UPDATED MAY 10, 2015.
HUMPHREYS OF PENNSYLVANIA
-"Andrew Atkinson Humphreys, A Biography," by Henry H. Humphreys.
ci.jpg)
Eeeck!
Reading this closely, with the jaundiced eyed aforementioned as we reconstructive historians must, we easily attain interpretive truth and rewrite it as follows:
"As a boy, Humphreys was a sissy."
There follows brief exegesis of the glorious family history which goes all the way back to 848 Anno Domini. We learn that the name means "peaceful giant or peaceful bear's cub" which "probably" is "not a designation of personal qualities," which meaning however is consistent with the family settling among and adopting the ways of the Friends, i.e. Quakers in Penns Woods after escaping oppression of the unpeaceful giant Britain.
We learn that the family coat of arms is "A lion sejant, resting dexter paw upon nag's head, couped ermine," which the undersigned reconstructive historian has no idea what that means; that the family were classed as those "Americans of Royal Descent" which fact came back to bite the family in the ass, as it were, giving throat thereafter to the libel of "dual loyalty," "Uncle Charles," a delegate to the Continental Congress, having "opposed the Declaration of Independence...and voted against it;" AAH, upon being asked "Why?" some years later, by "Mr. Bancroft, the historian," and AAH perhaps nonplussed, "taken by surprise," as it were, replied indefinitely that "he did not know, but inferred it was due to the oath which [Uncle] Charles had taken to the King of England," which reply perhaps should have been truncated at the first clause, and the second concerning the oath to the King of England left unsaid. But it wasn't.
shipbuilder and rendered service in that field by constructing the frigates Constitution, President,
United States, Chesapeake, Constellation, and Congress, upon completion of which the "Father" was the unhappy recipient of a letter from his most prominent Child dated October 24, 1801 informing him that,
"...your services will be dispensed with after the first of November next, up to which period, you will please make up your accounts, and transmit it to the accountant for settlement."
Signed Robert Smith, United States Secretary of the Navy.
Seven whole days to wind up his affairs, sheesh. Filtered sunlight, some dusky, obscuring, nay Dark, clouds, indeed.
At this point it becomes the disagreeable duty of the undersigned to admit of some little annoyance at the author of the work under analysis as there seems to be some fatality in his following a chronological order of things, as right after the 1801 unpleasantness above concerning Grandfather Joshua we of a sudden jump back to 1797 and HHH relates an amusing anecdote concerning AAH's grand-uncle Clement, brother of Joshua. The undersigned's annoyance is made a bit warmer on account of he is not master of the case, as it were, of this incident, he does not fully "grasp" it, and is made hotter still by suspicion that the 1797 incident may be not unrelated to Grandfather Joshua being sacked four years later and was intentionally placed "out of order" with the purpose artificially to filter the sunlight of, to obscure, as it were, Humphreys family service to America. Or perhaps Henry was in some fashion historically dyslexic or possessed of an untamed mind. Be all of that as it may, constituting a caveat, a warning, as it were, to the reader, the undersigned's incomplete understanding of the incident is as follows, the gravaman of which is:
"On April 14, 1797, Mr. Bache was attacked and thrashed by Clement Humphreys...[who] was arrested..."
Very out-of-character actions for one descended from a family whose name means "peaceful bear's cub."
All we are told by HHH is that this "Mr. Bache" "witnessed the launching" of one of Joshua's boats,
the United States.
?
the United States.
?
HHH's dyslexia or his powers of obfuscation come into play as he first relates that "at about the time of the launching" "a paper called the "Aurora" contained an article attacking the administration of the late President Washington."
?
The "Aurora" article caused warmth of feeling amongst some peoplez, HHH then tells us that Bache witnessed the launch, was "editor or proprietor" of said "Aurora" and was thence "thrashed" by Clement.
?
The "Aurora" article caused warmth of feeling amongst some peoplez, HHH then tells us that Bache witnessed the launch, was "editor or proprietor" of said "Aurora" and was thence "thrashed" by Clement.
There is imperfect "connecting the dots" here by HHH, Clement's thrashing of Bache is related to Joshua and Joshua's boats, Joshua was sacked four years hence--those are the dots but HHH does not supply the connective tissue, as it were. This is also another incident that comes back to bite the Humphreys' in the ass. One "Mr. James Bach McMaster, of the University of Pennsylvania (historian)" wrote (apparently years later but HHH isn't too good about dates) about the 1797 thrashing and referred to grand-uncle Clement as that "ruffian Humphreys."
Hagiography is hard! Immediately thereafter:
"Clement was regarded as one of the most promising men of Philadelphia."
We must needs pause for a moment in quiet admiration of that sentence.
Okay:
"Between eighteen and twenty years of age, he was sent as bearer of dispatches to France (Mr. John Adams being President)...our three Commissioners...were in hot controversy with the French
Directory...,and Clement was believed to have carried more important and convincing information
privately than the dispatches contained."
Knowing nothing whatsoever about the subject matter of that passage we may venture a reconstruction approximately along these lines.:
"Clement betrayed America with secret information to the French."
"Mr. Jefferson was particularly bitter on him."
Yes, yes, that does seem like a fair rewrite.
There follows an odd non sequitur,
"With the Government of this country since the Revolution, the family has held high positions; contrasting the past with the future, and looking into it as far as human ken, it is believed this race has run its course, so far as the profession of arms is concerned, as the younger generation have selected more peaceful occupations than that of arms.
With the passing away of Henry and Charles, sons of General Humphreys, the family will close its connection with this country and its military career, a career which has been one of honor for over one hundred years. The name of Humphreys which has been written in the pages of history since the year A.D. 1035, as soldiers, having served its purpose, must and will die out. Such is the law of nature."
Tres odd, non? Oui oui, especially since this is how chapter two ends, HHH continues to write for 315 pages! Bitter and melancholy HHH closes the family military career and its association with America! He refers to himself in the third person, he writes about himself and his family at a remove. He is detached, non chalant about death, "...must and will die out. Such is the law of nature." AAH was also detached. Detached from life, from the normal feelings of life, and, at Fredericksburg, detached from death, his own and his soldiers. Look at these photographs:
Big group of guys. Humphreys and the white-bearded guy are the only two motherfuckers who are deliberately not looking at the camera! Meade, sitting right next to Andrew, stares right at the camera.
With Meade again. Everybody squared up to the camera. Not Humphreys.
The formal portrait in profile was common during the Civil War and there are some full facial photos of AAH. What is striking to me is when AAH is photographed in groups, others do not give the side of their faces, and how lopsided the profile view is in AAH's formal portraits and how many more generals were portrayed more in full facial photographs. Compare:
"Clement was regarded as one of the most promising men of Philadelphia."
We must needs pause for a moment in quiet admiration of that sentence.
Okay:
"Between eighteen and twenty years of age, he was sent as bearer of dispatches to France (Mr. John Adams being President)...our three Commissioners...were in hot controversy with the French
Directory...,and Clement was believed to have carried more important and convincing information
privately than the dispatches contained."
Knowing nothing whatsoever about the subject matter of that passage we may venture a reconstruction approximately along these lines.:
"Clement betrayed America with secret information to the French."
"Mr. Jefferson was particularly bitter on him."
Yes, yes, that does seem like a fair rewrite.
There follows an odd non sequitur,
"With the Government of this country since the Revolution, the family has held high positions; contrasting the past with the future, and looking into it as far as human ken, it is believed this race has run its course, so far as the profession of arms is concerned, as the younger generation have selected more peaceful occupations than that of arms.
With the passing away of Henry and Charles, sons of General Humphreys, the family will close its connection with this country and its military career, a career which has been one of honor for over one hundred years. The name of Humphreys which has been written in the pages of history since the year A.D. 1035, as soldiers, having served its purpose, must and will die out. Such is the law of nature."
Tres odd, non? Oui oui, especially since this is how chapter two ends, HHH continues to write for 315 pages! Bitter and melancholy HHH closes the family military career and its association with America! He refers to himself in the third person, he writes about himself and his family at a remove. He is detached, non chalant about death, "...must and will die out. Such is the law of nature." AAH was also detached. Detached from life, from the normal feelings of life, and, at Fredericksburg, detached from death, his own and his soldiers. Look at these photographs:
The only one not looking at the camera.
Profiles in profile.
The formal portrait in profile was common during the Civil War and there are some full facial photos of AAH. What is striking to me is when AAH is photographed in groups, others do not give the side of their faces, and how lopsided the profile view is in AAH's formal portraits and how many more generals were portrayed more in full facial photographs. Compare:
Hooker.
McClellan.
Love that one. Sigel.
Burnside.
Sherman.
Grant.
"The eyes are the windows to the soul." Humphreys did not want anyone looking through his windows. He did not want anyone to get a glimpse at his soul because he knew, he knew what a troubled soul he had. He wanted to keep that hidden from others.
To some, Humphreys at Fredericksburg was heroism incarnate. To others, he was a "maniac." Humphreys was detached from people, more so than other generals, physically detached as at Fredericksburg but more to the point, emotionally detached, oblivious to death, his own and his soldiers'. He was cold, he lacked empathy. An extreme empathy deficit is a key criterion in diagnosing psychopathology. Only in unguarded moments, with people he trusted, did he show how odd, and how at odds, his view of things was, never more so than in letters he wrote after Fredericksburg. The people of the United States were appalled at the slaughter. "Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!" the U.S. troops spontaneously shouted during Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. Fredericksburg lives in the American psyche as synonymous with mindless slaughter. That is not how Humphreys saw it:
"The charge of my division is described by those who witnessed it as sublime, and Harry [HHH] tells me, that he heard some general officers who saw it (who did not know him) discussing it, and saying that it was the grandest sight they ever saw, and that as I led the charge and bared my head, raising my right arm to heaven, the setting sun shining full upon my face gave me the aspect of an inspired being.
"This is quite egotistical, is it not? I felt gloriously, and as the storm of bullets whistled around me, and as the shells and shrapnel burst close to me in every direction scattering with hissing sound their fragments and bullets, the excitement grew more glorious still.
"Oh, it was sublime! As we neared the enemy's works their lines became a sheet of flame that enveloped us in front and flank. We advanced to within thirty yards of them. Nearly our whole loss occurred in the charge and retiring, which occupied from ten to fifteen minutes, and in that time I lost more than 1,000 officers and men. In all I was exposed to their fire an hour and a half, being about one hundred fifty yards from them, but the officers and the men were under partial shelter except when charging and retiring.
...
"It was a chance that gave me this opportunity; but for the prompt and rapid movements I have always exacgted from my division it would not have been at hand in this pressing need; another division was intended for this duty, but I was on the ground and the division has reaped such reputation as will make the fortunes of many of its officers."
-AAH to wife, December 17, 1862.
That's a sick puppy there.
"Campbell, I felt like a young girl of sixteen at her first ball; I felt more like a god than a man; I now understand what Charles XII meant when he said, 'Let the whistling of bullets hereafter by my music.'"
The man was deranged.
UPDATED MAY 7, 2015.
There are only two direct references to AAH having some mental condition that I have found, both mention it en passant. Here is the first:
"[Charles Elet's] rival in the corps of engineers was Andrew Atkinson Humphreys, a driven and driving man who, despite his army background, approached the study of the river with far greater scientific tenacity than Elet...He chased every last fact, tested every theory. He became so consumed by his task that he suffered a nervous breakdown, lost his funding, and had to set the work aside for several years. But in the summer of 1861, amid the first clashes of Union and Confederate armies, Humphreys completed his survey. It became the most influential scientific study of the Mississippi ever written.
-Great Projects: The Epic Story of the Building of America, from the Taming of the Mississippi to the Invention of the Internet, James Tobin (2001).
He DOES look, to me, as if he had suffered a nervous breakdown in photographs.
###
In the harried days after his inauguration on 18 February 1861, the new Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, made “quiet overtures” to “some of the best officers in the U.S. service.”Among these was a senior captain in the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, Andrew A. Humphreys...
...
...overtures from volunteer generals failed to dispel the belief “universally held here in Washington,” as Humphreys wrote many years later, “that I would join the South, an expectation that the newcomers into power were duly informed of and acted on, [which] excluded me from everything and caused me to be looked on with distrust.”1
[We can diagnose that one as common McClellan's Disease, not a mental issue.]
...
He was a stickler for detail and stubborn as a mule. He was also a firm disciplinarian.
http://www.usace.army.mil/Portals/2/docs/history/Andrew%20Humphreys%20at%20Antietam%20and%20Fredericksburg.pdf
###
...the men had no affection for him.He was called "Old Goggle Eyes" because of his reading spectacles, and at the age of fifty-three, they considered him an old man, though he was tall [he was short!]and slim and not yet gray. He was new to his division, and his men knew him only as a strict disciplinarian, exacting and precise, an unfeeling, bow-legged tyrant.
It was true that Humphreys was one of the most demanding officers in the army.
...
Charles Anderson Dana, the Assistant Secretary of War, thought him "one of the loudest swearers" he had ever known, a man of "distinguished and brilliant profanity,"...But Dana also found Humphreys to be charming, a man completely without vanity... [BULLSHIT!] Theodore Lyman...extremely neat, "continually washing himself and putting on paper dickeys."
...
Humphreys was not gifted with the ability to inspire...Lt. Cavada of the general's staff...Just before he took his troops up to the Stone Wall at Fredericksburg, Humphreys had bowed to his staff in his courtly way, "and in the blandest manner remarked, 'Young gentlemen, I intend to lead this assault; I presume, of course, you will wish to ride with me?'" Since it was put like that, the staff had done so, and five of the seven officers were knocked off their horses. After his men had taken as much as they could stand in front of the Stone Wall on Marye's Heights, the next brigade coming up the hill saw Humphreys sitting his horse all alone, looking out across the plain, bullets cutting the air all around him. Something about the way the general was taking it pleased them, and they sent up a cheer. Humphreys looked over, surprised, waved his cap to them with a grim smile, and then went riding off into the twilight. [That is not normal, sorry!] In this way Humphreys had turned his first division's dislike of him into admiration for his heroic leadership...[That is bullshit.]
