"Died as a Soldier Should Die"

Many years ago, I worked as a ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park. I held plenty of responsibilities, not the least of which involved leading tours on the battlefield. During my first summer, I had to research and prepare four programs. One of them was a forty-minute guided walking tour of the Soldier’s National Cemetery. My program addressed the aftermath of the battle, the burial of the Union dead, and the meaning of Lincoln’s dedicatory remarks—things that I believed all visitors ought to learn.

One aspect of my tour made it especially memorable (to me, anyway). At the end of it, I halted the tour at the gravesite of a New York soldier: eighteen-year-old Sergeant William H. Ambler, Company D, 57^th New York. During the course of my research, I had found a few documents that described Ambler’s death. I closed the program by reading some lines to the crowd. I’d like to share some of them here.

This article appeared in South Salem New York’s local newspaper:

South Salem—In Memoriam.
Among the slain at the battle of Gettysburg was Wm. AMBLER, of the 57th. Regt., N.Y.S.V., a young man from this place. He was killed by the explosion of a shell, a piece going through his body and cutting him nearly in two. He was among the first of the three years’ men who responded to their country’s call and for two years has served his country most faithfully. Youth, though he was—being but eighteen at the time of his death—he sought the battle-field from no enthusiastic desire of adventure, but because he felt that duty called him, and manfully and courageously did he discharge the obligations devolving upon him as a soldier. The frequent letters he wrote to his widowed mother are unmistakable evidences that he never regretted the path he had chosen; they are characterized by a spirit of lofty patriotism and devotion to the cause of liberty and the right. He was in nearly all of the hard fought battles in which the Potomac army has been engaged, and once only having been wounded. But his battles are over. On the bloody field of Gettysburg death claimed the young hero as his victim, and amid the thousands that fell on those terrible days none died a truer soldier than he. Sleep brave boy in thy early but honored grave! The roar of cannon shall not disturb thee more, and drum and trumpet tone will roll unheeded above thy resting place, for thou sleepest ‘the sleep that knows no waking.’

But the night dew that falls though in silence it weeps,
Shall brighten with verdure the grave where he sleeps;
And the tear that we shed though in silence it rolls,
Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.

C. F.

 

This letter—which I always read—was addressed to Mary Ann Timson Ambler, William’s mother:

Mrs. Ambler,

It is with most painful feelings, that I inform you of the death of our beloved Willie. He was killed instantly at the battle of Gettysburg by a solid shot entering his right shoulder and passing through his left side. He was gallantly performing his duty & died as a soldier should die, beloved by those in command over him & by those he commanded. He was always prompt to do his duty & although he enlisted as a private, he had risen to fill the position of a Sergeant & was in a fair way of promotion. His company & officers sympathize with you in your loss and will always remember Willie as a true & fine soldier in the support of our glorious country. It will be a matter of great satisfaction to you, to know, that we took possession of his body and buried him in a soldier’s grave in the presence of his cousin Lieutenant Meade of the 4th Michigan Vols. Willie had some money in his possession, but before we recovered his body, the enemy had taken it from his pockets. His watch &c. I delivered to Lieutenant Meade, who will see that you get them. I would have written before, but this is the first opportunity that has offered. As soon as we reach camp, I shall arrange matters so that you can get pay, bounty, & pension. Hoping that you will meet your loss with Christian resignation & fortitude & that you may feel that Willie died in a good cause while protecting the stars and stripes.

Your Obedient Servant, O.F. Middleton, Lieutenant commanding, 57th Regt. N.Y.V.

 

I worked at Gettysburg for eight summers. In the end, I’m not sure how many tours of the cemetery I ended up leading, but that number certainly crested 100. In each one, Sergeant Ambler’s story made a prominent appearance. Often, I think back to Memorial Day weekend, when each gravesite had a flag to adorn it. I liked those days best.

I imagine that they are all adorned that way right now.

(Here is Sergeant Ambler's grave, New York Section, Row E, Number 91.)

 

(I've found only two photographs of Ambler. This one is the one most often reprinted.)

 

(Here's me--on the far right--leading a tour to a group of GNMP visitors on a rainy summer morning.)

 

“What Will I Do With My Gun?”

This tale is really gross. (Also, it is a little bit of a stretch for my blog’s theme. It involves the 5^th Connecticut, a regiment that once belonged to the Army of the Potomac, but served with the 20^th Corps during the Atlanta Campaign. But of course, this my blog; I do what I want.)

On May 15, 1864, the 5^th Connecticut found itself occupying the front lines at the Battle of Resaca. In the afternoon, it endured an artillery bombardment and an infantry assault delivered by A. P. Stewart’s division. Years later, a soldier remembered a singular incident from that battle:

After our boys had captured the open ridge and driven the rebels back into the woods, as a preparation for another charge upon the ridge, the Confederates turned all their artillery within range upon our boys along that ridge, making it an extremely hot and uncomfortable place, and our boys were ordered to lie down and hug the ground as close as they could. They lay down flat, the rear rank men lying between the legs of the front rank men, about as close as it was possible to put men; the rear rank men firing between the heads of the front rank men.

