, the whole line halted. In front of them, the rebels beheld a 10-foot-wide ditch filled with water from the previous day’s rains. Unable to judge the depth, none of the South Carolinians plunged in. Unable to advance, but unwilling to withdraw, the South Carolinians trained their guns at the 30-foot parapet and fired, doing little, if any, damage to the Union troops. The men of Col. James Gwyn’s 3^rd Brigade, 1^st Division, 5^th Corps confronted the South Carolinians. Having been hammered two days before, Gwyn’s infantry were eager to pay them back.

This Google Maps view depicts the modern topography of the Battle of Globe Tavern. Keep in mind, the modern railroad is on the incorrect side of the Halifax Road. In 1864, it would have been on the east side.

Here, I've crudely drawn in the 1864 positions of the various units. The light blue lines depict the Union earthworks. The dark blue lines depict the Union infantry and artillery positions. The red lines depict Hagood's brigade. The black line depicts the 1864 railroad. Keep in mind, I'm not entirely sure of the order of Hagood's regiments. I'm certain of the placement of the 21st and 25th South Carolina, but the position of the other three regiments in his brigade is speculative.

Hagood’s men were in a pickle. Not only were they trapped in the moat, but they had struck a portion of the Union works that formed a reentry angle. (In ordinary terms, this meant that the rebels faced a concave bend.) A portion of the Union line—Gwyn’s brigade—was in front of them, but another portion of the Union line fired at them from the left. Col. Hofmann’s brigade was on that side of the reentry. Meanwhile, on the right side of Hagood’s line, the Confederates faced a protruding earthwork manned by Capt. Augustus Martin’s Battery C, 3^rd Massachusetts Light Artillery, which swept the position with canister. In this position, the South Carolinians could not hope to stand for long.

To make matters worse, Hagood had lost control of his brigade. From his position behind the 21^st South Carolina, he shouted for his men to redress their line, but no one responded. He recalled, “[I] shouted again and again, [ordering] the command to halt; but the crash and rattle of twelve or fifteen pieces of artillery, and probably 2,500 rifles, which had now opened upon us at close range, drowned [my] voice and the fury of the battle was upon [my] men.”

How did his men get out of this fix? The story continues here.

Captain Dennis Dailey and the Capture of Hagood’s Brigade at the Battle of Globe Tavern, Part 1: The Battle of Globe Tavern

This is the first part of of a longer series. The introduction can be found here.

The story of the Dailey-Hagood incident begins with the Battle of Globe Tavern, one of several battles that occurred on the south side of Petersburg during the summer of 1864. By this point in the war, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had settled for a siege as a means of destroying Lee’s army. But to make it work, Grant had to send his troops to cut the main arteries into Petersburg. The first one that had to go was the Weldon Railroad, the line that connected the city to central North Carolina and thence to the vital seaport of Wilmington. The Army of the Potomac’s commander, Maj. Gen. George Meade, believed Maj. Gen. Gouverneur Warren’s 5^th Corps could handle this operation. In mid-August, the 5^th Corps set out for its target—Globe Tavern—a three-story brick structure near the railroad. Meanwhile, to keep Lee’s attention directed elsewhere, soldiers from the 2^nd Corps made a diversionary attack on the north side of the James River. If things went according to plan, the 5^th Corps infantry would destroy the railroad before Lee could react.

This photo depicts the Globe Tavern, which served as Warren's headquarters.

Warren’s troops arrived in the vicinity of Globe Tavern on August 18, 1864. Immediately, the Yankees went to work, tearing up the railroad tracks and bending them around the trunks of nearby trees. Humorously, they twisted the rails into the shape of a Maltese Cross, the symbol of their corps.

Here, 5th Corps soldiers bend the rails of the Weldon Railroad.

The destruction of the railroad went according to plan, but unfortunately, the soldiers of the 5^th Corps faced a Confederate counterattack. Unwilling to sit passively and let the Union troops sever this important rail line, Lieut. Gen. A. P. Hill’s corps sallied forth from Petersburg on a mission to drive the bluecoats from their position. On the afternoon of August 18, one of Hill’s divisions—Maj. Gen. Henry Heth’s—attacked Warren’s vanguard, driving the bluecoats southward, pushing them along the path of the railroad. Although driven from the field, the Union troops did not panic. Instead, they fell back to a more defensible position, one closer to the tavern. There, they dug in. The next day, Maj. Gen. William Mahone’s division renewed the attack. One 5^th Corps division—Maj. Gen. Samuel W. Crawford’s—routed. However, Warren brought up reinforcements (mainly units from the nearby 9^th Corps), and once again, he stabilized his line. The next day, August 20, rainy weather moved in, preventing the armies from engaging, but the Union troops continued to reinforce their breastworks.