Humphreys was a man with military training but little experience with troops in the field. His health had never been good, and illness prevented him from joining the army until late 1861...At the Battle of Fredericksburg, that he and his division won fame for their valor, known for getting closest to the Stone Wall of any Union division before being driven back.
[AAH was in Florida before the war on some engineering project and had to take leave for several months for his health. In many accounts of his life this episode is chalked up to "Florida Disease," I imagine some tropical physical illness, in others it is referred to as "coup de soleil" and is used in quotes just like that. Literally sunburn, "coup de soleil" is obvious euphemism. Humphreys himself said it was "mental exhaustion" from overwork.
Then there were some incidents in Washington. AAH had gone to personally solicit Secretary of War Stanton for a field command. He got it and then immediately requested leave to return to Philadelphia for a few days. Another incident, perhaps at the same time, I do not recall now, he took ill and was bed-ridden during the second Battle of Bull Run. Humphreys' son, Henry Hogshead Humphreys (hereinafter HHH), wrote a biography of AAH and wrote that on this occasion all of Washington was in a tizzy, the capital was being threatened after all, residents of the city were in the streets raising quite a loud commotion, one could even hear the cannon fire in the city and AAH heard nothing! He did not know, according to his son, that a battle was going on. That is not a physical illness, that is a mental illness, Humphreys was out of it for some reason.]
...
After the Battle of Chancellorsville, where his division was not heavily engaged, many of his men, whose terms of service had expired, were too tired or disgusted to re-enlist. [Or were dead, like Sgt. Bracken, and couldn't reenlist.] Nearly a division in all evaporated from the Fifth Corps...http://www.rocemabra.com/~roger/tagg/generals/index.html,
###
AAH had behavioral problems as a child. "Delinquent" or "uncontrollable," one or the other or both, were used to describe him. Hi father could not control him. Here is gauzy reference to his childhood personality, in a testament to him made years later:
As a boy, he was fearless, upright, and honorable , with a determined spirit of resistance to anything like tyranny or personal affront; first in all manly sports and a leader in daring exploits. His early education was received at "Tommy Watson's," the Germantown Academy, and at the school of an Englishman named Warren, who unfortunately used the rod. To the indignity of personal chastisement young Humphreys was too spirited to submit, and no command, entreaty or persuasion could induce him to return to the school...
-Andrew Athinson Humphreys, Brigadier-General U. S. Army, Brevet Major-General U. S. Army, Chief of Engineers, Hampton L. Carson, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
Vol. 22, No. 117 (Jan., 1885), pp. 48-71
###
Humphreys...was a curious mixture of precision and conceit.
...
Upon graduation in 1831...the young Andrew began his career; yet he retained his uncompromising attitudes.
...
His arrogance, however, did not preclude his innate skill...
...
the task that would mark the remainder of his life for six years: that of controlling the Mississippi River.
...
Humphreys was disheartened to learn that he would share this responsibility with a civilian, albeit a highly prominent one, for the job. Charles S. Ellet Jr., immediately got to work, observing much more than he researched, collecting very little serious hard information for his survey. The Ellet report was completed in less than a year.
Humphreys, on the other hand, threw everything he had he had into this effort. He was determined to demonstrate, completely and finally, the superiority of military engineers over civilians in large-scale projects of this sort. The 500 page document he ultimately produced, Report on the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River, was exceedingly impressive, and was not completed until 1867.
...
[after receiving command] this “engineer trained to precision” initially displayed something of a taskmaster’s personality when dealing with fresh troops, as he tended to be a strict disciplinarian. Charles A. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, noted him as a man of “distinguished and brilliant profanity.” In turn, the men of his command, gauging the fifty-plus year old Humphreys, marked for “continually washing himself and putting on paper dickeys,” and considered him old.
They dubbed Humphreys “Old Goggle Eyes..."
...
At Fredericksburg, his division gained the furthest ground against the intense Rebel fire from Marye’s Heights. [Some of this is repeated but is from different sources so I repeat it.]
...
A disheveled looking Humphreys, photographed during the 1864.[If "disheveled" is proper that is contradictory with his fastidiousness. His hair is askew, it's true, but the title of this photo is "Humphreys in the field." I, at least, wouldn't expect a general to have his hair brylcreemed in the middle of a battle. But in a civilian photo taken later in life his hair is even more askew. This is also the photo I characterized differently, as showing AAH "frazzled." That is how he looks to me. When I first saw this photograph I laughed out loud. He looks...mad to me. His eyes, it's a big photograph, you can enlarge it, his bearing, he just looks mad to me.]
...
Peace, however, was not destined to return to Humphreys with the cessation of armed conflict.
[The guy fought with everybody, he never knew peace in his entire life and doesn't look, to me, as if he was ever at peace internally. The later in life photo mentioned immediately above I published along with a drawing of Alfred E. Neuman, the Mad magazine comic character. I thought there were some similarities in appearance. Neuman is smiling however, it is part of his vacuous madness. AAH does not smile, AAH was not vacuous, AAH was very intelligent. I do not see an absence of stuff going on behind those eyes, I see too much going on. AAH looks, to me, barely able to contain all that is going on behind his eyes and, more to the point, barely able to contain his madness. It looks to me as if he is aware that he is not mentally or emotionally right, that he puts on the best face of normalcy that he can but it's a real struggle for him! It looks to me as if AAH tried his whole life to contain his madness.]
...
made the Chief of Engineers within the Army’s Corps of Engineers.
With the war over, Humphreys returned all of his energies to the Mississippi River assignment. There, a new foe awaited him – James Buchanan Eads. The two men clashed repeatedly, and with increasing bitterness, over two major projects concerning their visions concerning the waterway.
https://npsgnmp.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/an-invincible-repugnance-the-other-battles-of-general-andrew-atkinson-humphreys/
Aah (not AAH this time), that's all I copied and pasted. There is some other stuff. Someone on Amazon a little blurb about a book on AAH's work on the Mississippi River, that his "behavior indicates mental illness" and he was "dangerously erratic." These statements were made matter-of-factly, as if it was established and known by all. It is not known by me! I'm still trying to gather info on it.
...
...overtures from volunteer generals failed to dispel the belief “universally held here in Washington,” as Humphreys wrote many years later, “that I would join the South, an expectation that the newcomers into power were duly informed of and acted on, [which] excluded me from everything and caused me to be looked on with distrust.”1
[We can diagnose that one as common McClellan's Disease, not a mental issue.]
...
He was a stickler for detail and stubborn as a mule. He was also a firm disciplinarian.
http://www.usace.army.mil/Portals/2/docs/history/Andrew%20Humphreys%20at%20Antietam%20and%20Fredericksburg.pdf
###
...the men had no affection for him.He was called "Old Goggle Eyes" because of his reading spectacles, and at the age of fifty-three, they considered him an old man, though he was tall [he was short!]and slim and not yet gray. He was new to his division, and his men knew him only as a strict disciplinarian, exacting and precise, an unfeeling, bow-legged tyrant.
It was true that Humphreys was one of the most demanding officers in the army.
...
Charles Anderson Dana, the Assistant Secretary of War, thought him "one of the loudest swearers" he had ever known, a man of "distinguished and brilliant profanity,"...But Dana also found Humphreys to be charming, a man completely without vanity... [BULLSHIT!] Theodore Lyman...extremely neat, "continually washing himself and putting on paper dickeys."
...
Humphreys was not gifted with the ability to inspire...Lt. Cavada of the general's staff...Just before he took his troops up to the Stone Wall at Fredericksburg, Humphreys had bowed to his staff in his courtly way, "and in the blandest manner remarked, 'Young gentlemen, I intend to lead this assault; I presume, of course, you will wish to ride with me?'" Since it was put like that, the staff had done so, and five of the seven officers were knocked off their horses. After his men had taken as much as they could stand in front of the Stone Wall on Marye's Heights, the next brigade coming up the hill saw Humphreys sitting his horse all alone, looking out across the plain, bullets cutting the air all around him. Something about the way the general was taking it pleased them, and they sent up a cheer. Humphreys looked over, surprised, waved his cap to them with a grim smile, and then went riding off into the twilight. [That is not normal, sorry!] In this way Humphreys had turned his first division's dislike of him into admiration for his heroic leadership...[That is bullshit.]
Humphreys was a man with military training but little experience with troops in the field. His health had never been good, and illness prevented him from joining the army until late 1861...At the Battle of Fredericksburg, that he and his division won fame for their valor, known for getting closest to the Stone Wall of any Union division before being driven back.
[AAH was in Florida before the war on some engineering project and had to take leave for several months for his health. In many accounts of his life this episode is chalked up to "Florida Disease," I imagine some tropical physical illness, in others it is referred to as "coup de soleil" and is used in quotes just like that. Literally sunburn, "coup de soleil" is obvious euphemism. Humphreys himself said it was "mental exhaustion" from overwork.
Then there were some incidents in Washington. AAH had gone to personally solicit Secretary of War Stanton for a field command. He got it and then immediately requested leave to return to Philadelphia for a few days. Another incident, perhaps at the same time, I do not recall now, he took ill and was bed-ridden during the second Battle of Bull Run. Humphreys' son, Henry Hogshead Humphreys (hereinafter HHH), wrote a biography of AAH and wrote that on this occasion all of Washington was in a tizzy, the capital was being threatened after all, residents of the city were in the streets raising quite a loud commotion, one could even hear the cannon fire in the city and AAH heard nothing! He did not know, according to his son, that a battle was going on. That is not a physical illness, that is a mental illness, Humphreys was out of it for some reason.]
...
After the Battle of Chancellorsville, where his division was not heavily engaged, many of his men, whose terms of service had expired, were too tired or disgusted to re-enlist. [Or were dead, like Sgt. Bracken, and couldn't reenlist.] Nearly a division in all evaporated from the Fifth Corps...http://www.rocemabra.com/~roger/tagg/generals/index.html,
###
AAH had behavioral problems as a child. "Delinquent" or "uncontrollable," one or the other or both, were used to describe him. Hi father could not control him. Here is gauzy reference to his childhood personality, in a testament to him made years later:
As a boy, he was fearless, upright, and honorable , with a determined spirit of resistance to anything like tyranny or personal affront; first in all manly sports and a leader in daring exploits. His early education was received at "Tommy Watson's," the Germantown Academy, and at the school of an Englishman named Warren, who unfortunately used the rod. To the indignity of personal chastisement young Humphreys was too spirited to submit, and no command, entreaty or persuasion could induce him to return to the school...
-Andrew Athinson Humphreys, Brigadier-General U. S. Army, Brevet Major-General U. S. Army, Chief of Engineers, Hampton L. Carson, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
Vol. 22, No. 117 (Jan., 1885), pp. 48-71
###
Humphreys...was a curious mixture of precision and conceit.
...
Upon graduation in 1831...the young Andrew began his career; yet he retained his uncompromising attitudes.
...
His arrogance, however, did not preclude his innate skill...
...
the task that would mark the remainder of his life for six years: that of controlling the Mississippi River.
...
Humphreys was disheartened to learn that he would share this responsibility with a civilian, albeit a highly prominent one, for the job. Charles S. Ellet Jr., immediately got to work, observing much more than he researched, collecting very little serious hard information for his survey. The Ellet report was completed in less than a year.
Humphreys, on the other hand, threw everything he had he had into this effort. He was determined to demonstrate, completely and finally, the superiority of military engineers over civilians in large-scale projects of this sort. The 500 page document he ultimately produced, Report on the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River, was exceedingly impressive, and was not completed until 1867.
...
[after receiving command] this “engineer trained to precision” initially displayed something of a taskmaster’s personality when dealing with fresh troops, as he tended to be a strict disciplinarian. Charles A. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, noted him as a man of “distinguished and brilliant profanity.” In turn, the men of his command, gauging the fifty-plus year old Humphreys, marked for “continually washing himself and putting on paper dickeys,” and considered him old.
They dubbed Humphreys “Old Goggle Eyes..."
...
At Fredericksburg, his division gained the furthest ground against the intense Rebel fire from Marye’s Heights. [Some of this is repeated but is from different sources so I repeat it.]
...
A disheveled looking Humphreys, photographed during the 1864.[If "disheveled" is proper that is contradictory with his fastidiousness. His hair is askew, it's true, but the title of this photo is "Humphreys in the field." I, at least, wouldn't expect a general to have his hair brylcreemed in the middle of a battle. But in a civilian photo taken later in life his hair is even more askew. This is also the photo I characterized differently, as showing AAH "frazzled." That is how he looks to me. When I first saw this photograph I laughed out loud. He looks...mad to me. His eyes, it's a big photograph, you can enlarge it, his bearing, he just looks mad to me.]
...
Peace, however, was not destined to return to Humphreys with the cessation of armed conflict.
[The guy fought with everybody, he never knew peace in his entire life and doesn't look, to me, as if he was ever at peace internally. The later in life photo mentioned immediately above I published along with a drawing of Alfred E. Neuman, the Mad magazine comic character. I thought there were some similarities in appearance. Neuman is smiling however, it is part of his vacuous madness. AAH does not smile, AAH was not vacuous, AAH was very intelligent. I do not see an absence of stuff going on behind those eyes, I see too much going on. AAH looks, to me, barely able to contain all that is going on behind his eyes and, more to the point, barely able to contain his madness. It looks to me as if he is aware that he is not mentally or emotionally right, that he puts on the best face of normalcy that he can but it's a real struggle for him! It looks to me as if AAH tried his whole life to contain his madness.]
...
made the Chief of Engineers within the Army’s Corps of Engineers.
With the war over, Humphreys returned all of his energies to the Mississippi River assignment. There, a new foe awaited him – James Buchanan Eads. The two men clashed repeatedly, and with increasing bitterness, over two major projects concerning their visions concerning the waterway.
https://npsgnmp.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/an-invincible-repugnance-the-other-battles-of-general-andrew-atkinson-humphreys/
Aah (not AAH this time), that's all I copied and pasted. There is some other stuff. Someone on Amazon a little blurb about a book on AAH's work on the Mississippi River, that his "behavior indicates mental illness" and he was "dangerously erratic." These statements were made matter-of-factly, as if it was established and known by all. It is not known by me! I'm still trying to gather info on it.