At first the artillery firing at this line was extremely high and wild, and served only to amuse the men, but-by degrees they depressed their guns more and more and their shells came nearer, till finally, just as the rebel line came out of the woods to make the second charge, a shell came and struck the line in Company I, taking off the top of the head of James E. Richards in the front rank, and passing along down his back passed under the rear rank man, John Bates, bursting when it was about under the center of his body. Bates and Richards were of course killed outright by it, and four others were wounded by the pieces of the shell and pieces of the skull from Richards. Corporal Wm. H. Kerr had several pieces of the skull driven into his face, also Private James Tuttle’s face was filled, and Tommy Graham, from fragments of the shell or skull, had both eyes cut out of his head and then left hanging on his cheek. Lieutenant Stewart, commanding Company I, sprang up and helped to pull the dead men, Richards and Bates, to the rear from their places in the line in order to fill the gap with living fighting men, for the rebel column was coming on again charging and yelling. He saw that Tommy Graham could not see at all, and that while Corporal Kerr’s face was badly cut up, still that he had his eyesight remaining. He asked the corporal if he could see well enough to take himself to the rear and lead Tommy, totally blinded as he was. He said he thought he could, and thereupon the Lieutenant told Graham to go to the rear with Kerr and started them off; but Tommy had not moved two steps to the rear before he stopped and cried out, “Lieutenant, Lieutenant, what will I do with my gun?” and the brave man did not stir a step further until his officer had come to him and taken his gun and relieved him from this final responsibility.

If this picture could be imagined as it was, and as the comrades of poor Tommy saw it, then something of the true stuff of the man could be conceived, artillery roaring from all directions,—shells screeching past, and now coming so low that every one of them ricocheted along the ground and raked the earth from front to rear; a yelling line of rebels fast coming towards him, his eyes just closed forever to all the beauties of this earth and the glories of the skies, never to behold wife or children again, and still, when ordered to the rear in care of another, standing there with those sightless eyes dangling at his cheeks, and calling upon his officer to relieve him of his trusty gun, the last obligation remaining upon him, as he understood his duty to his country as a soldier; and then whoever can imagine this scene as it was, can begin to understand something of the truth and faithfulness of the nature of such private soldiers as Thomas Graham.

Today, I am fairly convinced that Civil War historians have trouble painting a clear picture of Civil War combat. For instance, academics love to remind readers of the graphic bloodshed—the bloated corpses, the severed limbs, and the unearthly smell of death. By contrast, amateur historians (and limited edition artists, especially) prefer to focus on the glory of battle—the fluttering flags, the stentorian shouts of commanders, the rampaging lines of troops, and the famous last lines of the war’s heroes. Thus, after many years of trying, we have fashioned two images of war, one supremely gruesome, the other imperiously glorious, and rarely do the two images meet.

This account from the 5^th Connecticut suggests that these two pictures of battle might, in fact, encounter each other on common ground. Here, we see graphic violence and celebrated valor going hand-in-hand. In this incident, it all revolved around one simple question: “What will I do with my gun?”

(Pvt. Thomas Graham, the soldier who lost his eyes to a piece of flying skull, had his name etched on this monument, the Soldiers' Monument in New Hartford, Connecticut. Image by ctmonuments.net)

A Photograph from the James River Earthworks

 

 

 

Over the past few weeks, I have been posting some stories from the 12^th New Hampshire Infantry. Occasionally, I’ve posted images of its officers. Some of these images are cropped from a larger photograph taken in December 1864 at Chaffin’s Farm, near Fort Harrison, Virginia.

The whole image depicts fifteen officers from the 12^th New Hampshire standing in front of their regimental headquarters.

They are, from left to right:

1^st Lieut. Alonzo W. Jewett

Capt. Ephraim W. Ricker
1^st Lieut. George E. Worthen
1^st Lieut. John P. Lane
Capt. James W. Saunders
Capt. Arthur S. Smith
Capt. Jeremiah L. Sanborn (who enlisted under a fake name)
1^st Lieut. Rufus E. Gale
Lt. Col. Thomas E. Barker
Maj. Nathaniel Shackford
Capt. Hosea Q. Sargent
Capt. Andrew M. Heath
Capt. John H. Prescott
Capt. Daniel W. Bohonon
1^st Lieut. Mayhew C. Batchelder

 

Some of you might recognize Smith, Barker, and Shackford from the previous posts. You might also make note of Captain Sargent (a confusing Civil War name, to be sure). He was one of several officers who, after the war, laid claim to leading the first organized Union troops into Richmond, April 3, 1865.

Anyway, there’s no moral or lesson here. I just wanted to marvel at the faces of these men as they prepared for the last winter of the war.

“. . . Even if Jesus Christ Himself Should Order It.”

One of my favorite quotes from the Civil War comes from Captain Thomas Barker, who, in heated fury after the Battle of Cold Harbor, vowed never to lead his regiment into another such charge, even if Jesus Christ ordered him to do it. I think this outburst speaks to a universal truth among battlefield commanders, that it hurts them immeasurably to carry out orders they believe will lead to the massacre of their men. I think that dilemma was faced by Barker, the youthful commander of the 12^th New Hampshire.