By the morning of Sunday, August 21, the weather—although still a bit misty—had begun to clear. The Union earthworks resembled a backwards number 7, with a line of infantry and artillery extending east-west across the Halifax Road and another line running northwest-southeast along the west side of the Weldon Railroad. Captain Patrick Hart’s 15^th New York Independent Battery held the apex of the Union line. Col. Nathan Dushane’s Maryland Brigade formed on the right of Hart’s battery and Brig. Gen. Edward S. Bragg’s Iron Brigade formed on the left. Col. J. William Hofmann’s brigade extended the Iron Brigade’s line to the southeast, connecting with Maj. Gen. Charles Griffin’s Division, which continued the 5^th Corps line to its terminus.

This map depicts the situation on August 21, 1864. The main Confederate effort targeted the apex of the Union line near the Blick farm; however, one errant brigade--Hagood's--attacked the position near the reentry angle.

Over the nighttime hours, the Confederates prepared to make their last assault. Lieut. Gen. Hill ordered his division commanders—Heth and Mahone—to attack the Union line at dawn. Heth planned to strike the Union right flank, and Mahone planned to strike Union apex, which curved around a farm owned by the Blick family.

The Confederate attack did not occur in a coordinated manner. Misty rain hampered the deployment of the infantry, and, as consequence, the two Confederate divisions set off at different times. Thus, when the Confederates made their grand assault, they delivered two uncoordinated punches, both easily repulsed by Warren’s 5^th Corps.

So, how did one Confederate brigade get trapped? Find that out in the next post.

The tale continues here.

Captain of the Coehorn Battery

 

On June 17, 1864, Confederate sharpshooters killed the commander of the Army of the Potomac’s first Coehorn mortar battery. At the time, the Confederates considered it a minor victory over a treacherous new adversary, one that threatened to make life in the trenches around Petersburg a veritable hell. For the Army of the Potomac, the death of the Coehorn battery commander signaled a terrible first sacrifice, but one that resulted from the addition of a powerful new tool—a weapon with immeasurable importance that ultimately helped the Army of the Potomac dislocate the rebels from their underground burrows.

This is tale is about the death of Captain D. K. Smith Jones, Captain of the Coehorn mortars.

This is the captain of the Coehorn mortars, Capt. D. K. S. Jones.

But first: what was a Coehorn mortar?

In short, a Coehorn was a lightweight, portable artillery tube. We might rightly consider it as the predecessor to the 60-mm mortar used by soldiers in modern times. The Coehorn made its first appearance back in 1673. A Dutch engineer, Menno van Coehorn, developed the concept as a means of dealing with prolonged siege operations—a troublesome problem for most European commanders. High walls and Vaubanian bastions made it difficult for besieging armies to capture towns quickly. Menno Coehorn believed that vertical trajectory weapons might offer an answer. Thus, he developed the mortar that bore his name. The Coehorn mortar’s first combat occurred during the Siege of Kaiserswerth in 1702, and following that, Coehorns became a mainstay of European siege operations for the next 100 years. In the nineteenth century, Coehorns existed in various sizes. For U.S. forces during the Civil War, they generally operated at twelve or twenty-four pounds. The twenty-four pound version could fire a 17-inch shell up to 1,200 yards. When fully loaded, a Coehorn mortar mounted on its carriage weighed 313 pounds.

Typically, a four-man squad carried a single Coehorn into its firing position. Then, a team of gunners loaded the shell into the tube, which was fixed at a 45-degree angle. The size of the powder charge determined the range and height of the round. When the shell was fired, it shot high into the air, nearly vertical, moving in a slow arc, and witnesses marveled at how the naked eye could see the fuse fizzing away as the shell careened toward its target. When the shell finally landed and exploded, it produced a monstrous fireball, an explosion much larger than standard light artillery rounds. Coehorn batteries possessed a major advantage in that the gunners did not need to reposition each gun after firing it. The Coehorns sat on flat wooden carriages. The concussion caused the Coehorns to buck, but they didn’t roll backwards because they did not possess any wheels.

This is a rare image of Model 1841 Coehorn mortars, the kind used by Battery D, 4th New York Heavy Artillery. They are seen in park with tompions affixed.

From 1861 to 1864, the Army of the Potomac had no use for Coehorns because they army did not normally engage in prolonged siege operations. (The one exception was Yorktown; there, the army employed 13-inch seacoast mortars, but the smaller Coehorns remained back at the arsenal.) The flat trajectory of light artillery batteries—and their easy evacuation through the limbering up process—made wheel-mounted guns preferable for combat situations.

However, all that changed in 1864 when the Army of the Potomac found itself embroiled in the Overland Campaign, which created a sprawling web of earthworks across Spotsylvania and Hanover Counties.

The first Coehorns—eight of them—joined the Army of the Potomac at the commencement of the Overland Campaign. They were attached to Battery F, 15^th New York Heavy Artillery. During the Battle of the Mule Shoe Salient, the 15^th New York fired its Coehorns at the rebel-occupied Bloody Angle. Sadly, it was not a marvelous debut. Many of the rounds overshot their targets and some shells even landed among the lines of prone Union infantry on the west side of the Angle. Apparently, Coehorn mortars required very exacting sighting methods. With such a high-angle trajectory, any miscalculation could send an errant mortar shell spiraling far away from its intended target.