HHH wrote in his hagiography of a "harmless" incident that was "enlarged upon" by AAH's "enemies" to deny him promotion but he doesn't say what it was. Matthew T. Pearcy spells it out. The occasion was Lincoln's removal of McClellan from command:
That will get your tit in a ringer! Especially when AAH "had quietly opposed Lincoln in 1860," especially when Stanton accused AAH of being "a McClellan man," especially when "the universally held belief" in Washington was that AAH was sympathetic to the Confederacy and to his old friend Jeff Davis, that will do it!
.JPG)
I really don't like General Andrew Atkinson Humphreys, there, I said it! I have long felt there was something wrong with that guy and last night decided to write an installment on this post to be titled something like,
Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals As Seen from the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac. by "a. Citizen-Soldier." Umm, pseudonym? Yes! "a. Citizen-Soldier" was listed as the author when the book first came out in 1864. See, it really is hard to get Civil War history that isn't white-washed. 1864, huh? Right in the middle of the war? That could be interesting. This is the edition of the book cited by Pearcy,
UPDATED May 2, 2015. The 133rd bivouacked at Falmouth before the battle and occupied the Union Church above. Collection of http://fredericksburgva.us/historic-union-church/.
########
After the battle:
Found this on Ebay:
.JPG)
The seller asks "profile of ?????. HELP! who is this???" I think it's McClellan, he was born in Philadelphia.
And a fine son he was, lol.
UPDATED MAY 3, 2015.
"Humphreys Was Nuts."
But he was not really nuts, meaning, to me as a lawyer, he was not legally insane, so I probably would not have gone with that title. There was something wrong with him but teasing out of Civil War history, where everybody was a hero, information on mental or emotional illness is difficult. I spent a couple of hours last night and then an hour or so this morning researching and copying and pasting pregnant passages and I will copy and paste those in a separate installment. But I also, and this is the subject of this installment, printed out "No Heroism Can Avail," cited by me yesterday as "HumphreysGayandHappy." :( The author, Matthew T. Pearcy, end-noted six times to a work I had never heard of:
Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals As Seen from the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac. by "a. Citizen-Soldier." Umm, pseudonym? Yes! "a. Citizen-Soldier" was listed as the author when the book first came out in 1864. See, it really is hard to get Civil War history that isn't white-washed. 1864, huh? Right in the middle of the war? That could be interesting. This is the edition of the book cited by Pearcy,
...and how it is listed on Amazon,
Red Tape & Pigeon-Hole Generals: Andrew A. Humphreys in the Army of the Potomac Hardcover – February, 1999
Wow-wa, woo-wa. Definitely interesting!
Google "William H. Armstrong Civil War" and you get a guy in the Pennsylvania 129th and that gets me close to an orgasm. Google "Frederick B. Arner" however and you get JACK. :( John Hennessy, whose name I'm familiar with from that great National Park Service site I keep mentioning, refers to Frederick B. Arner as "Fred," so he must know him so there must be a real Frederick B. Arner but doggone if there's a photo of him or a bio or a Wikipedia entry or any information about him. Which I find weird. Hennessy says Arner identified the real author, Armstrong, and his real target, Humphreys. Presumably, Arner explains how he did that in his introduction which I have not read but I have ordered the book.
UPDATED May 2, 2015. The 133rd bivouacked at Falmouth before the battle and occupied the Union Church above. Collection of http://fredericksburgva.us/historic-union-church/.
########
After the battle:
"His adjutant, Captain McClellan, had gone back to ready the First Brigade and returned to find Humphreys "sitting quietly and alone viewing the ground in his front” and whistling a cheerful tune. It was “Gay and Happy,”a prewar favorite that inspired several parodies. One popular version included the lines:
We are the boys so gay and happy,
Wherever we chance to be,
If at home or on camp duty,
‘Tis the same, we’re always free.
So let the war guns roar as they will,
We’ll be gay and happy still."
We are the boys so gay and happy,
Wherever we chance to be,
If at home or on camp duty,
‘Tis the same, we’re always free.
So let the war guns roar as they will,
We’ll be gay and happy still."
HumphreysGayandHappy
.jpg)
The above image "Genl. Humphreys charging at the head of his division after sunset of Dec 13, 1862," a sketch by Alfred Waud, is from the personal collection of the undersigned.
“I do like to see a brave man,” wrote one young Union officer of Humphreys, “but when a man goes out for the express purpose of getting shot at, he seems to me in the way of a maniac.”
.jpg)
The above image "Genl. Humphreys charging at the head of his division after sunset of Dec 13, 1862," a sketch by Alfred Waud, is from the personal collection of the undersigned.
“I do like to see a brave man,” wrote one young Union officer of Humphreys, “but when a man goes out for the express purpose of getting shot at, he seems to me in the way of a maniac.”
Well said, young Union officer, well said.
...
As Union soldiers descended into this valley and prepared to cross a mill race that ran just off to your left, they encountered dreadful sounds and sights—the full cacophony of battle, a panorama of suffering, the “Valley of Death.”
Once here, there was no time for reflection. Men and their commanders could only act.
...
This is an amazing site which I have recommended before:
I have been to Fredericksburg and have walked the walks and seen the things related here by Frank O'Reilly, whose book I have read also, but I can not tell it as well as did Mr. O'Reilly to a crowd of 1,500 on the anniversary of the battle:
Once here, there was no time for reflection. Men and their commanders could only act.
Fear was omnipresent among Union soldiers on this field, and they freely admitted it.
As one man from Connecticut plainly put it, “We thought every moment would be our last and I am willing to say for one that I was pretty badly scared.”
Another soldier remembered that one of his comrades “seemed in terrible mental agony, groaning and taking on. Perhaps I felt as badly as he but I kept it to myself. I felt that the hand of man or any earthly power was unable to save me, and I appealed to my Heavenly Father to save me, if it were His will.”
For most, a sense of duty and commitment helped overcome the paralyzing fear.
A rookie soldier from Pennsylvania remembered:
“One may ask how such dangers can be faced. The answer is, there are many things more to be feared than death. Cowardice and failure of duty with me were some of them. I said to myself, ‘This is duty. I’ll trust in God and do it. If I fall, I cannot die better.”
Courage is an inverse measure of fear. Courage is the will to overawe fear. The depth of fear at Fredericksburg demanded an unprecedented measure of courage to overcome.
Courage among soldiers is not limitless. Draw upon that reservoir again and again, and evermore deeply, and it will empty, and the soldier may cease to function. So intense, so frightening, so courageous were the efforts of soldiers on this battlefield, that it left many with reservoirs empty.
Here, in this deadly valley, Union soldiers crossed a threshold to a place unlike most of them had experienced before. The threshold was literal: the canal ditch. Of course the Confederate army, with days to prepare, knew this place well. They had torn up the bridge where Hanover crossed the ditch, leaving only the stringers. Far worse than that, Confederate artillery had time to measure the range to the this crossing precisely. As regiment after regiment crowded down George Street onto Hanover, Confederate artillery opened fire.
The Irish Brigade especially suffered here.
Beyond was a landscape whose horror would lodge in the American consciousness. Five hundred yards of open field, broken only the remnant fences of the town’s fairgrounds and a single house, owned by wheelwright Allen Stratton. This would be the defining landscape of Fredericksburg.
A Union brigade commander—a rank of men not usually prone to declamations of fear—wrote of that place, “I never realized before what war was. I never before felt so horrible since I was born.”
But he and thousands of others went. And we will follow their footsteps anew, all the way to a place none of them reached, the Sunken Road.
UPDATED April 27, 2015. This is from http://www.pa-roots.com/bedford/history/perrin,john133pavolunteers.html, posted apparently by a descendant of Pvt. John Perrin.:
Governor Curtin, of Pennsylvania, has issued a proclamation recommending the immediate formation throughout that State of volunteer companies and regiments in conformity with the militia act of 1858; also that, in order to give due opportunities for drill and instruction, all places of business be closed daily at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, so that all persons employed therein may, after that hour, be at liberty to attend to their military duties.
Arrangements are being made to dispatch to the entrance of Cumberland Valley all the troops now at Harrisburg, and other regiments from this State and New England detained there for that purpose. The citizens are organizing themselves into companies under the Governor's proclamation, and a very martial spirit prevails. By the invasion of Maryland, at Frederick, the city of Chambersburg, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, is threatened. General Andrew Porter has reported to Governor Curtin for the organization of the Pennsylvania militia. The rebels are reported to have invaded Pennsylvania at Hanover.
On August 19th the 133rd set out for Washington D.C. Upon arrival, the regiment reported to General Silas Casey by whom it was immediately ordered to Arlington Heights, Virginia located across the Potomac River from Washington D.C. It was here the 133rd joined forces with the 123rd, 131st and the 134th Pennsylvania Regiments under the command of Colonel Peter H. Allabach of the 131st.
The regiment was sent to Alexandria on August 27th where it was encamped for three days. On the 30th, following the defeat of the Union forces at the second Battle of Bull Run, the troops were moved to Fort Ward. This installation was one of the sixty-eight earthen forts built to protect Washington D.C. and was located on the west side of Alexandria. For the next two weeks, the troops were involved in picket duty and entrenchment construction at the fort.
On September 12th, the brigade, which had been strengthened by the addition of the 155th Pennsylvania regiment, crossed back over the Potomac to Washington D.C. While enroute, they were attached to Gen. Andrew A. Humphrey's [HISS! PFFT PFFT!] Division of the 5th Corps, Army of the Potomac. The brigades of Humphrey's division were from Pennsylvania with most of the troops being newly recruited nine-month volunteers. During the two-day stay at Washington, the soldiers exchanged the arms that had originally been issued to them for Springfield muskets. Each man was issued a small canopy, called a dog tent by the soldiers, and sixty rounds of ammunition.
Sunday morning, September 14th, the troops headed for Washington County, Maryland. Delayed for a day at the Monocacy River, the corp reached Sharpsburg on the morning of the 18th, the day after the Battle at Antietam. While continuing to skirmish with Union troops that day, the Confederate forces began to withdraw southward across the Potomac River into the Shenandoah Valley. The morning of the 19th, the Pennsylvania troops crossed Miller's cornfield, covered with the dead and the wounded of both armies. The Pennsylvania Volunteers set up camp a mile outside of Sharpsburg on the road leading to Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
Here the Pennsylvania regiments remained for about six weeks engaging in company and battalion drill. In late October the regiments began their march toward Falmouth, Virginia located on the opposite side of the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg. Falmouth was the headquarters of Union General Ambrose E. Burnside and the Army of the Potomac, which included the 133rd Pennsylvania volunteer regiment. Arriving there about November 17th, the Pennsylvania troops, for nearly four weeks, continued to drill diligently in preparation for the upcoming engagement with the Southern forces.
As one man from Connecticut plainly put it, “We thought every moment would be our last and I am willing to say for one that I was pretty badly scared.”
Another soldier remembered that one of his comrades “seemed in terrible mental agony, groaning and taking on. Perhaps I felt as badly as he but I kept it to myself. I felt that the hand of man or any earthly power was unable to save me, and I appealed to my Heavenly Father to save me, if it were His will.”
For most, a sense of duty and commitment helped overcome the paralyzing fear.
A rookie soldier from Pennsylvania remembered:
“One may ask how such dangers can be faced. The answer is, there are many things more to be feared than death. Cowardice and failure of duty with me were some of them. I said to myself, ‘This is duty. I’ll trust in God and do it. If I fall, I cannot die better.”
Courage is an inverse measure of fear. Courage is the will to overawe fear. The depth of fear at Fredericksburg demanded an unprecedented measure of courage to overcome.
Courage among soldiers is not limitless. Draw upon that reservoir again and again, and evermore deeply, and it will empty, and the soldier may cease to function. So intense, so frightening, so courageous were the efforts of soldiers on this battlefield, that it left many with reservoirs empty.
Here, in this deadly valley, Union soldiers crossed a threshold to a place unlike most of them had experienced before. The threshold was literal: the canal ditch. Of course the Confederate army, with days to prepare, knew this place well. They had torn up the bridge where Hanover crossed the ditch, leaving only the stringers. Far worse than that, Confederate artillery had time to measure the range to the this crossing precisely. As regiment after regiment crowded down George Street onto Hanover, Confederate artillery opened fire.
The Irish Brigade especially suffered here.
Beyond was a landscape whose horror would lodge in the American consciousness. Five hundred yards of open field, broken only the remnant fences of the town’s fairgrounds and a single house, owned by wheelwright Allen Stratton. This would be the defining landscape of Fredericksburg.
A Union brigade commander—a rank of men not usually prone to declamations of fear—wrote of that place, “I never realized before what war was. I never before felt so horrible since I was born.”
But he and thousands of others went. And we will follow their footsteps anew, all the way to a place none of them reached, the Sunken Road.
UPDATED April 27, 2015. This is from http://www.pa-roots.com/bedford/history/perrin,john133pavolunteers.html, posted apparently by a descendant of Pvt. John Perrin.:
PENNSYLVANIA AROUSED. [lol, ed.]
HARPER'S WEEKLY, issue dated September 20, 1862
Governor Curtin, of Pennsylvania, has issued a proclamation recommending the immediate formation throughout that State of volunteer companies and regiments in conformity with the militia act of 1858; also that, in order to give due opportunities for drill and instruction, all places of business be closed daily at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, so that all persons employed therein may, after that hour, be at liberty to attend to their military duties.
Arrangements are being made to dispatch to the entrance of Cumberland Valley all the troops now at Harrisburg, and other regiments from this State and New England detained there for that purpose. The citizens are organizing themselves into companies under the Governor's proclamation, and a very martial spirit prevails. By the invasion of Maryland, at Frederick, the city of Chambersburg, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, is threatened. General Andrew Porter has reported to Governor Curtin for the organization of the Pennsylvania militia. The rebels are reported to have invaded Pennsylvania at Hanover.