Who was Thomas Erskine Barker? Quickly: he was the youngest child born to the wife of a poor Canterbury farmer. Lacking funds, his family could not send him to private school, so he learned his letters with only a common school education. On May 13, 1861, as war fever spread across the North, Barker enlisted in the “Goodwin Rifles,” a unit that eventually became Company B, 2^nd New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry. The 2^nd New Hampshire engaged Confederate forces at Bull Run, July 21, 1861, and during the bewildering Union retreat, it helped cover the army’s withdrawal. Several men ended up prisoners, including Corporal Barker. For the next ten months, the Confederates held him as a prisoner of war. During five of those months, he was confined at Old Parish Prison in New Orleans, and for several weeks, the Confederate officers threatened to execute him and seventeen others as retribution for alleged criminalities perpetrated by Union troops. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed, and Union authorities negotiated his safe release. This rough prison experience lingered with him, and when he returned to Concord in May 1862, he brought with him a renewed interest in punishing the leaders of the rebellion. He recruited a new company, which became Company B, 12^th New Hampshire, and he led it into action at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. He was wounded at the latter engagement, struck in the leg by a ball. He returned home to recuperate, and while there, he married Florence Whittredge, the President of the Women’s Relief Corps. By the summer of 1864, Captain Barker had risen to command the 12^th New Hampshire.

(This image depicts Captain Thomas E. Barker in the summer of 1862, shortly after his return from Confederate prison.)

 

On the morning of June 3, 1864, Barker’s 12^th New Hampshire led the attack of Colonel Griffin Stedman’s brigade, 1,800 men strong. According to Stedman’s orders, the brigade had to form in “closed column of division,” essentially, a column, forty ranks deep and two companies wide. (In Civil War terminology, when two companies joined together, it formed a “division.”) Barker protested the formation. Although it had worked splendidly for the Army of the Potomac two weeks earlier at Spotsylvania Court House, Barker complained that the shape of the Confederate earthworks in front of Stedman’s column would create a deadly crossfire, savaging the men in the rear divisions.

The following image—taken from the 12^th New Hampshire’s regimental history—illustrated the tactical problem.

(The regimental historian remembered the attack this way. Note the horseshoe-shaped Confederate line and the "closed column by division" formation of the 12th New Hampshire.)

 

 

The horseshoe shape of the enemy earthworks created an interlocking field of fire into which Barker’s regiment had to advance. Asa Bartlett, the 12^th New Hampshire’s adjutant, later explained:

To advance a massed column of troops into such a semi-circle of destruction as here portrayed, with front and back flanks entirely exposed to the converging fire of eight or ten pieces of artillery and more than half a mile sweep of battle-lined musketry, was something fearful to even contemplate, but how much more so to actually experience none can tell save those who were there. No wonder that Captain Barker who had a heart to feel as well as courage to act, when he saw the field covered with his own brave men and heard the cries of the wounded, some of whom were less fortunate than the dead, stood up before his superiors in rank while the enemy’s shot was still flying around him, and wounding some of his listeners as he spoke, and denounced in righteous wrath the general, high or low, who was guilty of ordering such a murderous charge as that. He was so highly wrought up by his anger and the excitement of the occasion, that he declared with an oath that he would not take his regiment into another such charge, [even] if Jesus Christ himself should order it.

Captain Barker, as hereafter seen, was decidedly opposed to making the charge, massed in column, and so expressed his opinion. Adjutant-General Reynolds referred to Napoleon, as making all his charges in solid column, and thought it the most effectual way. “The most effectual way of murdering men, I agree, and there is the evidence of it,” sharply replied the captain, as he pointed to the field in front, thickly spotted with the dead and wounded. The next moment General Reynolds was wounded in the shoulder, from the effects of which he afterwards died.

It is well to remember where Barker stood in relation to this column of divisions. He stood front and center of the whole thing. Private George Place, a soldier in Company B—one of the companies at the front of the column—remembered, “Colonel [sic] Barker was standing near me, and I heard him remark, that he thought he had experienced some heavy artillery firing at the battle of Bull Run, but none equaled the closeness of that fire, yet strange as it may appear, as far as I could learn, not a man of the regiment was hurt while in that position.”

Place also remembered Barker giving the order to charge:

Finally, the Colonel [sic] drew his sword,— “Forward, march,” and the regiment started. We had not gone ten feet, when a rebel battery on our left flank opened fire. . . .The guns were so arranged that the iron storm swept past us about two rods in front. How it crashed and howled through those pine trees! For a moment, the regiment quailed and halted. As it did so, I turned and looked at Colonel Barker. I shall never forget the expression that came into his face as he beheld that halting. His eyes dilated, and it seemed as if I could almost see the fire flash from them. He flung his sword above his head and shouted with a voice that seemed as if the rebels must have heard,—“Forward!” Instantly the regiment started again, yelling as it went. There was no more halting after that, until, swept down in killed and wounded, it lost all semblance of order, and could do no otherwise than fall back.

Somehow, Barker managed to live through the destructive attack at Cold Harbor—truly a charmed life, if such a thing existed. He remained the 12^th New Hampshire’s commander throughout the remainder of the war, rising to the rank of colonel. When his regiment mustered out in July 1865, he wrote a touching farewell address. An excerpt of it is reprinted here:

Farewell Address.

Head Quarters 12^th N. H. Vols.,

Concord, N. H., July 3, 1865.

Soldiers, — The day to which we have all looked forward so long and anxiously has at last arrived. The great work in which we engaged almost three years ago is accomplished, and with the knowledge that we have done an honorable part toward crushing the rebellion, saving the union, and restoring peace, we have been permitted to return to our dear old native State, and are about to resume our peaceful avocations.