This sketch by Alfred Waud depicts the Coehorn mortars in action during the Overland Campaign.

Despite the weapon’s lackluster first appearance, the Army of the Potomac’s Chief of Artillery, Brigadier General Henry J. Hunt, admired the premise. Coehorns were portable and if placed in the right hands, they might weaken impressive defenses built by Lee’s army. Even after the failure of the Coehorns at Spotsylvania, Hunt ordered twenty-two additional Coehorns shipped to the army. By the end of the Overland Campaign, the Army of the Potomac had forty on hand.

The first battery of Coehorns remained attached to the 15^th New York Heavy Artillery until May 30. Many of the Army of the Potomac’s professionally-trained artillery officers did not want the 15^th handling these unique weapons. The 15^th New York Heavy Artillery was a German-speaking regiment and it lacked a sufficient number officers who understood English, which displeased the xenophobic West Pointers. Also, some of the infantry officers believed the 15^th New York would be better suited if the entire regiment were armed as infantry. As a consequence, the commander of the 2^nd Corps artillery brigade, Colonel John C. Tidball, insisted that the Coehorns go to an English-speaking unit with extensive garrison experience. General Hunt agreed. Thus, he transferred the Coehorns to Battery D, 4^th New York Heavy Artillery, a regiment that had been in service since December 1861.

This photograph depicts the officers of the 4th New York Heavy Artillery in garrison at Fort Corcoran. Captain Jones is hard to spot. He's thirteenth from the left.

Here's a close-up of Captain Jones. Only a portion of his face is visible.

On May 30, the 4^th New York received its new weapons and deployed them against the Army of the Potomac’s immediate threat, the Confederate positions near Totopotomoy Creek. Specifically, Battery D was stationed near Edwin Shelton’s brick mansion, “Rural Plains.” (This house is still in existence, part of Totopotomoy Creek Battlefield Park.) A sixteen-year-old soldier in the 11^th New York Light Artillery, Private Frank Wilkeson, recalled the scene. Wilkeson marveled at the sight of the Coehorn battery’s commander, Captain Jones. Wilkeson spoke to him, and Jones gladly offered his time to instruct the youngster on mortar tactics. Wilkeson later wrote:

 

One day during this protracted Cold Harbor fight, a battery of Cohorn mortars was placed in position in the ravine behind us. The captain of this battery was a tall, handsome, sweet-voiced man. He spent a large portion of his time in our earthworks, watching the fire of his mortars. He would jump on a gun and look over the works, or he would look out through the embrasures. Boy-like, I talked to him. I would have talked to a field-marshal if I had met one. He told me many things relative to mortar practice, and I, in turn, showed him how to get a fair look at the Confederate lines without exposing himself to the fire of the sharpshooters, most of whom we had “marked down.” He playfully accused me of being afraid, and insisted that at six hundred yards a sharpshooter could not hit a man. But I had seen too many men killed in our battery to believe that. So he continued to jump on guns and to poke his head into embrasures.

 

This image depicts Pvt. Frank Wilkeson of the 11th New York Light Artillery. (This is how he looked later in the war, after he received a commission as second lieutenant.) Wilkeson's father served as a war correspondent for the New York Times. Also, his aunt was feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Private Wilkeson concluded that the Coehorn mortars were an innovative weapon, and he gladly watched as the shells eviscerated the Confederates in front of the Shelton mansion. Those Confederates belonged to Major General John C. Breckinridge’s division. One of them, Captain T. C. Morton of the 26^th Virginia Battalion, recalled the harm the Coehorn mortars did to his command. He wrote:

Before this shelling of our position commenced, [Private] John Ford had been placed on the advanced picket line and his position happened to be in a sandy bottom near the creek, where he had sheltered himself behind an uprooted tree. He could be plainly seen by many of the men, crouching low in the sand. In the midst of the cannonading a large mortar shell without exploding, fell in the sand a few feet from him, the fuse still smoking and spitting and an explosion momentarily imminent. John took in the situation at a glance, and doubtless arguing that if he jumped up to run, the shell might explode before he got out of reach and tear him to pieces, and that the safest thing for him to do was to get down into the ground, commenced at once to work down into the sand with hands, legs and head. My attention was attracted by the men hollering, “Scratch [Run!] John! Scratch! She’s a-going off!” and looking in the direction where I had last seen him, I witnessed an amusing spectacle. Never was a man more dead in earnest. The sand all around him was in commotion, and in the few seconds that the fizzing fuse gave him, he burrowed like a great gopher till nothing but the top of his hump could be seen as the loose sand settled around it. I held my breath expecting the next second to see the poor fellow blown to atoms. Then the explosion came with a tremendous jar that shook the ground and sent a hundred pieces of iron singing through the air. We all kept our eyes fixed upon the spot as the smoke and dust slowly lifted, when the first sight that came to view was the head of Ford, happily, still on his shoulders, and as he realized that he was all right, he looked back at us and sang out “Who-eeh” as cheerily as if he had treed a coon instead of been face to face with death a second before. An answering cheer and a laugh went up from the boys on the line, and the incident was the next minute forgotten.