On August 19th the 133rd set out for Washington D.C. Upon arrival, the regiment reported to General Silas Casey by whom it was immediately ordered to Arlington Heights, Virginia located across the Potomac River from Washington D.C. It was here the 133rd joined forces with the 123rd, 131st and the 134th Pennsylvania Regiments under the command of Colonel Peter H. Allabach of the 131st.
The regiment was sent to Alexandria on August 27th where it was encamped for three days. On the 30th, following the defeat of the Union forces at the second Battle of Bull Run, the troops were moved to Fort Ward. This installation was one of the sixty-eight earthen forts built to protect Washington D.C. and was located on the west side of Alexandria. For the next two weeks, the troops were involved in picket duty and entrenchment construction at the fort.
On September 12th, the brigade, which had been strengthened by the addition of the 155th Pennsylvania regiment, crossed back over the Potomac to Washington D.C. While enroute, they were attached to Gen. Andrew A. Humphrey's [HISS! PFFT PFFT!] Division of the 5th Corps, Army of the Potomac. The brigades of Humphrey's division were from Pennsylvania with most of the troops being newly recruited nine-month volunteers. During the two-day stay at Washington, the soldiers exchanged the arms that had originally been issued to them for Springfield muskets. Each man was issued a small canopy, called a dog tent by the soldiers, and sixty rounds of ammunition.
Sunday morning, September 14th, the troops headed for Washington County, Maryland. Delayed for a day at the Monocacy River, the corp reached Sharpsburg on the morning of the 18th, the day after the Battle at Antietam. While continuing to skirmish with Union troops that day, the Confederate forces began to withdraw southward across the Potomac River into the Shenandoah Valley. The morning of the 19th, the Pennsylvania troops crossed Miller's cornfield, covered with the dead and the wounded of both armies. The Pennsylvania Volunteers set up camp a mile outside of Sharpsburg on the road leading to Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
Here the Pennsylvania regiments remained for about six weeks engaging in company and battalion drill. In late October the regiments began their march toward Falmouth, Virginia located on the opposite side of the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg. Falmouth was the headquarters of Union General Ambrose E. Burnside and the Army of the Potomac, which included the 133rd Pennsylvania volunteer regiment. Arriving there about November 17th, the Pennsylvania troops, for nearly four weeks, continued to drill diligently in preparation for the upcoming engagement with the Southern forces.
About 8:30 a.m., December 13, 1862, the first Battle of Fredericksburg began. It has become known
as one of the most one-sided battles of the War Between the States. The Union army suffered
horrifying casualties while engaged in the futile frontal assaults Burnside launched against the well-entrenched Confederates on the Heights behind the city of Fredericksburg. Civil War scholars attribute this Union defeat to Burnside's indecisiveness in his plan of action, lack of preparation, delays in the arrival of equipment needed to cross the river and communication failures.
.jpg)
[No. Burnside, you fat fuck, YOU charge across that moonscape! Humphreys, knock yourself out, put your hat on your sword and go prancing around that field on your horse, you crazy bastard.
I have written here before, probably below, that I put myself in the position of those about whom I write and I can see myself doing some of the things they do. I have put myself in Pvt. Perrin's position, in Sgt. Bracken's position, and, there is no doubt in my mind of this, I could not and would not have made that charge. I'd a cussed out Old Burn and A.A. and turned my ass around and walked back to Cambria County, fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all, says I.]
The Open Fields Crossed by the Union Troops with Marye's (pronounced Marie's) Heights in the Background.The fields had become littered with fallen soldiers by the time Pvt. Perrin's unit arrived that afternoon. From the Heights, the Confederate troops had an almost unobstructed view and were well entrenched in the Sunken Road behind the Stone Wall. " The Union soldiers lay where they fell, (including Pvt. John Perrin) in the cold winter air as night crept over them, blanketing their agonized cries.” - unknown
Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration
That is an unusual photograph.
It is unusual first because it is a group photograph, second, because it was taken indoors. Notice the wainscoting in the upper right hand corner. Thought it was a window at first. Notice the carpet.
I googled "Union Civil War Soldiers." The first five Google images of groups were taken out-of-doors. So, the photograph of the 133rd is unusual in that it is a group shot taken indoors.
It is also unusual in that it is not a formal photo. This is the first Google image of a group of Union soldiers taken indoors:
That's formal. "Okay boys, left leg forward, guns over left shoulder. Standard bearer, hold it like that." All in full uniform. By contrast, none of the eight in the 133rd photo are in full uniform; at most four are wearing military head-wear. In addition, the 133rd eight are posing informally.
By far the most common indoor photograph of Union Civil War Soldiers was the formal individual portrait. The photograph of the 133rd (and the Fifth Artillery) is unusual: 1. Group. 2. Indoors. 3. Not full uniform. 4. Informal posing.
When in tarnation was the 133rd photo taken? What were the circumstances? The answers to those questions, friends and enemies is, "I don't know." But I will speculate!
D.C.? The 133rd mustered in at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg. From there they went to Washington. They spent some time there, I don't remember how long, they were reviewed by President Lincoln, but they were there for some little while.
And
they
partied.
There was womenz of unsartin marals in Washington, D.C. There was alcohol-booze. Some of the
newly-minted soldiers had too much of both. Was that photo taken in their hotel before a night out on the town?
-September 10, 2014
On the header, the first known (to me) photograph of any members of the 133rd. The image was digitalized just recently by the U.S. Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. I saw it about a month ago and ordered a copy. I received it today. On the back of the photo the members are identified as: Front: Captain Webster B. Loman, Company D, 5th Pa. Artillery, Sgt. J. Speer Orr, Company A, Pa. 133rd, George C. Fisher, cannot make out rank 5th Pa. Artillery, 1st Sgt. James Kenly, Co. A, Pa. 133rd. Rear: Pvt "Dad," superscript Harris, Lenhart, 5th Pa. Artillery, Pvt. David J. Edwards, Company A, Pa. 133rd, Johnny Watkins, can't make it out, then maybe "Lt.", Co. D, 5th Pa. Artillery, and 2nd Lt. Michael Downey, Co. K, Pa. 133rd.
A fine group of ruffians there! I don't know if they scared the Rebels but they sure scare me!
As always, my best to the descendants of the soldiers.
-Sept. 9, 2014.
From the New York Public Library http://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/10/04/ussc-processing-project-after-antietam.:
"[C]ontemporary materials can show us what it was like for a soldier to experience that single day within the context of a long and grueling campaign. Project staff member Joseph Lapinski describes such an item encountered in the USSC's Statistical Bureau records — the notebook of a camp inspector visiting Union troops near Sharpsburg, Maryland on October 28, 1862.
USSC staff inspected military camps in order to identify and report health concerns and supply shortages. Inspectors typically recorded their observations on printed questionnaires called "camp inspection returns."
...
Camp inspection returns have much to say about the state of individual regiments at a specific place and time.
...
Just recently, a small leather notebook entitled "Inspection Returns, October 28, 1862," was found among unsorted Statistical Bureau materials. The journal format alone is enough to make this item unique within the realm of inspection returns, but what sets it apart is its hybrid nature, combining elements from camp inspections as well as the aforementioned battle studies.
Front cover and interior title page, Inspection Returns, October 28, 1862.
It soon became apparent that the volume, written by a Sanitary Commission inspector or agent whose handwriting has yet to be identified, described the condition of seventeen regiments camped in the vicinity of Sharpsburg, Maryland, near the Antietam battlefield. The return, or report, for each regiment takes the form of detailed responses to ten unspecified questions, inquiring about the regiment's recent marches, whether or not they were engaged at Antietam, their camp conditions and general health, and their need for any clothing and medical supplies. Though dated more than one month after the battle of Antietam, the entries offer insight into the regiments' experiences before, during, and after the battle.
One of the most common observations made of the regiments in this area was their exhaustion resulting from long marches. Forces had hurried to gather in the vicinity of Sharpsburg in the days leading up to the battle, some having marched ten or more miles a day, for a week, only to arrive weakened and fatigued.
...
as one of the most one-sided battles of the War Between the States. The Union army suffered
horrifying casualties while engaged in the futile frontal assaults Burnside launched against the well-entrenched Confederates on the Heights behind the city of Fredericksburg. Civil War scholars attribute this Union defeat to Burnside's indecisiveness in his plan of action, lack of preparation, delays in the arrival of equipment needed to cross the river and communication failures.
.jpg)
I have written here before, probably below, that I put myself in the position of those about whom I write and I can see myself doing some of the things they do. I have put myself in Pvt. Perrin's position, in Sgt. Bracken's position, and, there is no doubt in my mind of this, I could not and would not have made that charge. I'd a cussed out Old Burn and A.A. and turned my ass around and walked back to Cambria County, fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all, says I.]
The Open Fields Crossed by the Union Troops with Marye's (pronounced Marie's) Heights in the Background.The fields had become littered with fallen soldiers by the time Pvt. Perrin's unit arrived that afternoon. From the Heights, the Confederate troops had an almost unobstructed view and were well entrenched in the Sunken Road behind the Stone Wall. " The Union soldiers lay where they fell, (including Pvt. John Perrin) in the cold winter air as night crept over them, blanketing their agonized cries.” - unknown
Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration
Update October 24, 2014. This is an amazing site http://npsfrsp.wordpress.com, from which amazing site,
"For the Middle Pontoon Crossing, my idea of a “likeliest” target-zone for the Union bridge-builders in December 1862 was derived in part from a Union map entitled Position of the Divisions of Humphreys, Whipple, Griffin and Sykes at the battle of Fredericksburg, on Dec. 13th, 1862. Here’s the section of that map that specifies the bridge-location—upstream from the foot of Berkeley Street, or “Rocky Lane”—and upon which I’ve noted the location of Building Two. It (and not a structure with the design and neighbors of Building One) would have appeared prominently in any sketch of a bridge being built from the Stafford side of the Rappahannock towards a point upstream from Berkeley Street:"
Anyway, go there for some great historical detective work.
From another amazing site but I forget which, new, to me photographs:
Ahh, thecivilwarproject, burying Union dead at F-burg.
From longstreet.typepad:
////////////////////////////
That is an unusual photograph.
It is unusual first because it is a group photograph, second, because it was taken indoors. Notice the wainscoting in the upper right hand corner. Thought it was a window at first. Notice the carpet.
I googled "Union Civil War Soldiers." The first five Google images of groups were taken out-of-doors. So, the photograph of the 133rd is unusual in that it is a group shot taken indoors.
It is also unusual in that it is not a formal photo. This is the first Google image of a group of Union soldiers taken indoors:
That's formal. "Okay boys, left leg forward, guns over left shoulder. Standard bearer, hold it like that." All in full uniform. By contrast, none of the eight in the 133rd photo are in full uniform; at most four are wearing military head-wear. In addition, the 133rd eight are posing informally.
By far the most common indoor photograph of Union Civil War Soldiers was the formal individual portrait. The photograph of the 133rd (and the Fifth Artillery) is unusual: 1. Group. 2. Indoors. 3. Not full uniform. 4. Informal posing.
When in tarnation was the 133rd photo taken? What were the circumstances? The answers to those questions, friends and enemies is, "I don't know." But I will speculate!
D.C.? The 133rd mustered in at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg. From there they went to Washington. They spent some time there, I don't remember how long, they were reviewed by President Lincoln, but they were there for some little while.
And
they
partied.
There was womenz of unsartin marals in Washington, D.C. There was alcohol-booze. Some of the
newly-minted soldiers had too much of both. Was that photo taken in their hotel before a night out on the town?
-September 10, 2014
On the header, the first known (to me) photograph of any members of the 133rd. The image was digitalized just recently by the U.S. Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. I saw it about a month ago and ordered a copy. I received it today. On the back of the photo the members are identified as: Front: Captain Webster B. Loman, Company D, 5th Pa. Artillery, Sgt. J. Speer Orr, Company A, Pa. 133rd, George C. Fisher, cannot make out rank 5th Pa. Artillery, 1st Sgt. James Kenly, Co. A, Pa. 133rd. Rear: Pvt "Dad," superscript Harris, Lenhart, 5th Pa. Artillery, Pvt. David J. Edwards, Company A, Pa. 133rd, Johnny Watkins, can't make it out, then maybe "Lt.", Co. D, 5th Pa. Artillery, and 2nd Lt. Michael Downey, Co. K, Pa. 133rd.
A fine group of ruffians there! I don't know if they scared the Rebels but they sure scare me!
As always, my best to the descendants of the soldiers.
-Sept. 9, 2014.
From the New York Public Library http://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/10/04/ussc-processing-project-after-antietam.:
"[C]ontemporary materials can show us what it was like for a soldier to experience that single day within the context of a long and grueling campaign. Project staff member Joseph Lapinski describes such an item encountered in the USSC's Statistical Bureau records — the notebook of a camp inspector visiting Union troops near Sharpsburg, Maryland on October 28, 1862.
USSC staff inspected military camps in order to identify and report health concerns and supply shortages. Inspectors typically recorded their observations on printed questionnaires called "camp inspection returns."
...
Camp inspection returns have much to say about the state of individual regiments at a specific place and time.
...
Just recently, a small leather notebook entitled "Inspection Returns, October 28, 1862," was found among unsorted Statistical Bureau materials. The journal format alone is enough to make this item unique within the realm of inspection returns, but what sets it apart is its hybrid nature, combining elements from camp inspections as well as the aforementioned battle studies.
Front cover and interior title page, Inspection Returns, October 28, 1862.
It soon became apparent that the volume, written by a Sanitary Commission inspector or agent whose handwriting has yet to be identified, described the condition of seventeen regiments camped in the vicinity of Sharpsburg, Maryland, near the Antietam battlefield. The return, or report, for each regiment takes the form of detailed responses to ten unspecified questions, inquiring about the regiment's recent marches, whether or not they were engaged at Antietam, their camp conditions and general health, and their need for any clothing and medical supplies. Though dated more than one month after the battle of Antietam, the entries offer insight into the regiments' experiences before, during, and after the battle.