You have served your country long and nobly. By your deeds you have won a name that shall live forever. From the bloody fields of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Front Royal, Swift Creek, Drury’s Bluff, Port Walthal, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Cemetery Hill, Bermuda Front, and your triumphant entry into Richmond, ages hence will view your deeds, and the generations of centuries to come will honor and bless you for the legacy gained by your valor and bequeathed to them.

Since my connection with you as your commanding officer your conduct everywhere has been a source of pride to me. For bravery in battle you are second to no regiment that New Hampshire has ever sent to the field, and there is no State that can boast of braver troops than our own rock-bound Granite State.

For discipline and drill you have ever excited the admiration of military men. . . . By your ever ready, willing, and cheerful obedience to all orders you have rendered the duties of your commanding officer pleasant, and words are inadequate to express my appreciation of your services.

We have delivered up to the state authorities our old war-worn and bloodstained colors, which have been made dear to us through toil, danger, and sacrifice for their preservation. Nobler blood never coursed in the veins of man, or was sacrificed on a country’s altar, than has been poured out on many a crimsoned field for them. God bless the noble dead—our comrades still—who have fallen in their defense! Our last duties as a military organization have been performed, and as we arc about to separate, perhaps for time, we must say farewell.

As you have been faithful, brave, and true soldiers, I feel assured that you will be good and worthy citizens, and of your duties as such I will not venture a word, except an admonition that you will ever greet the bereaved friends of our comrades that we have buried in a distant land, or sent home to rest beneath their native sod, with kind words and helping hands.

Soldiers, I am proud of your record, and the highest honor that I ask is that, when the history of the Rebellion is written, my name may be recorded as the commander of the Twelfth New Hampshire Volunteers.

With kindest wishes for you in all your relations of life, and that Heaven's richest blessings may be shed upon you all, I bid you a kind and affectionate farewell.

Thomas E. Barker,

Col., 12th N. H. Vols.

I often wonder if, when Barker wrote out his farewell address, he thought of the men he had lost at Cold Harbor and the vow he made, never to lead men into such a charge, even if “Jesus Christ himself should order it.”

After Barker died, a veteran remembered: “[Barker always] appeared on the higher plane of moral excellence[.] . . . But [he never]  . . . had a thought that he was any better, or even quite as good as many of the men whom he had the honor to command. And in nothing more than this did he show his real worth as a soldier and a man.” Responsibility, it seemed, humbled Barker, but that humbleness made it difficult for him to order the death of that which he loved the most: his regiment.
 

(Here, you can see Lt. Col. Thomas Barker on the Bermuda Hundred Peninsula. You can see Maj. Nathaniel Shackford, from the previous post, standing behind him.)

 

“I Shall Never Forget My Ambulance Ride.”

The Battle of Cold Harbor subtracted 177 men from the ranks of the 12^th New Hampshire. Of those, sixty-three were killed or mortally wounded. The remaining 114 were wounded. Infamously, some of those wounded men were caught between the hostile lines for four days. Not until June 7 did Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant seek a truce so that his men could reclaim the dead and wounded.

Even before the truce became official, Union soldiers traipsed into the hostile no-man’s-land; they knew that time was of the essence. The wounded could not remain untreated for long. The weary New Hampshire bluecoats attempted their forays in the dead of night. Although the fighting had ended, the crunching of leaves always invited fire from Confederate sharpshooters. Asa Bartlett, the regimental historian, remembered:

Here then is such a picture of war as does not often present itself even to the veteran of a hundred battles. Two armies so closely confronting each other that their main lines in some places are scarcely a rifle shot apart, and the exposure of a hand or head, upon either side, is pretty sure to result in a furlough for thirty days or eternity; while upon the narrow space between, in plain sight of both friend and foe, are lying thousands of the dead, wounded, and dying, all stricken down from the ranks of one of the opposing armies, and all unprotected and uncared for. That the wounded were thus allowed to remain in suffering helplessness upon the field day after day, unless sooner rescued by their pitying comrades, was because of such a shameful and criminal negligence as no common words can fully and justly characterize. . . . Thus in silent darkness, for none but whispered words could be spoken, they crept around among the still more silent dead listening, for they could make no call, for some deep sigh or low moan that would tell them where amid the surrounding gloom of night and death they might find one in whose veins the vital fluid still continued to circulate. And when by some such sound or mere accident a comrade at last was found, with whispered caution to make if possible no cry of distress or groan of agony, he was carefully lifted up, a blanket or stretcher put under him, and borne away with noiseless steps to where they would receive all the comfort and care that kind hearts and willing hands could render. And thus the noble work of rescuing suffering humanity went on, not only for that night, but the next and even the third, until all of the living and most of the dead were removed, leaving but comparatively few to be buried, on the field where they fell, under a flag of truce, which was not until just before dark on the 7^th, or five days after the battle.

During these nighttime excursions, the survivors of the 12^th New Hampshire found two men barely clinging to life, Captain Nathaniel Shackford of Company E and Captain Arthur St. Clair Smith of Company G. Shackford, age thirty-seven, had been wounded three times: a grape shot had clipped three inches of bone out from his elbow, a piece of shell had passed completely through his back, and a bullet had bruised his right hip. Smith, age twenty-three, had been hit five times: three bullets had bruised him and two bullets had penetrated his flesh. And, by the way, these wounds were not the first wounds that either officer had suffered. Shackford had received four wounds in 1863—one at Chancellorsville and three at Gettysburg. Likewise, Smith had received a wound to the arm at Chancellorsville.
 