But not all incidents were so comical. Captain Morton also remembered a more gruesome incident from his regiment’s first encounter with the Coehorns:

I do not know what our loss was in this artillery fight, [I] only recollect that two men in my own company were killed. One of them while lying down was struck on the back by a large piece of descending shell and cut in two, poor fellow. The other had gone to the rear a mile with a detail to cook and was on his way back to the line with a camp-kettle full of corn-bread and beef on his arm when the cannonading commenced. He ran towards the breastworks for protection, while the hungry men in the trenches watched his race through the ploughing shot and shell, almost as solicitous for the safety of their breakfast, perhaps, as for that of their comrade. Just before the poor fellow reached us, however, a shell exploded directly in front of him, and when the smoke cleared away the bloody fragments of the man and the scattered contents of the camp-kettle lay mingled together on the ground before our eyes. It is said that from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh, but on this occasion speech came from the emptiness of one poor soldier’s stomach, when looking upon the ghastly wreck before us, he exclaimed: “Lor’, boys, just look, Joe Flint is all mixed up with our breakfast, and it ain’t fit for nothing!” Such want of sentiment, or feeling if you like, sounds strange and heartless to us now, but in those times of courage and every-day suffering, the hungry soldier’s remark, finding an echo in the empty stomachs of his fellows, did not seem so much out of place.

In their second encounter with the Coehorns, the Confederates did not like what they saw.

After leaving the battlefield at Cold Harbor, the Army of the Potomac drifted south. It crossed the James River and moved against Petersburg from the east. As soon as the Army of the Potomac’s infantry made contact with the Dimmock Line—the long string of redans that encircled Petersburg—Battery D was again called to the front. On June 17, it was posted north of the William Shands house in support of two divisions of 2^nd Corps and 9^th Corps that attempted (unsuccessfully) to penetrate Confederate earthworks at Hare House Hill. The mortars plied their work of death, weakening the rebel position. Eventually, word got passed to a Confederate brigade commander, Colonel Matt Ransom, whose unit was directly opposite the Coehorns. Ransom had to silence the battery. Ransom selected his ten best marksmen and sent them to the parapet with specific instructions to kill the Coehorn gunners.

This illustration depicts the Coehorn Battery at work. Likely, it is based upon the Waud sketch shown above. Note that it depicts Captain Jones standing at right.

During the assault, Captain Jones noticed the increased volume of enemy sharpshooter fire and gave orders declaring that no one in Battery D could show his head above the breastworks. Apparently, Jones had taken young Wilkeson’s advice to heart—at least so far as his gunners were concerned.

Sadly, Jones did not apply the same orders to himself; he routinely peeked his head over the parapet to get a good look at where the mortar rounds fell. (Later on, one of Jones’s lieutenants surmised that Jones had poor eyesight. He lingered too long at the parapet because he needed to wait until the slow-burning fuse triggered the explosion of the shell in order to see where the shell had hit.)

As the sharpshooter fire increased, Jones took a seat atop an ammunition box and began conversing with his chief of ammunition, Corporal H. Page Burnell. Suddenly, a brigade from the 9^th Corps—Col. Jacob P. Gould’s—came running back in retreat over the works in front of the Coehorn battery, its attack having failed. In haste, Captain Jones arose from his seat and said, “Corporal, hand me a fifteen and a half second fuse, I am going to give them a shell!”

Over in the Confederate works, Colonel Ransom cautioned his men. He noticed how the Union captain of the Coehorns always poked his head above the works right after he issued a command. Ransom told his sharpshooters that as soon as they heard the Union commander shout, they must fire on that spot!

Colonel Matthew W. Ransom commanded the North Carolina brigade that took credit for killing Captain Jones. After the war, he was elected as a U.S. Senator and became President Pro Tempore of the Senate for three days in 1895.

Apparently, the words, “I am going to give them a shell!” sounded like orders to Ransom’s sharpshooters, because all of them fired. One of those ten bullets found its mark.

As Corporal Burnell recollected, “As he [Jones] uttered the words a bullet struck him in the left temple and came out by his right ear. He dropped, quivered a minute, perhaps, and all was over.”

As Burnell grasped his dead commander, Private John H. Mead arrived on the scene. Mead had gone to the rear along with another man in search of ammunition, and together, they found Captain Jones dead near the ammunition box. Soon, First Lieutenant Abram G. Bradt arrived and took charge. He ordered four men to gather up Captain Jones’s remains and bury them. One of the men that Bradt selected was Private Sylvester Simpson. (Presumably, Burnell, Mead, and the unnamed man with Mead were the other three.) Together, they unrolled a blanket and placed Jones’s body onto it. With that, they carried the corpse to the rear.