One of the most common observations made of the regiments in this area was their exhaustion resulting from long marches. Forces had hurried to gather in the vicinity of Sharpsburg in the days leading up to the battle, some having marched ten or more miles a day, for a week, only to arrive weakened and fatigued.
...
Entry for the 133rd Pennsylvania Volunteers, Inspection Returns, October 28, 1862.
Amplifying these stresses and sufferings of battle were the high rates of sickness found in the camps. Camp sites were often used repeatedly by various regiments, each previous one leaving behind debris and refuse for the next. Many regiments were confronted with shortages of clothing, blankets and medical supplies. These poor conditions caused diarrhea and camp fever to become commonplace throughout the camps. The 133rd Pennsylvania Volunteers suffered greatly from both of these illnesses. Recent days of rain and frost added to the general misery."
Boy oh boy. For an independent researcher to single out one regiment that "suffered greatly," it must really have been bad. The 133rd did not see action in Antietam, their first engagement was at Fredericksburg in December. For some of course, like Sgt. Nathan Bracken, it was to be their last
engagement. The 133rd only came into existence in August. For Sgt. Bracken and others killed at Fredericksburg it was a short military career. Short as it was, it ended in death and was preceded by great suffering. Disease killed more soldiers in the Civil War than enemy bullets did. The 133rd was composed of Cambria County farm boys. They had never been thrown together with large numbers of other people. One imagines that much like the American Indians they had no natural defenses built up for the diseases they encountered and..."suffered greatly" as a result. They answered the call of Father Abraham for "300,000 more" and went off as I imagine it with a thrill of patriotic military adventure made more thrilling for being unknown to them. First to Camp Curtin, then to D.C., then to Antietam, then Fredericksburg. It was a short unhappy life.
In everything I write in Public Occurrences I put myself in the position of those I write about. I put myself in the position of the President of the United States when I write about him. What would I do? Not because I want to be a president; because citizens in a democracy make judgments on their leaders and I think the fairest way to make judgments on others is to put yourself in their place. If I am to conclude "The President of the United States FUCKED UP," it is because I have put myself in his position as best I can, with the information that he had, as best I can ascertain that, and have concluded that I would not have fucked up, I would have done differently.
I have put myself in Nathan Bracken's position many times. I feel especially comfortable doing that since there is some of his blood in my blood and because I grew up where he grew up. I remember when I was 26 years old. I remember what I knew and didn't know, what I felt, what I believed. I would have volunteered, no doubt in my mind about that. I would have gone to war. I would also have co-written that letter about Lt. Flannagan! I could see myself doing that, too. I would not have gone back home from Camp Curtin if I got sick there. I would have gone to D.C. and not run off there. I would have gotten drunk in D.C. I would have gone to Antietam and slept on the cold ground and gotten diarrhea. I would not have gone home because I wouldn't know how to get back home, but I would have wanted to! I would have gone on to Fredericksburg. But...
But if I had been across the river on that hill watching the battle all day and had seen charge after charge repulsed and my comrades getting massacred and then that dingleberry Humphreys come up and give his "forlorn hope" speech, or any speech, ordering us to cross the river and I had crossed the river on those slippery, rickety pontoon bridges and the rebel snipers were shooting at me, the first time in my life I would have had somebody shoot at me, and I hadn't flinched so bad that I fell into the river and I made it across and into town and I marched down the streets where my dying comrades were grabbing at my pants legs saying "Don't go!" and I entered the field which I could hardly see at dusk with all the smoke in the air from the rebel batteries and had made it behind that house and then had left my cover behind that house and charged out onto that open, treeless, frigging coverless, open field and saw that dingleberry Humphreys riding ahead of me with his hat on his sword and the fire come from the rebel rifles safe behind that stone wall then from the batteries on the flanks of the heights and had charged up that hill getting closer and closer to the stone wall and had gotten to within 6 rods of the stone wall--I don't think I could have done all that. I think at some point there, probably when I was behind that house, I think I would have stayed behind that house and taken a shit there or feigned injury--"My hammy, my hammy, I pulled my hamstring!"--but I would not have gone. I don't think adrenalin or courage or duty or Newton's first law would have overridden my rationality and I would have known it was a forlorn hope and I don't do forlorn hopes.
Below is more from Mr. Pfanz. My grandmother, Elizabeth Gill, and her sister visited the Fredericksburg battle site in 1967 to try to determine where Sgt. Bracken was buried. All I ever understood they were told was "in a mass grave." This is the first detail that I, at least, knew of plausible burial sites of those who made the charges up Marye's Heights. The table below is summary of my understanding of the numbers from Mr. Phanz' article but based on Wikipedia's number of US dead. Mr. Phanz begins his article with "More than 1,700 soldiers had been killed." Presumably, that is both sides, US and CS. Wikipedia has a total of 1,892 dead, 1,284 of which were US soldiers.
1,284 Total US killed (Wikipedia).
913 Total US buried per Brooke's report, December 19, 1862.
609 Buried in Hanover-Littlepage trench, December 17.
148 Buried in two "ditches," December 18.
130 Buried in second trench "nearby" Hanover-Littlepage, December 18.
I hold that the total of the three burial sites immediately above, 887, is close-enough-for-government-work to 913. That still leaves 371. I'm going to see if I can write to Mr. Pfanz to see if he has a different number than Wikipedia's 1,284, to clarify that the 148 and the 130 refer to separate burial sites, where the "ditches" were if they are separate, and where the second trench was.
More than 1,700 soldiers had been killed in the battle. Many of the corpses had been left behind, unburied, in the Army of the Potomac's retreat. Gen. Robert E. Lee of the Confederate army attended to the burial of his own dead and sent a message to his Union counterpart, Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside, requesting that he send detachments back across the Rappahannock River to inter the Northern dead. Burnside readily assented to the proposal.
Gen. Edwin Sumner, commanding the Union army's Right Grand Division, detailed three officers and 100 men from the Second and Ninth corps for the task. Soldiers from other corps may also have taken part. Col. John R. Brooke of the 53rd Pennsylvania led the Second Corps detachment. The Union army had interred most of the soldiers who had died in the fighting south of Fredericksburg during a flag of truce on Dec. 15, 1862, so the burial parties focused on Marye's Heights sector of the battlefield, directly behind the town.
Brooke and his men crossed the Rappahannock River below the Lacy House (Chatham) early on Dec. 17 and were escorted by a detail of Confederate soldiers from the 13th Mississippi Regiment to the plain outside of town.
...
While some of the soldiers gathered in the battle's harvest, other fashioned a ditch, approximately 6 feet wide and 100 yards long, from a defensive trench started by Union soldiers during the battle. The trench began at Hanover Street and extended south in a line just east of modern-day Littlepage Street. As soldiers brought the bodies in, they laid them side by side in the ditch, three deep, and covered them with a thin layer of dirt.
In all 609 men were buried there.
Amplifying these stresses and sufferings of battle were the high rates of sickness found in the camps. Camp sites were often used repeatedly by various regiments, each previous one leaving behind debris and refuse for the next. Many regiments were confronted with shortages of clothing, blankets and medical supplies. These poor conditions caused diarrhea and camp fever to become commonplace throughout the camps. The 133rd Pennsylvania Volunteers suffered greatly from both of these illnesses. Recent days of rain and frost added to the general misery."
Boy oh boy. For an independent researcher to single out one regiment that "suffered greatly," it must really have been bad. The 133rd did not see action in Antietam, their first engagement was at Fredericksburg in December. For some of course, like Sgt. Nathan Bracken, it was to be their last
engagement. The 133rd only came into existence in August. For Sgt. Bracken and others killed at Fredericksburg it was a short military career. Short as it was, it ended in death and was preceded by great suffering. Disease killed more soldiers in the Civil War than enemy bullets did. The 133rd was composed of Cambria County farm boys. They had never been thrown together with large numbers of other people. One imagines that much like the American Indians they had no natural defenses built up for the diseases they encountered and..."suffered greatly" as a result. They answered the call of Father Abraham for "300,000 more" and went off as I imagine it with a thrill of patriotic military adventure made more thrilling for being unknown to them. First to Camp Curtin, then to D.C., then to Antietam, then Fredericksburg. It was a short unhappy life.
In everything I write in Public Occurrences I put myself in the position of those I write about. I put myself in the position of the President of the United States when I write about him. What would I do? Not because I want to be a president; because citizens in a democracy make judgments on their leaders and I think the fairest way to make judgments on others is to put yourself in their place. If I am to conclude "The President of the United States FUCKED UP," it is because I have put myself in his position as best I can, with the information that he had, as best I can ascertain that, and have concluded that I would not have fucked up, I would have done differently.
I have put myself in Nathan Bracken's position many times. I feel especially comfortable doing that since there is some of his blood in my blood and because I grew up where he grew up. I remember when I was 26 years old. I remember what I knew and didn't know, what I felt, what I believed. I would have volunteered, no doubt in my mind about that. I would have gone to war. I would also have co-written that letter about Lt. Flannagan! I could see myself doing that, too. I would not have gone back home from Camp Curtin if I got sick there. I would have gone to D.C. and not run off there. I would have gotten drunk in D.C. I would have gone to Antietam and slept on the cold ground and gotten diarrhea. I would not have gone home because I wouldn't know how to get back home, but I would have wanted to! I would have gone on to Fredericksburg. But...
But if I had been across the river on that hill watching the battle all day and had seen charge after charge repulsed and my comrades getting massacred and then that dingleberry Humphreys come up and give his "forlorn hope" speech, or any speech, ordering us to cross the river and I had crossed the river on those slippery, rickety pontoon bridges and the rebel snipers were shooting at me, the first time in my life I would have had somebody shoot at me, and I hadn't flinched so bad that I fell into the river and I made it across and into town and I marched down the streets where my dying comrades were grabbing at my pants legs saying "Don't go!" and I entered the field which I could hardly see at dusk with all the smoke in the air from the rebel batteries and had made it behind that house and then had left my cover behind that house and charged out onto that open, treeless, frigging coverless, open field and saw that dingleberry Humphreys riding ahead of me with his hat on his sword and the fire come from the rebel rifles safe behind that stone wall then from the batteries on the flanks of the heights and had charged up that hill getting closer and closer to the stone wall and had gotten to within 6 rods of the stone wall--I don't think I could have done all that. I think at some point there, probably when I was behind that house, I think I would have stayed behind that house and taken a shit there or feigned injury--"My hammy, my hammy, I pulled my hamstring!"--but I would not have gone. I don't think adrenalin or courage or duty or Newton's first law would have overridden my rationality and I would have known it was a forlorn hope and I don't do forlorn hopes.
(Posted July 29, 2014, updated July 31.)
Below is more from Mr. Pfanz. My grandmother, Elizabeth Gill, and her sister visited the Fredericksburg battle site in 1967 to try to determine where Sgt. Bracken was buried. All I ever understood they were told was "in a mass grave." This is the first detail that I, at least, knew of plausible burial sites of those who made the charges up Marye's Heights. The table below is summary of my understanding of the numbers from Mr. Phanz' article but based on Wikipedia's number of US dead. Mr. Phanz begins his article with "More than 1,700 soldiers had been killed." Presumably, that is both sides, US and CS. Wikipedia has a total of 1,892 dead, 1,284 of which were US soldiers.
1,284 Total US killed (Wikipedia).
913 Total US buried per Brooke's report, December 19, 1862.
609 Buried in Hanover-Littlepage trench, December 17.
148 Buried in two "ditches," December 18.
130 Buried in second trench "nearby" Hanover-Littlepage, December 18.
I hold that the total of the three burial sites immediately above, 887, is close-enough-for-government-work to 913. That still leaves 371. I'm going to see if I can write to Mr. Pfanz to see if he has a different number than Wikipedia's 1,284, to clarify that the 148 and the 130 refer to separate burial sites, where the "ditches" were if they are separate, and where the second trench was.
More than 1,700 soldiers had been killed in the battle. Many of the corpses had been left behind, unburied, in the Army of the Potomac's retreat. Gen. Robert E. Lee of the Confederate army attended to the burial of his own dead and sent a message to his Union counterpart, Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside, requesting that he send detachments back across the Rappahannock River to inter the Northern dead. Burnside readily assented to the proposal.
Gen. Edwin Sumner, commanding the Union army's Right Grand Division, detailed three officers and 100 men from the Second and Ninth corps for the task. Soldiers from other corps may also have taken part. Col. John R. Brooke of the 53rd Pennsylvania led the Second Corps detachment. The Union army had interred most of the soldiers who had died in the fighting south of Fredericksburg during a flag of truce on Dec. 15, 1862, so the burial parties focused on Marye's Heights sector of the battlefield, directly behind the town.
Brooke and his men crossed the Rappahannock River below the Lacy House (Chatham) early on Dec. 17 and were escorted by a detail of Confederate soldiers from the 13th Mississippi Regiment to the plain outside of town.
...
While some of the soldiers gathered in the battle's harvest, other fashioned a ditch, approximately 6 feet wide and 100 yards long, from a defensive trench started by Union soldiers during the battle. The trench began at Hanover Street and extended south in a line just east of modern-day Littlepage Street. As soldiers brought the bodies in, they laid them side by side in the ditch, three deep, and covered them with a thin layer of dirt.
In all 609 men were buried there.
...
The work was not completed by day's end, prompting Gen. Burnside to request a second flag of truce on Dec. 18. Lee granted the request and once again Union soldiers, 200 to 300 in number, rowed across the Rappahannock River into Fredericksburg.
...
They placed 23 bodies in one ditch and 125 in another.
...
Nearby, Union soldiers opened a second trench and hastily filled it with 130 bodies.
...
The next day,[Dec. 19] Col. Brooke drafted a report of the expedition. He recorded burying a total of 913 bodies, not counting the five that he had brought back across the river.
...