(Capt. Nathaniel Shackford, Co. E, 12th N.H. Vols., who was thrice wounded at Cold Harbor.)

 

 

(Capt. Arthur St. Clair Smith, Co. G, 12th N.H. Vols., who was wounded five times at Cold Harbor.)

 

 

In the middle of the night, the unwounded survivors bore Shackford and Smith off the field by carrying them on stretchers. Near Beulah Church, they loaded the two grievously wounded officers onto an ambulance bound for White House Landing, the location of the nearest field hospital, about ten miles distant. Smith remembered, “I shall never forget my ambulance ride with Captain Shackford.”

(Litter bearers and an ambulance bore Shackford and Smith from the field.)

 

This remembrance by Smith sounds like a simple line, but I think the words, “never forget” challenge us to consider what this ambulance ride was like. Their horse-drawn wagon bounced over bumpy, dirt-filled roads in the black of night. It could not have been a pleasant experience for a either soldier; both of them nursed multiple wounds. As Smith remembered it, he expected Shackford to die during the journey. Perhaps, then, no words exist to describe the suffering.
 

 

(This image by Mathew Brady depicts White House Landing on the Pamunkey River. This image shows what the landing looked like in June 1864.)

 

 

The horse-drawn ambulance was not their only conveyance. Shackford’s wounds required his immediate transfer to a general hospital near Washington. On June 10, medical personnel loaded him onto the steamer Connecticut, along with 674 other wounded men. It took twenty-eight hours for the steamer to sail down the Pamunkey, then down the York River, and then into the Chesapeake Bay before finally ascending the Potomac. As a newspaper reporter wrote, “The wounded brought up in the Connecticut were all very severe cases, and it was found necessary to move the boat along at moderate speed, as  the working of the engine went at full speed affected them unfavorably.” Even so, fifteen men died as the ship sailed to its destination: Washington, D.C.

(Here is USS Connecticut, the steamship that transported Capt. Shackford to Washington.)

 

 

As for Smith, he remained a few days longer at White House Landing, with 2,000 other wounded men.  He experienced the same awful trip, but later. 

Amazingly, the two men survived their wounds. In fact, both returned to duty that autumn and mustered out with their regiment in 1865. Shackford served as a state prison appraiser, and later, he supervised a hosiery mill.  He died on October 20, 1920. Arthur Smith became a lawyer and served as justice of the peace at Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Later, he became a judge, city council member, alderman, and state legislator. He died on December 19, 1895.

Even though they lived long lives, it is safe to say that they never forgot their ride in an “ambulance,” whether it was by stretcher, horse-cart, or steamship.

 

(Here, you can see Capt. A. St. Clair Smith in December 1864. You can see that he has recovered from his wound and rejoined his regiment.)

 

(Here is newly-promoted Major Shackford, from the same photograph as the one above.)

 

“Shot to Death With Musketry.”

On April 29, 1864, at Williamsburg, Virginia, Brigadier General Isaac J. Wistar’s brigade lined up to witness the execution of two deserters, Private Owen McDonald and Private James Scott. McDonald, who was twenty-nine-years-old, had been born in England, and had enlisted at Concord, New Hampshire, on November 11, 1863. Scott, who was twenty-two, had been born in Scotland, and had enlisted on November 30, 1863, at Nashua, New Hampshire.  Both men had gone to the front as substitutes, called up after Lincoln’s October 17 requisition for 300,000 volunteers. Within weeks of their muster, McDonald and Scott arrived at Point Lookout, Maryland, and there, they found themselves assigned to the 12^th New Hampshire, a regiment performing guard duty over Confederate prisoners of war.

In early April, the weather warmed up and orders arrived, transferring the 12^th New Hampshire and its sister regiment, the 2^nd New Hampshire, to a new post. For McDonald and Scott, the possibility of wasting away the war as prison guards suddenly evaporated. They knew that if they stayed with their companies—G and K—they would surely see combat. Apparently, other recently-added substitutes possessed the same feeling of foreboding. Over the course of the next week, 100 men deserted from the 2^nd and 12^th New Hampshire regiments. McDonald deserted on April 9, and Scott joined the exodus on April 10. Somehow, after bolting, McDonald and Scott met up, and they, in turn, joined with another deserter, Private Henry Holt of Company F, 2^nd New Hampshire. Together, these three men stole a boat from a St. Mary’s County waterman and used it to row up the Chesapeake Bay—a reckless plan, in my humble opinion. On April 12, several hours into their bid for freedom, a ship heading south from Baltimore, USS Mystic, stopped and overhauled them. After questioning them, the captain determined them to be deserters. As it happened, USS Mystic had charted course for Whittaker’s Landing, a wharf on the James River just south of Williamsburg.

(Here, you can see a sketch of USS Mystic, the gunboat that caught the three New Hampshire deserters.)