As it happened, the four-man detail passed by Private Wilkeson of the 11^th New York battery, the young soldier who had shadowed Captain Jones eighteen days earlier. Wilkeson remembered the scene:

One day I went to the spring after water. While walking back I met four men carrying a body in a blanket. “Who is that?” I asked. “The captain of the mortars,” was the reply. Stopping, they uncovered his head for me. I saw where the ball had struck him in the eye, and saw the great hole in the back of his head where it had passed out.

Private Simpson and his four companions buried Captain Jones in a garden, probably somewhere on the Shands property. A few days later, Lieutenant Bradt made arrangements to have Jones’s body exhumed and shipped back to Saratoga, New York, to its permanent burial site.

In the larger story of the Civil War, Captain Jones’s death is a minor footnote. However, we might pause and reflect upon the legacy that he and the men of Battery D left upon the larger arc of U.S. military history. The shelling of May 30 and June 17 were not the last time that the U.S. Army used Coehorn mortars. Mortars of all sizes saw extensive use in the Eastern Theater after the Coehorns arrived in 1864. Famously, the Army of the Potomac deployed a giant, 13-inch mortar known as the Dictator. Beyond that, mortars stayed in the army for the next 150 years. Infantry mortars have been an integral part of the Great War, World War 2, Korea, Vietnam, and the War on Terror. (Rare is the day I see a book about the War in Afghanistan that does not mention them.) 

“Stovepipe Boys” of the modern era might do well to remember the name of Captain D. K. Smith Jones, their Civil War counterpart.

This image depicts the Dictator, the Army of the Potomac's famous siege mortar near Petersburg. Brig. Gen. Henry J. Hunt and Col. John C. Tidball--two of the biggest champions of the Coehorn mortars--can be seen standing closest to the camera.

Too often we remember the weapon and not the soldiers who pioneered them. Weapons are, after all, only what humans make them. Jones, the captain of the Coehorn mortars, made them something to be feared.

U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan aim their M224 60-mm mortar at the enemy. In a way, the Army of the Potomac's Coehorn battery has left a lasting legacy upon U.S. Army.

Marylanders in the Army of the Potomac, a Seven-Part Series.

The officers of the 2nd Maryland Volunteer Infantry are pictured here, photographed in 1865.

Hey there, fans of Tales from the Army of the Potomac!

I have another series coming your way.

Being a Marylander, I thought it was high time to seek out some tales that originated from my home state. Here is a seven-part series that resulted from my quest.

Enjoy!

Part 1. When Maryland veterans tried to identify their state’s Unionist heroes, at which name did they first arrive? They told us to remember Col. Nathan T. Dushane. Come learn his story here.

Part 2. Col. Jacob Eugene Duryée gets plenty of love from historians, especially those who study the Battle of Antietam. Turns out, he wasn’t such a swell guy. Come find out why.

Part 3. When Maryland began recruiting U.S.C.I. regiments, local slave-holders tried to stand in the way. They didn’t stand a chance. Click here to learn the incredible story about the Union raid on Upper Marlboro’s slave jail.

Part 4. On November 1, 1864, slavery came to an end in Maryland. That pivotal event happened when the state’s new constitution went into effect. As it turns out, we ought to credit the Army of the Potomac’s Marylanders for casting the deciding vote. Part 4 tells this interesting tale.

Part 5. On April 1 and 2, 1865, the Army of the Potomac broke the back of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Would it surprise you to learn that Marylanders were leading the charge? Two of them received the Medal of Honor for their heroism. Come learn their stories here.

Part 6. Rising from private to colonel, Benjamin F. Taylor may have had the most exciting story of any Marylander in the Army of the Potomac. He left behind tons of written material about his life and his well-traveled regiment. And yet, no one has ever published it.

Part 7. How often did brothers actually confront each other in the Civil War? Well, in the case of Maryland, it happened at least once. And Walt Whitman was there too! Check out the unbelievable story of the Prentiss brothers.

“Each Died For His Cause”: Marylanders in the Army of the Potomac, Part 7.

For this last post about Marylanders in the Army of the Potomac, I want to discuss the story of the Prentiss brothers, two Baltimoreans who served in opposing armies. The Union brother, Lt. Col. Clifton Prentiss, was part of the Army of the Potomac’s 6^th Corps. He was mortally wounded in one of the last battles, the April 2, 1865, assault against the Petersburg earthworks. His younger brother, Pvt. William Prentiss, was mortally wounded at the same battle. Amazingly, after having been separated for four years, the two brothers ended up at the same field hospital! It’s a story that has been told a few times before by other historians, so I cannot say that I’m going to add much that hasn’t been said before. However, I’d like to profile it largely because it is a quintessentially Maryland story. Quite often, we Civil War buffs erroneously call the Civil War a “brothers’ war.” Of course, in reality, Civil War families rarely divided because of political allegiance. More often, brothers fought alongside each other, not against each other.

But Maryland was an exception. Truly, it was a state divided by political fidelity and these differences of opinion ripped families asunder. Maryland’s 1860 population numbered about 687,000. Most estimates suggest that 4,000 Marylanders fought for the Confederacy and up to 60,000 Marylanders—black and white—fought for the Union. The Prentiss brothers were just two of those 64,000, and they were among the very last Marylanders to perish in the conflict. Nothing represented the story of Maryland better than their tragic demise.