Over the next four years, [From end of war, July 1865] contract workers collected the remains of 15,000 Union soldiers from battlefields throughout Central Virginia and brought them to Fredericksburg for burial. (Confederate soldiers who died in the area were buried at private expense in two local cemeteries.)
(Posted July 30, 2013)
...................
The following is written by Donald C. Pfanz, staff historian at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The entire article can be found here: http://fredericksburg.com/CivilWar/Battle/0804CW. The 133rd was under Allabach. From context, Mr. Pfanz has Humphreys' assault beginning sometime after 4:30 pm and before sunset (Tyler's brigade).
Meanwhile, several hundred yards to the north, Gen. Andrew A. Humphreys' division was wading into action. Most of Humphreys' men had never been in battle before, and as the shells screamed over their heads, many soldiers involuntarily ducked or "juked," to use the 19th-century phrase. Dodging enemy shells was unbecoming in a soldier and did no good, and Humphreys did not want to see it.
Over the roar of battle, the grizzled veteran shouted out, "Don't juke, boys!" Just then a particularly large shell went whizzing past Humphreys' head, causing him to duck. Despite the danger, the soldiers could not help but laugh at their commander's expense. Humphreys was embarrassed, but he rose to the occasion. "Juke the big ones, boys," he shouted, "but don't mind the little ones!"
The general had two brigades, one commanded by Col. Peter H. Allabach, the other led by Gen. Erastus B. Tyler. There was only room at the front for one brigade at a time. Leaving Tyler back near the millrace (modern Kenmore Avenue), Humphreys led Allabach's men toward the wall. When they reached the front, however, instead of continuing forward, they instinctively took cover in a shallow ravine 150 yards from the wall. In doing so, they joined thousands of other Union soldiers who were already there.
With great effort, Humphreys got Allabach's men back on their feet and moving again, but the attack's momentum was gone. Allabach's brigade got within 30 yards of the wall before recoiling under the blasts of the Confederate rifles. Staggering toward the rear, they rejoined their comrades in the muddy defile.
With the sun now setting, Humphreys brought up his last brigade. Having seen the futility of exchanging fire with the Confederates, Humphreys ordered Tyler's men to fix bayonets. They would have to take the stone wall using nothing but cold steel!
(July 30, 2013)
..........................................................................................................................
"The Attack on Fredericksburg-The Forlorn Hope Scaling the Hill." That would be Humphreys' Division. That would be the 133rd. That would be Marye's Heights there. That is the title to this original sketch done for Harper's Weekly, December 27, 1862. It is for sale on ebay, under the heading "Battle of Fredericksburg Virginia, Union Bridge Building." That would be the wrong heading. (July 30, 2013)
Revised June 3, 2008
Humphreys, top center right, with sword raised. In this sketch the 133rd Pennsylvania Regiment is in the first row below Humphreys and to his right.
FROM WWW.PACIVILWAR.COM
Removal Request for Lt. Flannagan
133rd Regiment, Company F
Cambria County, Pennsylvania
First Letter Second Letter Third Letter
To Lieut. Francis Flannagan - Dear Sir: --
We, the undersigned, members of Captain John M. Jones' Company, do hereby announce that it is the unanimous wish of all to have a change in the command of our company. We are all desirous to place a person who will be capable to instruct us in the manual of arms in the office of Second Lieutenant. We do not, by any means, bear any disrespectful feeling towards you, because we are compelled to request you to resign. But knowing your incapability to discharge the duties required of you, we are thus forced to do so.
Hoping that you will not bear any ill-feeling toward us for our present action, we will close our remarks by once more declaring our unanimous wish that you will resign your office, so as to enable us to place a competent person to teach us the duties which we, as private soldiers, must at some future day discharge.
Ellis R. Williams H. J. Humphreys
Thomas D. Davis D. S. Evans Esq.
Alexander Jones Robert E. B. Waugaman
John O. Evans James M. Edelblute
Meshach Thomas Peter Keith
George W. Berkey Francis A. Sutton
Edward J. Humphreys Lewis R. Edwards
Thomas J. Evans Daniel Powell
John A. Thompson Evan E. Jones
W. H. Davis David D. Lewis
Valentine S. Barker David Thomas
Hosea J. Evans John N. Griffith
A. Evans J. M. Thompson
William M. Evans Levi Severance
Christian Shinefelt J. F. Wiggins
William H. Howell Edwin E. Roberts
Evan Michaels John M. Jones
Hugh E. Evans David Morgan
Cyrus H. Fronk William Makin
B. F. G. McCloskey Joseph F. Stearns
Nathan Bracken
Joseph Mack
Edward Jones Jr.
Milton Jones
John W. Hughes
William Jones
R. J. Bennett
Daniel Long
Lewis Snider
J. N. Whitehead
Tobias Snyder
D. L. Kuttenger
W. R. Tibbit
R. B. McDowell
Samuel Lamer
A. J. Litzinger
David D. Pryce
Roster Source: PA State Archives, Harrisburg, PA
Camp Chase, August 23rd, 1862
Col. Spiekman,
Dear Sir: - The members Captain John M. Jones' Company are desirous to lay before you certain grievances we are anxious to see settled. Knowing you to be a gentlemanly officer who will deal justice to the privates under your command, we, therefore, implore you to interfere in our behalf. The case we have under consideration is as follows:
Our Second Lieutenant, Francis M. Flannagin, is not capable to discharge the duties required of him. We do not, by any means, wish to be lacking in drill, but such, surely, will be the case if Lieut. Flannagin will remain in office. The other day we petitioned the company, asking the said Lieutenant to resign, which was signed by 59 members. Yesterday, we presented the petition in to him, and received an answer today. His reply was in the negative.
We are therefore compelled to ask you, Sir, to interfere in the matter, which we hope and pray you will do, for the sake of us, who are willing and anxious to serve our country, and die in its behalf if such requirements will be asked of us; but, before we enter upon the field of battle, we want to be efficient in the knowledge of drill.
Knowing that you possess the power to remove an officer under your command, we, therefore, ask you to remove the aforesaid lieutenant so as to enable us to fill the vacancy.
We have a private in our company who we are anxious to place over us. He is thoroughly acquainted with the present drill, and is a first class drill master and if only elected Lieutenant, he will have the company perfect in the manual of arms.
Hoping to hear from you soon, we remain yours,
The Members of the Company.
P. S. - Enclosed you will find the petition.
Roster Source: PA State Archives, Harrisburg, PA
Records Group-19, 14-4035 carton 81.Contributed by Marcia Fronk
133rd Regiment, Company F
Cambria County, Pennsylvania
First Letter Second Letter Third Letter
Arlington Heights, Tuesday, August 26th, 1862
Hon. A. G. Curtin: --
Dear Sir: -- we are compelled much against our will, to trouble the highest authority that a soldier can appeal to. We are members of Captain John M. Jones' Company, from Ebensburg, Cambria County Pa., and belong to the 133 regiment, commanded by Col. Spiekman. We have a Second Lieutenant, whom we are anxious to see removed. He is not capable to discharge the duties required of him. We wish to have officers who are able to instruct us in the present drill, but our Second Lieutenant, cannot do this.
Will you, kind sir, interfere in our behalf, it is the desire of the whole company that you will remove our Second Lieutenant, Francis M. Flannagin, from the company, so as to enable us to elect a man who is thoroughly acquainted in the knowledge of drill, and who has seen service during the present war. Such a one, is to be found serving as a private in our company, Richard M. Jones. He was commissioned, by your honor, in April 1861, as a Lieutenant in the Scott Legion, and served with credit to the regiment and himself, for three months. His business affairs m from enlisting in the three years service but when he found a country was in actual need of all able body men, he, unhesitatingly came forth, and is now to be found in our midst. Although a private, he is, nevertheless, called upon twice at day to drill the company which he does in a first rate manner.
We are anxious to place him over us, knowing that such an object must be accomplished before we shall be fit to go into active duty.
We now close, imploring you to interfere in our behalf, and ask you pardon for thus intruding upon you.
The members of Captain John M. Jones'
Company, 133rd Pennsylvania Regiment
Col. Spiekman
Washington, D.C.
CONTRIBUTED BY MARCIA FRONK.
After the article's introduction, and Mr. Wertz' summary of the organization of the regiment, the excerpts begin with Mr. Wertz' account of the movements of the regiment after Antietam, a battle in which the 133rd played no part.
About 2 o'clock on the 13th day of December, 1862, just 50 years ago this coming December, the Confederate Artillery proclaimed the disastrous repulse of two brigades.
The sixth assault, consisting of the first brigade of Gen. Humphrey's (sic throughout) division of the Fifth Army Corps, commanded by Brigadier-General Tyler, embracing the 134th Regiment, commanded by Col. O'Brien; the 129th by Col. Frick, 126th by Col. Elder, who fell early in the conflict, leaving the command to Col. Rowe, and the 91st, the three-year regiment, by Col. Gregory.
Gen. Humphrey then rode to Tyler's brigade and directed his men not to ["fire," but sentence cut off] as it was useless, and ordered them to charge with the bayonet. He ordered the officers to the front and made the charge over the heaviest fire yet opened. The fire of the enemy's musketry and artillery became still hotter; the stone wall was a sheet of flames that enveloped the head and flank of the column, and, in spite of all the effort, the column turned and retired, his force being too small to try another charge. He was directed to bring in Alibaugh's men from the line of natural embankment, retiring slow and in good order, singing and hurrahing. This Junco march of Alibaugh's men must have been what the Confederate General, in his official report, referred to when he said: 'This last desperate and maddened attack met the same fate that had befallen those preceding, and were sent back to their beaten comrades in town.
On Sunday, at 3 o'clock, the 133d was ordered to the river to get a fresh supply of ammunition, and was returned to the battlefield on picket until Sunday evening at 7 o'clock, when we were ordered back to town with the rest of the brigade, where we remained until Monday night, when we were ordered to cross the river and return to camp.
With the repulse of Humphrey's Division, the fighting came to an end. Gen. Humphrey had one horse disabled by wounds and another killed under him. He had but one remaining officer mounted and his horse was wounded in three places. More than 1000 men were killed and wounded in his two brigades. The loss of the regiment was three commissioned officers killed, eight wounded, 17 enlisted men killed, 129 wounded, and 27 missing. Among the many who deserve mention are Adj. James C. Noon, of Company B, who fell urging the men to the fatal charge, and Capt. John Jones and Lieut. Scott, of Company F, who fell while nobly leading their command.
Unbeknownst to me at least, this speech also contains what is surely the inspiration for the most famous part of President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, for the president, an avid reader of history, could not have been unaware of Holmes' words here, "to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return."
"In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire"
Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to each other-not the expression of those feelings that, so long as you live, will make this day sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth--but an answer which should command the assent of those who do not share our memories, and in which we of the North and our brethren of the South could join in perfect accord.
But Memorial Day may and ought to have a meaning also for those who do not share our memories. When men have instinctively agreed to celebrate an anniversary, it will be found that there is some thought of feeling behind it which is too large to be dependent upon associations alone. The Fourth of July, for instance, has still its serious aspect, although we no longer should think of rejoicing like children that we have escaped from an outgrown control, although we have achieved not only our national but our moral independence and know it far too profoundly to make a talk about it, and although an Englishman can join in the celebration without a scruple. For, stripped of the temporary associations which gives rise to it, it is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return.
So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiam and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may fall-at the beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks; but in no other way can he reach the rewards of victory.
When it was felt so deeply as it was on both sides that a man ought to take part in the war unless some conscientious scruple or strong practical reason made it impossible, was that feeling simply the requirement of a local majority that their neighbors should agree with them? I think not: I think the feeling was right-in the South as in the North. I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.
Accidents may call up the events of the war. You see a battery of guns go by at a trot, and for a moment you are back at White Oak Swamp, or Antietam, or on the Jerusalem Road. You hear a few shots fired in the distance, and for an instant your heart stops as you say to yourself, The skirmishers are at it, and listen for the long roll of fire from the main line. You meet an old comrade after many years of absence; he recalls the moment that you were nearly surrounded by the enemy, and again there comes up to you that swift and cunning thinking on which once hung life and freedom--Shall I stand the best chance if I try the pistol or the sabre on that man who means to stop me? Will he get his carbine free before I reach him, or can I kill him first? These and the thousand other events we have known are called up, I say, by accident, and, apart from accident, they lie forgotten.
But the men, not less, perhaps even more, characteristic of New England, were the Puritans of our day. For the Puritan still lives in New England, thank God! and will live there so long as New England lives and keeps her old renown. New England is not dead yet. She still is mother of a race of conquerors--stern men, little given to the expression of their feelings, sometimes careless of their graces, but fertile, tenacious, and knowing only duty. Each of you, as I do, thinks of a hundred such that he has known. I see one--grandson of a hard rider of the Revolution and bearer of his historic name--who was with us at Fair Oaks, and afterwards for five days and nights in front of the enemy the only sleep that he would take was what he could snatch sitting erect in his uniform and resting his back against a hut. He fell at Gettysburg. [Col. Paul Revere, Jr., 20th Massachusetts].
There is one who on this day is always present on my mind. [Henry Abbott, 20th Mass.]. He entered the army at nineteen, a second lieutenant. In the Wilderness, already at the head of his regiment, he fell, using the moment that was left him of life to give all of his little fortune to his soldiers. I saw him in camp, on the march, in action. I crossed debatable land with him when we were rejoining the Army together. I observed him in every kind of duty, and never in all the time I knew him did I see him fail to choose that alternative of conduct which was most disagreeable to himself. He was indeed a Puritan in all his virtues, without the Puritan austerity; for, when duty was at an end, he who had been the master and leader became the chosen companion in every pleasure that a man might honestly enjoy. His few surviving companions will never forget the awful spectacle of his advance alone with his company in the streets of Fredericksburg. In less than sixty seconds he would become the focus of a hidden and annihilating fire from a semicircle of houses. His first platoon had vanished under it in an instant, ten men falling dead by his side. He had quietly turned back to where the other half of his company was waiting, had given the order, "Second Platoon, forward!" and was again moving on, in obedience to superior command, to certain and useless death, when the order he was obeying was countermanded. The end was distant only a few seconds; but if you had seen him with his indifferent carriage, and sword swinging from his finger like a cane, you would never have suspected that he was doing more than conducting a company drill on the camp parade ground. He was little more than a boy, but the grizzled corps commanders knew and admired him; and for us, who not only admired, but loved, his death seemed to end a portion of our life also.