 

On April 11, while the three deserters were still searching for a boat in which to make their escape, the soldiers of the 12^th New Hampshire piled into a steamship, the Thomas Morgan, and sailed down the Chesapeake Bay, landing at Yorktown in the afternoon. The next day, the regiment marched to Williamsburg. The regiment had barely paused when USS Mystic arrived at the dock. Thus, within three days of their escape, James Scott and Owen McDonald returned to their regiment in chains.

The New Hampshiremen’s new brigade commander, General Wistar, hated bounty jumpers, and he believed that these three deserters represented the worst of the bunch. Wistar ordered two joint courts-martial to punish them. In order to test the mettle of his two New Hampshire regiments, Wistar selected officers from the 2^nd and 12^th New Hampshire to render judgment. If the New Hampshire officers elected to punish their own, it would send a clear message to all others who contemplated desertion.

(Brig. Gen. Isaac Jones Wistar demanded courts-martial for the three deserters, and for a fourth deserter caught during the same week.)

Within hours, the court convened and issued its first verdict, finding Private Holt guilty of desertion. At the same time, tt also found another soldier guilty of desertion, Private John Egan of Company A, 2^nd New Hampshire. (At Yorktown, Egan procured a Confederate uniform and attempted to make his way to enemy lines. A scout stopped him and returned him to his regiment.)

On April 15, 1864, both Egan and Holt faced death by firing squad . The execution took place on a bluff overlooking the York River, just one mile east of Yorktown. According to the 2^nd New Hampshire’s regimental historian, Martin Haynes, General Wistar ordered a battery of artillery to point its loaded cannon at the regiment to prevent the men from mutinying. As Haynes remembered, “No words can tell how keenly the proud old men of the proud old Second felt the disgrace of the position.” He continued:

The provost marshal read the findings of the court and the sentence, when the firing party of twelve men advanced and took position a few feet in front of the coffins. The prisoners removed their coats, and knelt upon the grass while the priest performed the holy offices of the church. Arising, they shook hands with the provost marshal and the priest. Their eyes were bandaged and their wrists tied with white handkerchiefs. Then they were led to and seated upon their coffins, facing the executioners. The marshal raised his hand, and his men brought their pieces to a ‘ready;’ again, and the guns sprang to the shoulder; a third time, and the volley rang out. Two or three bullets were heard singing out over the river, and Egin [sic] and Holt fell back across their coffins. After a short time the bodies were examined by surgeons, who declared life extinct, when all the troops were filed past the bodies and back to their camps.

One of the officers who had sentenced the two men, Captain George W. Gordon, noted in his journal, “We marched back to camp blue as whetstones and not a little mad for such measures are necessary to keep men with the commands to which they belong. It is rather hard but fair.”

(Capt. George W. Gordon, 2nd New Hampshire Volunteers, served on the court. His journal revealed a strong opinion. In his mind, the deserters needed to die.)

After the execution of Holt and Egan, McDonald and Scott stood trial before the exact same court. Predictably, it found both men guilty and sentenced them to die. On April 25, General Wistar signed the death warrant:

General Order No. 4

The proceedings, findings, and sentences of the Court having been approved by Brigadier General I. J. Wistar, the officer convening the court, and forwarded to the Major General Commanding Department, have been by him confirmed and ordered to be executed.

The prisoners having been turned over by the Brigadier General Commanding to the Colonel Commanding this Brigade for execution: Private Owen McDonough [sic] Co. “K” Second [sic] New Hampshire Volunteers and Private James Scott Co. “G” Second [sic] New Hampshire Volunteers, will be shot to death with musketry, on the plain, below Fort Magruder, between the hours of 4 and 5 P.M. tomorrow 29^th instant, in the presence of the Brigade.

The Brigade line will be formed at the place mentioned at a quarter before 4 o’clock P.M. at which time Commanders of the regiments will have their commands promptly on the ground.

Once again, Wistar’s brigade formed to witness a double-execution. This time, it stood at Fort Magruder, near Williamsburg. Adjutant Asa Bartlett, the judge advocate, later described this execution:

This was the first time that the Twelfth had ever witnessed an execution of the extreme penalty of military law, and the scene is still quite vivid in the minds of some who saw it. The spot having been selected and two graves dug, the regiments of the brigade are marched out at the hour appointed and formed into three sides of a hollow square, facing inward, with the newly-dug graves in the middle of the open side. Soon the “mark time” beat of the muffled drum is heard, and the condemned men, riding on their rough-made coffins, and guarded by twelve soldiers, selected from the Second Regiment, as executioners, slowly approach the square, and entering at one end of the open side, are driven round the whole distance of the other three sides, close in front of the lines. As they pass along, their countenances are closely scanned by every soldier, eager to read therefrom the emotions of the soul within. One of them, with downcast, sorrowful gaze, looks as if he realizes his situation, and that the woeful sorrow for the past, that has brought him here, is nearly equal to the dread of the terrible present that is now before him. The other acts more like one riding to a circus than [to] his own grave. A brutish grin is on his face, accompanied with an indifference of demeanor that seems half real and half affected. The teams are halted in front of the graves, beside which the coffins are placed, and the victims, dismounting from the cart, remain standing while the provost martial reads the death warrant and a prayer is made by the chaplain. They are next seated upon their coffins, their caps removed (the heedless one, bound to die game, taking his off himself and throwing it for some distance), their eyes bandaged with handkerchiefs, and now the dreadful moment of death-waiting suspense has arrived. The provost steps to one side a few paces, raises his hand, and twelve muskets instantly come to a “ready”; a little higher the hand, and the muskets are aimed and waiting; his hand drops, and Owen McDonald and James Scott fall over their coffins into eternity.