Here’s what happened.

On December 22, 1825, Massachusetts-born educator John Prentiss married Amelia F. Kennedy of Baltimore. Together, they had nine children. Five of these children died young. (Marcia, born September 1, 1831, died on June 30, 1832; William, born on July 10, 1833, died on January 25, 1836; Aurelia, born May 2, 1838, died five days later; Mary Amelia, born August 26, 1841, died on December 11, 1845; and Marcia Gray, born August 25, 1844, died on December 4, 1850.) Then, the two parents died within five years of each other. Amelia Prentiss died in February 1857, and John died on August 31, 1861. He died when his carriage—which was crossing a railroad track in downtown Baltimore—was struck by a train. This accident occurred at the intersection of Cathedral and Biddle Streets, right where the Northern Central Railway crossed the road. (Today, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra building occupies this area.) Prentiss was thrown from his carriage and instantly killed.

Thus, only four Prentiss children lived to adulthood. They were:

·         John H. Prentiss, Jr., born November 26, 1826. He became a physician.

·         Thomas Melville Prentiss was born on October 29, 1829. He moved to Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, New York, and became an elder Presbyterian minister.

·         Clifton Kennedy Prentiss—the one who served in the Union army—was born on June 16, 1835.

·         William Scollay Prentiss—the Confederate soldier—was born on May 29, 1839.

Not much is known about the two youngest Prentiss brothers, other than that they lived in Baltimore most of their lives, and that they benefited from their father’s wealth and his connections in higher education. (William Scollay Prentiss, for instance, graduated from the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy.) Both brothers were propelled into military service in the summer of 1861, right when the war’s turbulence led to several high-profile political arrests in Baltimore. Clifton Prentiss joined a Unionist militia company, entering as a private. Meanwhile, William Prentiss fled Maryland and slipped across the Potomac River. In Virginia, he joined the unit being organized by Colonel Bradley Tyler Johnson, which became known as the 1^st Maryland Infantry (C.S.A.). It’s tempting to wonder how their father’s death in August influenced their decisions, but so far, I’ve discovered no information to connect John Prentiss’s violent death with the decisions made by his sons.

In any event, the war carried the two brothers along its treacherous track. Assuming that Private William Scollay Prentiss remained with his regiment at every engagement, he participated in Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign, the Second Battle of Winchester, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, and the Siege of Petersburg. Prentiss appears to have been a private the whole time, staying in Company A, 1^st Maryland Battalion, and then with Company A, 2^nd Maryland Infantry (C.S.A.), when his regiment was re-designated by the Confederate War Department in January 1864.

Meanwhile, Clifton Prentiss joined a new regiment in the summer of 1862. In June, the War Department began raising a brigade of Unionist Marylanders called the “Maryland Brigade.” Prentiss helped recruit one of the companies. When it mustered-in, it became known as Company F, 6^th Maryland. On July 31, Governor Augustus Bradford commissioned Prentiss as second lieutenant, and then as captain, on August 27. Rushed to the front in September 1862, the 6^th Maryland eventually joined the division commanded by Brig. Gen. Robert Milroy. In June 1863, it participated in the Battle of Star Fort, part of the Second Battle of Winchester. (Although William Prentiss’s regiment was nearby, there is no indication that the two brothers met, or were even aware of the other’s proximity.) After Gettysburg, the whole division—and the 6^th Maryland with it—became part of the Army of the Potomac. It became 3^rd Division, 6^th Corps. The 6^th Maryland had an active final year, fighting in the Overland Campaign, the Siege of Petersburg, and in Sheridan’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign. Captain Prentiss appears to have been with his regiment the whole time, except during the summer and fall of 1864, when he served on the staff of Maj. Gen. Truman Seymour. On November 17, 1864, Governor Bradford promoted him to major, and he returned to his regiment, serving as its second-in-command.

On the morning of April 2, 1865, fate compelled the two brothers to meet.

That day, the 6^th Corps prepared for its massive 14,000-man assault to be delivered against the Confederate earthworks southwest of Petersburg. During the predawn hours, near a winding rivulet called Arthur’s Swamp, Col. Joseph Warren Keifer lined up his brigade. Knowing that the battle might very well deliver the coup de grace to the Confederacy, Keifer made certain his men would break through the enemy line. The 6^th Maryland occupied the front and center of Keifer’s line-of-battle. Because of its position, the 6^th Maryland stood the best chance of being the first Union regiment to breach the enemy earthworks. Keifer later explained:

A narrow opening, just wide enough for a wagon to pass through, was known to exist in the enemy’s line in front of my brigade, though it was skilfully covered by a shoulder around it. The existence of this opening was discovered from the observation tower, and deserters told of it. I determined to take advantage of it, and therefore instructed Colonel Clifton K. Prentiss of the 6^th Maryland, when the time for the attack came, to move his regiment by the flank rapidly through this opening without halting or firing, and when within, open on the Confederates behind the works, taking them in flank, and, if possible, drive them out and thus leave for our other troops little resistance in gaining an entrance over the ramparts.