It is not of the dead alone that we think on this day. There are those still living whose sex forbade them to offer their lives, but who gave instead their happiness. Which of us has not been lifted above himself by the sight of one of those lovely, lonely women, around whom the wand of sorrow has traced its excluding circle--set apart, even when surrounded by loving friends who would fain bring back joy to their lives? I think of one whom the poor of a great city know as their benefactress and friend. I think of one who has lived not less greatly in the midst of her children, to whom she has taught such lessons as may not be heard elsewhere from mortal lips. The story of these and her sisters we must pass in reverent silence. All that may be said has been said by one of their own sex---
"But when the days of golden dreams had perished,
Comrades, some of the associations of this day are not only triumphant, but joyful. Not all of those with whom we once stood shoulder to shoulder--not all of those whom we once loved and revered--are gone. On this day we still meet our companions in the freezing winter bivouacs and in those dreadful summer marches where every faculty of the soul seemed to depart one after another, leaving only a dumb animal power to set the teeth and to persist-- a blind belief that somewhere and at last there was bread and water. On this day, at least, we still meet and rejoice in the closest tie which is possible between men-- a tie which suffering has made indissoluble for better, for worse.
But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us. But, above all, we have learned that whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart.
Such hearts--ah me, how many!--were stilled twenty years ago; and to us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year--in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life--there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death. Year after year lovers wandering under the apple trees and through the clover and deep grass are surprised with sudden tears as they see black veiled figures stealing through the morning to a soldier's grave. Year after year the comrades of the dead follow, with public honor, procession and commemorative flags and funeral march--honor and grief from us who stand almost alone, and have seen the best and noblest of our generation pass away.
But grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean. I see beyond the forest the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death--of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen , the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.
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The following is written by Donald C. Pfanz, staff historian at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The entire article can be found here: http://fredericksburg.com/CivilWar/Battle/0804CW. The 133rd was under Allabach. From context, Mr. Pfanz has Humphreys' assault beginning sometime after 4:30 pm and before sunset (Tyler's brigade).
Meanwhile, several hundred yards to the north, Gen. Andrew A. Humphreys' division was wading into action. Most of Humphreys' men had never been in battle before, and as the shells screamed over their heads, many soldiers involuntarily ducked or "juked," to use the 19th-century phrase. Dodging enemy shells was unbecoming in a soldier and did no good, and Humphreys did not want to see it.
Over the roar of battle, the grizzled veteran shouted out, "Don't juke, boys!" Just then a particularly large shell went whizzing past Humphreys' head, causing him to duck. Despite the danger, the soldiers could not help but laugh at their commander's expense. Humphreys was embarrassed, but he rose to the occasion. "Juke the big ones, boys," he shouted, "but don't mind the little ones!"
The general had two brigades, one commanded by Col. Peter H. Allabach, the other led by Gen. Erastus B. Tyler. There was only room at the front for one brigade at a time. Leaving Tyler back near the millrace (modern Kenmore Avenue), Humphreys led Allabach's men toward the wall. When they reached the front, however, instead of continuing forward, they instinctively took cover in a shallow ravine 150 yards from the wall. In doing so, they joined thousands of other Union soldiers who were already there.
With great effort, Humphreys got Allabach's men back on their feet and moving again, but the attack's momentum was gone. Allabach's brigade got within 30 yards of the wall before recoiling under the blasts of the Confederate rifles. Staggering toward the rear, they rejoined their comrades in the muddy defile.
With the sun now setting, Humphreys brought up his last brigade. Having seen the futility of exchanging fire with the Confederates, Humphreys ordered Tyler's men to fix bayonets. They would have to take the stone wall using nothing but cold steel!
(July 30, 2013)
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"The Attack on Fredericksburg-The Forlorn Hope Scaling the Hill." That would be Humphreys' Division. That would be the 133rd. That would be Marye's Heights there. That is the title to this original sketch done for Harper's Weekly, December 27, 1862. It is for sale on ebay, under the heading "Battle of Fredericksburg Virginia, Union Bridge Building." That would be the wrong heading. (July 30, 2013)
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Well, would you look at that. I'm always on the lookout for stuff on the 133rd and I was lucky enough to be able to find this original Muster Roll of Company G. A "Record of Events" is included:
"Grand Review by President Lincoln and others on the [can't make out date] of October."
Just received this in the mail yesterday so I'll post more when I have a chance. Anyone with a relative in Company G, email me his name at publocc@gmail.com and I'll send you a photo of the name as it appears on this. Very nice.
Revised June 3, 2008
Humphreys, top center right, with sword raised. In this sketch the 133rd Pennsylvania Regiment is in the first row below Humphreys and to his right. 
The Pennsylvania 133rd first saw combat in the battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862. The unit was part of Brigadier-General Andrew A. Humphreys Division. Overwhelmingly, historians have honored the courage of Humphreys men. (1) Of all his regiments, the 133rd suffered more total casualties, more officers killed, and more enlisted men killed than any other. It is also among a very few regiments in the United States army that day with a reasonable claim to have gotten closest to the Confederate line of defense. (2) No history of the 133rd exists.
The 133rd only came into existence on August 15, 1862, short of just four months before Fredericksburg. The 133rd, like Humphreys' other seven regiments, were volunteers, that is, without prior military experience. Understandably, Major-General Burnside withheld Humphreys' units from early combat on December 13 in favor of more experienced soldiers. (3) However that also meant that when Humphreys received his order, he and his men knew that it was a last-ditch measure by Burnside. Burnside's order put a greater demand for courage on these raw recruits than on any other men in the U.S. army that day. Humphreys himself, and circumstances, were to demand even more, none more so than of the Pennsylvania 133rd. (4)
The 133rd only came into existence on August 15, 1862, short of just four months before Fredericksburg. The 133rd, like Humphreys' other seven regiments, were volunteers, that is, without prior military experience. Understandably, Major-General Burnside withheld Humphreys' units from early combat on December 13 in favor of more experienced soldiers. (3) However that also meant that when Humphreys received his order, he and his men knew that it was a last-ditch measure by Burnside. Burnside's order put a greater demand for courage on these raw recruits than on any other men in the U.S. army that day. Humphreys himself, and circumstances, were to demand even more, none more so than of the Pennsylvania 133rd. (4)
The town of Fredericksburg was sacked by U.S. soldiers in the days preceeding the battle. One anecdote of the sacking involves a soldier in the 133rd. Members of the Pennsylvania 155th Regiment made a discovery in the basement of a residence in town:
Col. Allen sanctioned, for the sake of the sick and wounded in the hospitals, the appropriation of the contents of this wine cellar, by a reliable committee from the Regiment...At this point a comrade...William R. Jones,...at that time serving as a private soldier in the One Hundred and Thirty-Third Pennsylvania Regiment, from Johnstown, Pa., volunteered to relieve the over-worked men of the One Hundred and Fifty-fifth, in the labors of receiving bottles of wine passed up to them through the grating in the street. Private Jones...soon diverted a goodly number of the last hundred bottles to himself and companions for services rendered. This diversion was not discovered by the One Hundred and Fifty-fifth until the next day, when, through Colonel F.B. Speakman, commanding the One Hundred and Thirty-third, Jones' good joke on the One Hundred and Fifty-fifth leaked out. (5)
Humphreys' was the last major United States effort to seize Marye's Heights. The battle had begun at a foggy 8 am. First General French, then General Hancock, then General Howard had sent in their men. All had been repulsed. Humphreys and his men had seen all of this. General Joseph Hooker was next up, and he personally appealed to Burnside to desist from another attack. Burnside overrode him. At 2:30 pm Hooker gave Humphreys the order.
Burnside's battle plan was to have the U.S. soldiers cross a gently sloping field in the rear of the town, overrun the confederate line of defense at the other end of the field, and then scale an abruptly rising hill and seize the heights. The plan was simple both in the sense of being easily understood, and unintelligent.
Once beyond town, there was no cover for the U.S. soldiers. The field was bare of trees, structures and, except for a swale, surface gradation. The virtually unprotected distance to be traversed to the enemy line was approximately 350 yards. The enemy line consisted of Confederate infantrymen, three to six deep, in a sunken road, and behind a stone wall that extended for approximately one mile. Confederate batteries on top of the heights provided protection for the infantrymen below, and added to the firepower arrayed against the advancing Federals. One Confederate general said to another that not a chicken could cross the field without being killed. The United States volunteers could see this too, and did see it all day, before getting called into battle. Humphreys may have added, inexplicably, to this bleak picture. Reportedly, he addressed his men and described their mission as one of "forlorn hope." (5) He then led them into battle.
If given the "forlorn hope" speech was delivered by Humphreys before he knew the half of it. Humphreys did not know the battlefield at Fredericksburg. He had not been on it all day. His division had been on a hill on the north side of the Rappahannock River when he received his order. The course of the battle was plain to see from there, but not the particulars. Humphreys did not know even that the Confederate infantry was entrenched behind a stone wall. (6)
The 133rd was one of two regiments in Humphreys' first charge across the field. The time of their charge has been variably described--3:30, 4:00, 4:30. The best estimation is given by the consistent description that it was about dusk. The time between 2:30 and about dusk was taken up by having to ford the Rappahannock. Crossing on pontoons, all previous Federal units had been exposed to deadly enemy fire. The 133rd's crossing was made more dangerous by the fading daylight and pontoons made more rickety by use. (7)
Once across the river and in town, Humphreys got to examine the battlefield, but his men, of course, did not, until being led into battle. Under enemy fire, the 133rd began their march from the edge of the town out onto the field, the twilit scene further obscured by a cloud of gun smoke that hung in the air.
Shortly after entering the field, the cloud of smoke lifted, which gave the men a better look at the field, and the enemy a better look at them. Humphreys had decided that the only hope, albeit a forlorn one, was a bayonet charge. (8) In the order of attack the 155th, on the left, and the 133rd on the right, went in first. Behind them were the 123rd on the left, and the 131st on the right. That completed Allabach's Brigade. Behind, was Tyler's Brigade, first the 129th on the left and the 134th on the right, and lastly the 91st on the left and the 126th on the right. (9)
Burnside's battle plan was to have the U.S. soldiers cross a gently sloping field in the rear of the town, overrun the confederate line of defense at the other end of the field, and then scale an abruptly rising hill and seize the heights. The plan was simple both in the sense of being easily understood, and unintelligent.
Once beyond town, there was no cover for the U.S. soldiers. The field was bare of trees, structures and, except for a swale, surface gradation. The virtually unprotected distance to be traversed to the enemy line was approximately 350 yards. The enemy line consisted of Confederate infantrymen, three to six deep, in a sunken road, and behind a stone wall that extended for approximately one mile. Confederate batteries on top of the heights provided protection for the infantrymen below, and added to the firepower arrayed against the advancing Federals. One Confederate general said to another that not a chicken could cross the field without being killed. The United States volunteers could see this too, and did see it all day, before getting called into battle. Humphreys may have added, inexplicably, to this bleak picture. Reportedly, he addressed his men and described their mission as one of "forlorn hope." (5) He then led them into battle.
If given the "forlorn hope" speech was delivered by Humphreys before he knew the half of it. Humphreys did not know the battlefield at Fredericksburg. He had not been on it all day. His division had been on a hill on the north side of the Rappahannock River when he received his order. The course of the battle was plain to see from there, but not the particulars. Humphreys did not know even that the Confederate infantry was entrenched behind a stone wall. (6)
The 133rd was one of two regiments in Humphreys' first charge across the field. The time of their charge has been variably described--3:30, 4:00, 4:30. The best estimation is given by the consistent description that it was about dusk. The time between 2:30 and about dusk was taken up by having to ford the Rappahannock. Crossing on pontoons, all previous Federal units had been exposed to deadly enemy fire. The 133rd's crossing was made more dangerous by the fading daylight and pontoons made more rickety by use. (7)
Once across the river and in town, Humphreys got to examine the battlefield, but his men, of course, did not, until being led into battle. Under enemy fire, the 133rd began their march from the edge of the town out onto the field, the twilit scene further obscured by a cloud of gun smoke that hung in the air.
Shortly after entering the field, the cloud of smoke lifted, which gave the men a better look at the field, and the enemy a better look at them. Humphreys had decided that the only hope, albeit a forlorn one, was a bayonet charge. (8) In the order of attack the 155th, on the left, and the 133rd on the right, went in first. Behind them were the 123rd on the left, and the 131st on the right. That completed Allabach's Brigade. Behind, was Tyler's Brigade, first the 129th on the left and the 134th on the right, and lastly the 91st on the left and the 126th on the right. (9)
Peter H. Allabach had a full salt-and-pepper beard in the style of the Amish. Before Fredericksburg he commanded four divisions, the 133rd, 123rd, 131st, and 155th. At least one person who served under Col. Allabach before Fredericksburg did not care for him. Sgt. D.P. Marshall, later a Brevet Major, wrote that Allabach,
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1. See, e.g. Edward J. Stackpole, on all of the charges on Marye's Heights, not just those of Humphreys' Division, "...the troops who shattered themselves against the Stone Wall by Fredericksburg were as sound and courageous as any who ever wore the uniform of the American soldier." The Fredericksburg Campaign (1957). (p. 270)
"I know of no greater courage in the Civil War than that shown by the Union soldiers at Fredericksburg," Shelby Foote commentary, The Civil War, a film by Ken Burns.