Captain Gordon, a member of the court who had asked for the death sentence, again remarked in his journal:  “We are getting a pretty hard name for a court. Well we have got four of them shot and more are deserving of being shot if I am judge.”

Five weeks after the deaths of McDonald and Scott, the 2^nd and 12^th New Hampshire joined the Army of the Potomac and engaged in the terrible battle at Cold Harbor. The 2^nd New Hampshire lost sixteen officers and men killed. Meanwhile, the 12^th New Hampshire lost sixty-three. The battle even claimed the lives of some of the officers who had served on the courts-martial, including Captain George Gordon and Captain William H. Smith.

Sometime that summer, a Union officer, Captain John McMurray, visited Fort Monroe. There, he encountered a friend of his, a lieutenant from the 2^nd New Hampshire who had served on the courts-martial of the four deserters and who had survived the Battle of Cold Harbor. McMurray asked the lieutenant what had happened to Gordon and Smith. The lieutenant replied, “Both were shot to death with musketry,” a derisive reply meant to make the June 3 attack at Cold Harbor appear equivalent to a death sentence. McMurray later recalled, “A pang of genuine sorrow for their death pierced my heart. Often since, when I have thought of them, and reflected upon their death, these two sentences have come into my mind: ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,’ and ‘Vengeance is mine, I will pay saith the Lord.’”

(Capt. John McMurray, 6th U.S.C.I., believed the merciless members of the court received their own style of justice at Cold Harbor.)

I think this tale is powerful enough as it is; I need not say much more about it. But let me conclude with this: the Civil War was, at its simplest, just an interlocking web of death sentences. I think the soldiers of 2^nd and 12^th New Hampshire understood this too well.

 

(There are no known images that depict the executions of Holt, Egan, Scott, and McDonald. Probably, they looked something like this Harper's Weekly sketch.)

 

 

 

The Outcome of a Maimed Consciousness

On July 1, 1863, Sarah Garland Emery of Canterbury, New Hampshire, had a morbid dream. Her husband, Charles, was off at the front, serving with the 12^th New Hampshire Infantry. Although she did not know it, the Battle of Gettysburg was about to begin and that battle was about to claim the life of one of her husband’s closest friends, Lieutenant Henry French. Sarah Emery remembered,

It was the night before the battle of Gettysburg, a night never to be forgotten by me, that I had the strange dream, or vision, for it did not seem like a dream, that told me plainer than tongue or pen, and as unmistakably as my own eyes, the fate that awaited my husband and his brother comrade, Lieutenant French. They were . . . schoolmates together, and enlisted from the same neighborhood. I was then stopping here in London [N. H.] with my own folks, and though expecting from newspaper reports that a battle would be fought in a few days, did not know that the two great armies were rapidly concentrating at Gettysburg, and that advanced forces were already engaged on that historic field. I therefore retired that night with nothing more than usual to worry or excite me.

Sometime during the night I heard, as I thought, three or four plain and distinct raps on the outside of the front door. Changing my first impulse to arouse the other inmates of the house, I decided not to disturb them, as they gave no sound of being awake, but to answer the summons myself. Hastily dressing, I took the lamp I had lighted in my hand, and descending the front stairs unlocked and opened the door.

There, sad, solemn, and silent, but in perfect lifelike form, countenance, and attitude, and in full dress uniform, stood Lieut. Henry French!

I spoke and extended my hand, but without heeding either, he passed in by me through the hallway into the sitting-room, the door of which he opened and closed after him. For the first time a feeling of dread chilled through my veins, and I hesitated to follow. But something stronger than my fears impelled me forward, and opening the door just closed, I entered the room after him.

Here, in the middle of the room, I saw two coffins, both open and empty, as I first thought, but upon approaching nearer I noticed that only one was empty, while the other held what now seemed the pale face and lifeless form of him who but a minute before stood and moved in life and strength before me. As I gazed upon the empty coffin, a small stream of blood ran out of the foot of it, and fell upon the floor, and something seemed to say: ‘This is for Charles who, too, must give his life’s blood for his country, but his time has not come yet.’

When Sarah Emery awoke the next morning, she confessed, “I lay for a long time, scarcely daring to believe that I was once more on the conscious side of the dividing line.” A few days later, as news of the Battle of Gettysburg spread through town, elements of her unusual dream came true. A neighbor came by and informed her that Lieutenant French had indeed been killed. Although Sarah Emery worried about the second coffin she had seen in her dream, she “thought [that] my husband was all right, because his name was not in the list of killed or wounded. A day or two later and a letter from his own hand left no longer room for doubt that he had passed through the terrible carnage unscathed.”

Naturally, the dream continued to trouble her. Every day, Mrs. Emery fretted over the vision of the second coffin, and as the days of July passed, her family wondered why she continued to appear sad and remote. Emery remembered, “My husband was alive and well, but the empty coffin was constantly before me, and there was but little more doubt in my mind for whom it remained open, than there was whom I saw in the other one.”