At 4:40 A.M., signal guns near Union Fort Fisher fired a salvo, indicating that the time had come to commence the attack. With a mad cheer, the 6^th Corps troops charged forward, and Major Prentiss, true to his word, was among the first to leap atop the Confederate earthworks. Col. Keifer, who was mounted and riding up toward the concealed gap in the earthworks, recalled:

The time occupied in the assault was short. Colonel Prentiss with his Marylanders penetrated the fortifications at the opening mentioned. They surprised the enemy by their presence and a flank fire, and, as anticipated, caused him to fall back. The storming bodies swarmed over the works, and the enemy immediately in their front were soon killed, wounded, captured, or dispersed. Ten pieces of artillery, three battle-flags, and General Heath’s headquarters flag were trophies of my command.

Major Prentiss paid for his heroics. As he mounted the parapet, a musket ball struck him in the chest, ripping through his lungs. Keifer, who was near enough to get a decent view of the scene, explained, “The brave Colonel Prentiss as he led a storming column over the parapet of the fort, was struck by a ball which carried away a part of his breast-bone immediately over his heart, exposing its action to view. He fell within the fort.”

As the 6^th Corps infantry widened the breakthrough, soldiers from the 6^th Maryland carried Maj. Prentiss to a nearby field hospital, quite possibly the Hart Farm, which was immediately behind Confederate lines. Meanwhile, other soldiers from the division—those who survived the initial morning clash along the parapet—turned south and began rolling up the Confederate line, widening the gap. Near an artillery bastion called Fort Davis, Brig. Gen. William McComb’s brigade tried to stem the tide of Yankees. In the heated fighting, Private William S. Prentiss of the 2^nd Maryland Battalion fell wounded with a shattered right leg.

As it happened, soldiers from the 6^th Maryland began passing over the battlefield, chasing McComb’s routed men. Some of the Marylanders stopped to assist the wounded Confederate soldiers who were now trapped behind Union lines. As fate would have it, some of the 6^th Maryland soldiers found Private William Prentiss and gave him water from their canteens. Curious about the fate of his brother, Prentiss asked if the 6^th Maryland was nearby.

The soldiers replied, “We belong to that regiment! Why do you ask?”

Prentiss replied, “I have a brother in that regiment.”

“Who?”

“Capt. Clifton K. Prentiss.”

No doubt shocked by this wounded man’s identity, the 6^th Maryland soldiers pointed, “Yes, he is our Major now and is lying over yonder, wounded.”

William Prentiss said, “I would like to see him.”

Here’s where the story gets murky. According to John Rigdon King, an officer in 6^th Maryland, the soldiers sent word to Maj. Prentiss that his brother, William, was lying nearby. When he heard the news, Clifton refused to see him. He snarled, “I want to see no man who fired on my country’s flag.” But then, the commander of the 6^th Maryland, Col. Joseph C. Hill, apparently hearing the news, ordered the stretcher-bearers to carry William Prentiss to the improvised field hospital and lay him beside his brother, whether he liked it or not. As King described it, “Our Major glared at him. The Confederate brother smiled: that was the one touch of nature; out went both hands and with tears streaming down their cheeks, these two brothers, who had met on many bloody fields opposite for three years, were once more brought together.”

Hospital Steward William Howell Reed, who was also in a position to know what happened, told a slightly different story. He claimed that the two brothers were laid side by side, but entirely by accident. He explained:

In one of our wards we had an officer, Colonel Clifton J. Prentiss, of Baltimore, whose case was of such peculiar and touching interest that it ought not to be passed by. In one of the closing battles of the war he was wounded through the lungs. When I first saw him, he was brought into the hospital from the field, as we thought, fatally hurt. At the same time a lad, a rebel soldier, was lifted from the stretcher upon an adjoining bed, with a thigh amputation, having been struck by a fragment of a shell above the knee. This Union officer and this rebel soldier lay side by side, not knowing that they were indeed brothers, and unconscious, in all that bloody strife which had set its fatal seal upon them both, that they had been striking the one against the other, and falling but ten feet apart. And so, by some blessed providence, they were brought together at last,—the glance of an eye, or some well-known tone of voice, making their recognition complete, which it only needed the hand-grasp to confirm.

I’d speculate that King’s recollections were more accurate. (Human agency, not luck, probably explained how the two brothers came to share the same field hospital.) But, whichever version was the truth, both brothers did indeed meet inside the field hospital and they clasped hands when they saw each other. Another member of the 3^rd Division, 6^th Corps, John Newton Terrill of 14^th New Jersey, recollected simply, “A rebel lieutenant was picked up wounded, who gave his name as Lieut. Prentiss, of the 2^nd Maryland regiment; he was the younger brother of the major [of the 6^th Maryland], whom he had not seen since the rebellion broke out; they were both placed in the hospital together, and their wounds dressed. The meeting between the brothers was very affecting, causing many to shed tears.”