After Gettysburg, the 12^th New Hampshire received a transfer to Point Lookout, Maryland, where, for several months, Lieutenant Charles Emery and his comrades guarded Confederate prisoners. In April 1864, the 12^th New Hampshire joined the 18^th Corps and soon it participated in Benjamin Butler’s Bermuda Hundred Campaign. Then, in late May, it rejoined the Army of the Potomac just in time for the Battle of Cold Harbor. In the infamous frontal assault on June 3, 1864, the 12^th New Hampshire lost 177 officers and men. As the news of the regiment’s redeployment reached friends and family back home, Sarah Emery worried that the prophesy was about to come true. She continued:

I now seemed to anticipate afresh that the sad end, so long delayed, was soon to come; and a nervous feeling of impending danger too plainly told me that the worst was about to be realized. A few days later and I received another and the last letter ever written by him for whose safe return I had so long waited and prayed in vain. It was written on the night and in the early morning before the terrible charge of Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864.

He had commenced the letter on the evening of the second, and wrote that the morrow would again bring carnage and death into the ranks of the Twelfth, and that he felt that he should not again be among the lucky few who would escape unharmed. About midnight he wrote again, saying he was sure he should fall, but whether he should be killed on the field or receive his mortal wound he could not tell. Toward morning, and but a short time before the charge, he finished the letter, stating that in answer to his prayers he had then the assurance that although the bitter cup must be drunk for the redemption of his country, as his great Captain had drunk his for the redemption of the world, yet he should not be killed outright, but should live to see me once more at least before he died.

This was enough, for I knew his presentiment must prove true, and with a hasty preparation I immediately started for Washington and found my husband there in one of the large hospitals, prostrate and weak from the nervous shock and loss of blood from two severe wounds, one in his left arm and the other in his right thigh.

Now followed days and nights of watching and praying, while life and death seemed balancing in the scales, until at last the physicians spoke encouragingly, and thought the danger well nigh passed. His arm had been taken off, and the stump was healing so well that he, too, was beginning to entertain strong hopes of final recovery and the enjoyment of many happy days with me in our pleasant cottage home.

We had talked over our trials in the past and our hopes for the future; he had told me of the battles he had been in, and of his narrow escapes; and several times spoke of the great battle of Gettysburg, and the death of Lieutenant French, and of how he had saved the national colors of his regiment from capture in that battle. When told that I had never before heard anything about his saving the flag, he seemed surprised, and wondered that Adjutant Heath, who went, you know, from the same town, had never written home about it.

He then related to me briefly the circumstances, and said: ‘If I should not live to get home, Heath, I have no doubt, will make known the facts about it and see that full justice is done me.’

He also talked to me freely all about the strange premonition he had the night before he was wounded, how deeply it impressed him, and how glad and thankful he was and ought to be that he was not killed, like so many of the brave boys around him, but was still alive with the chances daily increasing of his seeing his native hills once more, and there living to enjoy the blessings of peace which he had given his own blood and limbs to secure.

During all this time, nearly two months, I said nothing of my own warning more than a year before, and, although it was almost constantly in my mind, I carefully avoided saying or doing anything to awaken in his mind a suspicion that I did not share with him his often expressed and most sanguine hopes of his final recovery.

And, to tell the fact, he had lived so long and improved so much, that, at times, the desire to have it so was so strong, I thought I could see a silver lining to the dark cloud of fear and doubt that had for many months hung over me; but it would soon disappear and leave a still deeper shade of gloom, that no ray of hope could penetrate or dispel. But the days and nights of anxious waiting and watching were at last nearly numbered, and the final, fatal hour was fast approaching. As well and hopeful as usual, my husband had closed his eyes in peaceful, quiet rest; but something of the same dread feeling of impending danger that I had felt once or twice before, as you will remember, came over me, and I could not sleep.

Soon I was summoned to his bedside, and I knew, even before I could get there, that the dread messenger had come. I found him, slowly but surely, bleeding to death! Secondary hemorrhage from his wound in the groin, caused by the sloughing open of one of the femoral arteries, had broken out, and there was no power in medical skill to stop it.

Just as he breathed his last, a stream of blood ran from off the foot of his bed upon the floor, just as I had seen it run out the foot of the empty coffin, and the realization of my vision was then and there sadly and solemnly consummated.

A shrewd historian might dismiss this account as sanctimonious rubbish, but I’m not so skeptical of it. Psychologist James Sully once explained dreams as revelations, or as he put it, “the outcome of a maimed consciousness.” Oddly enough, Sully explained dreams as an attachment to humankind’s primordial past—which really doesn’t fit here—but he made it clear that dreams are revelations of truths that the conscious mind refuses to accept. In Sarah Emery’s case, she refused to accept the possibility that her husband could die in the war. Thus, her 1863 dream was the response of her subconscious mind; it prepared her for the possibility of his death. Her dream did not predict the future so much as it revealed it, exactly as Sully explained. In any case, her dream happened. It was a real event and we should not doubt the veracity of her account.

More to the point: what a wild window into the human mind! To me, Sarah Emery’s story suggests that, in war, dreams are far more illuminating—and far more didactic—than in times of peace. This dream maimed her consciousness in such a way that she never forgot it.
 

(Lt. Charles Sargent Emery, Co. F, 12th N.H.V.)

 

(Charles and Sarah Emery are buried here, in Merrimack County, N. H.)