Both Keifer and Reed also agreed that at least one, perhaps both, of the older brothers came down to visit the two wounded Prentiss brothers at the field hospital. Reed, in fact, seemed to know a great deal about the final hours of the two wounded men, and apparently he served in the same facility after both of them were transported from the battlefields in Virginia. Both brothers went to a general hospital in Washington, D.C.—most likely Armory Square Hospital. After that, they were moved a second time, arriving at an unknown hospital in Brooklyn in either May or June. William Scollay Prentiss died first. He endured an amputation at the upper thigh, but expired on June 23, 1865. Whether derived from firsthand knowledge or not, Reed explained:

Day after day we used to visit him in the quiet ward where he seemed to be so much alone, for he had but little sympathy until he was converted over to the old flag which he had forsaken. And when the memories of his home and his early companionships came over him, and he felt that even this renewal of old ties was still but a fraternal estrangement, his boy’s heart quite gave way, and he begged for the kindly smile of this elder brother, for I the love and generous sympathy of their boyhood. In a few weeks the exhaustion of his system was so complete that he sank rapidly away and died.

Like his younger brother, Maj. Clifton Prentiss was held at the Armory Square hospital for several weeks—at least until May—and was later transferred to a hospital in Brooklyn. On April 25, while at Armory Square, he received promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel, a reward for his leadership during the April 2 assault. He lingered on into the summer, but death eventually came for him as well. He breathed his last on August 20, 1865. Because he was also assigned to the Brooklyn hospital, Reed knew about the final moments of Lt. Col. Prentiss. He explained:

The brave and all-enduring colonel lived on,—every breath a stab, and every movement of the poor frail body like the tension and snapping of some cord of life. Through many weary months he waited and suffered. Life had much in store for him. He longed to be again amid its peaceful activity; yet he was always submissive, and only looked to see what was the loving Father’s will. And that will was revealed at last, giving him but time to say, “It is well; I am ready to go.”

Both Prentiss boys were laid to rest, side by side, in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Presumably, the two eldest brothers, James and Thomas, made the funeral arrangements.

Before their death, the Prentiss brothers caught the attention of one of the nineteenth-century’s most famous authors, Walt Whitman. During the last week of May, Whitman—who often visited Civil War hospitals—met both of them. He jotted down his thoughts and eventually published them in his 1882 book, Specimen Days. Whitman mentioned the encounter under the title, “Two Brothers, One South, One North.”

May 28-9.—I staid to-night a long time by the bedside of a new patient, a young Baltimorean, aged about 19 years, W.S.P., (2d Maryland, southern,) very feeble, right leg amputated, can’t sleep hardly at all—has taken a great deal of morphine, which, as usual, is costing more than it comes to. Evidently very intelligent and well bred—very affectionate—held on to my hand, and put it by his face, not willing to let me leave. As I was lingering, soothing him in his pain, he says to me suddenly, “I hardly think you know who I am—I don’t wish to impose upon you—I am a rebel soldier.” I said I did not know that, but it made no difference. Visiting him daily for about two weeks after that, while he lived, (death had mark’d him, and he was quite alone,) I loved him much, always kiss’d him, and he did me. In an adjoining ward I found his brother, an officer of rank, a Union soldier, a brave and religious man, (Col. Clifton K. Prentiss, Sixth Maryland infantry, Sixth corps, wounded in one of the engagements at Petersburgh, April 2—linger’d, suffer’d much, died in Brooklyn, Aug. 20, ‘65.) It was in the same battle both were hit. One was a strong Unionist, the other Secesh; both fought on their respective sides, both badly wounded, and both brought together here after a separation of four years. Each died for his cause.

“Each died for his cause.” This was classic Whitman, saying what something was rather than what it meant. Undoubtedly, he wanted readers to contemplate the war’s tragedy, that a nation had been torn asunder by two oppositional causes. I wish he had paused to consider how the death of the Prentiss brothers had been a uniquely Maryland problem. The Old Line State had been split in twain by the same national confrontation. It was the hotly-contested middle ground of the Civil War. Indeed, the chasm created by the war had cleaved the Prentiss family. No incident from the war better explained the richness of the war’s consequences upon Maryland as the death of Lt. Col. Clifton Prentiss and his Confederate brother, William.

This photograph depicts Major Clifton Kennedy Prentiss in early 1865. There are no known photographs of his younger (Confederate) brother, William.

This is the approximate location of Major Prentiss's mortal wounding. On April 2, 1865, he led a contingent of men from the 6th Maryland over the parapet in the background. These entrenchments are located on the grounds of Pamplin Park. The area is identified by the presence of the "shoulder" mentioned by Col. J. Warren Keifer. The wayside depicts the shoulder and sally-port. 

In May 1865, Walt Whitman met both Prentiss brothers as they lay dying in a Washington, D.C. hospital. Whitman wrote an account of his meeting in his book, Specimen Days.

Although some controversy exists as to the final location of the Prentiss brothers, both appear to have been buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. These markers commemorate their deaths.