But see, Bell Irvin Wiley, "Fredericksburg, while demonstrating extemes of gallantry under the most trying conditions, was also marked by instances of shameful conduct. Lieutenant Henry Ropes wrote his father on December 16, 1862: 'Hooker's [ed note: Hooker was Humphreys' commander] men ran by us like Sheep. I saw a whole Brigade of Pennsylvania cowards (Tyler's Brigade) break and run in total disorder when they were brought up to our relief. Our men cursing them most heartily.' " [ed note: The 133rd was part of Allabach's Brigade, not Tyler's.] Captain Henry Abbott reported to his brother: 'The army generally didn't fight well. The new regiments behaved shamefully, as well as many of the old ones. The 15th Mass. was seized with a panic at nothing at all and broke like sheep...Hooker's troops broke and ran,' " Billy Yank (89)
2. "Humphreys' Division succeeded in getting closer to the stone wall than any other." The Fredericksburg Campaign. Edward J. Stackpole (1957) (217).
"I know of no greater courage in the Civil War than that shown by the Union soldiers at Fredericksburg," Shelby Foote commentary, The Civil War, a film by Ken Burns.
But see, Bell Irvin Wiley, "Fredericksburg, while demonstrating extemes of gallantry under the most trying conditions, was also marked by instances of shameful conduct. Lieutenant Henry Ropes wrote his father on December 16, 1862: 'Hooker's [ed note: Hooker was Humphreys' commander] men ran by us like Sheep. I saw a whole Brigade of Pennsylvania cowards (Tyler's Brigade) break and run in total disorder when they were brought up to our relief. Our men cursing them most heartily.' " [ed note: The 133rd was part of Allabach's Brigade, not Tyler's.] Captain Henry Abbott reported to his brother: 'The army generally didn't fight well. The new regiments behaved shamefully, as well as many of the old ones. The 15th Mass. was seized with a panic at nothing at all and broke like sheep...Hooker's troops broke and ran,' " Billy Yank (89)
2. "Humphreys' Division succeeded in getting closer to the stone wall than any other." The Fredericksburg Campaign. Edward J. Stackpole (1957) (217).
See also two accounts cited by Scott B. Lang in his book, The Forgotten Charge, The 123rd Pennsylvania at Marye's Heights, Fredericksburg, Virginia (2002): S.W. Hill, "Allabach's Brigade. It Went as Near as Any Others to the Deadly Stone Wall at Fredericksburg, National Tribune, April 16, 1908 (fn 36 in Forgotten Charge, p. 162); Emmanuel Noll, "Allabach's Brigade. It Attacked at Fredericksburg Before Tyler's Brigade and Went Further," National Tribune, October 1, 1908. (fn 54 in Forgotten Charge, p. 163).
3. Among others see, Under the Maltese Cross. Antietam to Appomattax. Campaigns 155th Pennsylvania Regiment (1910), (95)
4. Some histories relate that Humphreys made a pre-battle speech to his men in which he described their mission as one of "forlorn hope." (E.g. Under the Maltese, (95-98). Francis Augustin O'Reilly uses the modifier "alleged" as to whether Humphreys actually delivered the speech, The Fredericksburg Campaign. Winter War on the Rappahannock. (2003) (391). Lang seems to attribute the phrase to Hooker: "The 'forlorn hope,' a term used by General Hooker for Humphreys' assault, was ready to move." Ibid (71). On the next page however Lang also quotes a Confederate private using the phrase: "Just before sunset, everything being quiet along the line, many of the reserve, without orders, crowded to the front and were spectators of that last forlorn hope led by gallant Humphries [sic]..." (72).
If given, Humphreys speech is at odds with the unanimous description of his conduct. He is described as being delighted when given the order to take the field. As described by Lang above, his enthusiasm and bravery attracted the admiration even of the Confederates. His conduct inspired art: A.R. Waud sketched the scene for Harper's Weekly, with the title, GALLANT CHARGE OF HUMPHREY'S DIVISION (sic) AT THE BATTLE OF FREDERICKSBURG.
5. Under the Maltese Cross (108-109).
6. On December 16, Humphreys wrote in his official report on the battle that before ordering in his men, "I had not as yet seen any part of the ground occupied by the enemy or our own troops, and the necessity was so urgent that I could not take time to examine it." (Official report as recorded in Maltese Cross (808)). O'Reilly has written bluntly, "A.A. Humphreys knew nothing of the ground. He had rushed forward without reconnoitering first." (393)
7. O'Reilly (391-2).
8. Maltese Cross (809).
9. Ibid (395).
9. Ibid (395).
10. History of the 155th Regiment Company K. (65). Other of Marshall's grievances against Allabach appear on pages 66 and 69. This book was reprinted in 1998 by Mechling Associates, Inc. of Butler Pa. The copyright is owned by Ron Gancas. The "First Part" of the book was written by Major J.A. Cline in 1888. The remainder of the book appears to have been written by Marshall. The last page of the book notes that there were 138 surviving members of the 155th Regiment in 1913, suggesting that Marshall's part was published no later than that year.
PHOTOS: SKETCH, "HUMPHREYS CHARGE," BY ALFRED WAUD, HARPERS WEEKLY.
PHOTOS: SKETCH, "HUMPHREYS CHARGE," BY ALFRED WAUD, HARPERS WEEKLY.
MEDAL AND RIBBON PRESENTED TO ATTENDEES OF THE 1908 DEDICATION OF THE MEMORIAL AND STATUE TO GENERAL HUMPHREYS AND HIS MEN ON THE FREDERICKSBURG BATTLEFIELD.
SUGGESTIONS, CORRECTIONS, ADDITIONS SOLICITED. ANYONE WISHING TO CONTRIBUTE OTHER PHOTOS, DOCUMENTATION OR STORIES TO THE HISTORY OF THE PENNSYLVANIA 133RD FEEL FREE TO EMAIL PUBLOCC@GMAIL.COM
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
FROM WWW.PACIVILWAR.COM
Removal Request for Lt. Flannagan
133rd Regiment, Company F
Cambria County, Pennsylvania
First Letter Second Letter Third Letter
To Lieut. Francis Flannagan - Dear Sir: --
We, the undersigned, members of Captain John M. Jones' Company, do hereby announce that it is the unanimous wish of all to have a change in the command of our company. We are all desirous to place a person who will be capable to instruct us in the manual of arms in the office of Second Lieutenant. We do not, by any means, bear any disrespectful feeling towards you, because we are compelled to request you to resign. But knowing your incapability to discharge the duties required of you, we are thus forced to do so.
Hoping that you will not bear any ill-feeling toward us for our present action, we will close our remarks by once more declaring our unanimous wish that you will resign your office, so as to enable us to place a competent person to teach us the duties which we, as private soldiers, must at some future day discharge.
Ellis R. Williams H. J. Humphreys
Thomas D. Davis D. S. Evans Esq.
Alexander Jones Robert E. B. Waugaman
John O. Evans James M. Edelblute
Meshach Thomas Peter Keith
George W. Berkey Francis A. Sutton
Edward J. Humphreys Lewis R. Edwards
Thomas J. Evans Daniel Powell
John A. Thompson Evan E. Jones
W. H. Davis David D. Lewis
Valentine S. Barker David Thomas
Hosea J. Evans John N. Griffith
A. Evans J. M. Thompson
William M. Evans Levi Severance
Christian Shinefelt J. F. Wiggins
William H. Howell Edwin E. Roberts
Evan Michaels John M. Jones
Hugh E. Evans David Morgan
Cyrus H. Fronk William Makin
B. F. G. McCloskey Joseph F. Stearns
Nathan Bracken
Joseph Mack
Edward Jones Jr.
Milton Jones
John W. Hughes
William Jones
R. J. Bennett
Daniel Long
Lewis Snider
J. N. Whitehead
Tobias Snyder
D. L. Kuttenger
W. R. Tibbit
R. B. McDowell
Samuel Lamer
A. J. Litzinger
David D. Pryce
Roster Source: PA State Archives, Harrisburg, PA
Records Group-19, 14-4035 carton 81.Contributed by Marcia Fronk
Camp Chase, August 23rd, 1862
Col. Spiekman,
Dear Sir: - The members Captain John M. Jones' Company are desirous to lay before you certain grievances we are anxious to see settled. Knowing you to be a gentlemanly officer who will deal justice to the privates under your command, we, therefore, implore you to interfere in our behalf. The case we have under consideration is as follows:
Our Second Lieutenant, Francis M. Flannagin, is not capable to discharge the duties required of him. We do not, by any means, wish to be lacking in drill, but such, surely, will be the case if Lieut. Flannagin will remain in office. The other day we petitioned the company, asking the said Lieutenant to resign, which was signed by 59 members. Yesterday, we presented the petition in to him, and received an answer today. His reply was in the negative.
We are therefore compelled to ask you, Sir, to interfere in the matter, which we hope and pray you will do, for the sake of us, who are willing and anxious to serve our country, and die in its behalf if such requirements will be asked of us; but, before we enter upon the field of battle, we want to be efficient in the knowledge of drill.
Knowing that you possess the power to remove an officer under your command, we, therefore, ask you to remove the aforesaid lieutenant so as to enable us to fill the vacancy.
We have a private in our company who we are anxious to place over us. He is thoroughly acquainted with the present drill, and is a first class drill master and if only elected Lieutenant, he will have the company perfect in the manual of arms.
Hoping to hear from you soon, we remain yours,
The Members of the Company.
P. S. - Enclosed you will find the petition.
Roster Source: PA State Archives, Harrisburg, PA
Records Group-19, 14-4035 carton 81.Contributed by Marcia Fronk
133rd Regiment, Company F
Cambria County, Pennsylvania
First Letter Second Letter Third Letter
Arlington Heights, Tuesday, August 26th, 1862
Hon. A. G. Curtin: --
Dear Sir: -- we are compelled much against our will, to trouble the highest authority that a soldier can appeal to. We are members of Captain John M. Jones' Company, from Ebensburg, Cambria County Pa., and belong to the 133 regiment, commanded by Col. Spiekman. We have a Second Lieutenant, whom we are anxious to see removed. He is not capable to discharge the duties required of him. We wish to have officers who are able to instruct us in the present drill, but our Second Lieutenant, cannot do this.
Will you, kind sir, interfere in our behalf, it is the desire of the whole company that you will remove our Second Lieutenant, Francis M. Flannagin, from the company, so as to enable us to elect a man who is thoroughly acquainted in the knowledge of drill, and who has seen service during the present war. Such a one, is to be found serving as a private in our company, Richard M. Jones. He was commissioned, by your honor, in April 1861, as a Lieutenant in the Scott Legion, and served with credit to the regiment and himself, for three months. His business affairs m from enlisting in the three years service but when he found a country was in actual need of all able body men, he, unhesitatingly came forth, and is now to be found in our midst. Although a private, he is, nevertheless, called upon twice at day to drill the company which he does in a first rate manner.
We are anxious to place him over us, knowing that such an object must be accomplished before we shall be fit to go into active duty.
We now close, imploring you to interfere in our behalf, and ask you pardon for thus intruding upon you.
The members of Captain John M. Jones'
Company, 133rd Pennsylvania Regiment
Col. Spiekman
Washington, D.C.
William Wertz: Story of the 133d Regiment, Taken from the Diary of a Veteran
Excerpted below, this article appeared in Army News and is introduced by a staff writer. It was obtained from the U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
After the article's introduction, and Mr. Wertz' summary of the organization of the regiment, the excerpts begin with Mr. Wertz' account of the movements of the regiment after Antietam, a battle in which the 133rd played no part.
William Wertz of this place, a survivor of the 133d Regiment, P.V.I., read an interesting history of the regiment at the recent reunion of the veterans held in Johnstown. It was taken from a diary kept by Mr. Wertz during the Civil war and The News has been asked to publish it for the old soldiers. It follows:
Comrades and Friends:
The 133d Regiment was recruited under authority granted by Gov. Andrew G. Curtin--A, B and F, in Cambria county; G, H and I, in Perry; C and K in Bedford, and D and E, in Somerset. Company A was recruited by Capt. Kopelin; Company B by Capt. Charles Butland; Company C by Alexander Robb; Company D by Edward M. Shrock; Company E by George F. Baer; Company F by John M. Jones; Company G by B.F. Speakman; Company H by David L. Tressler; Company I by A.B. Demaree and Hiram Fertig, and Company K by Samuel B. Tate.
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We then returned to camp, near Sharpsburg, and remained there in company and batallion drill until the latter part of October when we again took up the march to Fredericksburg, by way of Warrington. Here Gen. McClellan bid the army adieu, and Gen. Burnsides took command, where the inauguration of the Fredericksburg campaign took place. We then continued the march by way of Warrington Junction and White Plains to Fredericksburg, and arrived at Falmouth, near Fredericksburg, on the 22d of November and camped as our pontoon had not yet arrived. Gen. Summer (sic) came up a few days later, and wanted to cross the river, but Hooker would not permit him to do so. If he had been permitted to cross at that time the costly sacrifice of the 11th and 13th of December might have been avoided, as Gen. Lee's forces were small at that time.
We remained on the hills, opposite Fredericksburg, until Halleck sent our pontoons from Washington, drilling every day and preparing for battle. In the mean time Gen. Lee kept fortifying around Fredericksburg, and concentrating his forces around the town until he had 78,000 men within a radius of 25 miles, and kept closing in until he had them all within a radius of five miles.
The time had arrived, after five distinct and separate assaults made against Longstreet's front, by the divisions of French, Hancock, Howard, Getty, Sturges and Griffen, and each succeeding effort met the same fate.
About 2 o'clock on the 13th day of December, 1862, just 50 years ago this coming December, the Confederate Artillery proclaimed the disastrous repulse of two brigades.
The sixth assault, consisting of the first brigade of Gen. Humphrey's (sic throughout) division of the Fifth Army Corps, commanded by Brigadier-General Tyler, embracing the 134th Regiment, commanded by Col. O'Brien; the 129th by Col. Frick, 126th by Col. Elder, who fell early in the conflict, leaving the command to Col. Rowe, and the 91st, the three-year regiment, by Col. Gregory.
The second brigade was commanded by Col. Alibaugh (sic throughout), leaving his regiment to be commanded by Col. Shont; the 133d by Col. Speakman; the 123d by Col. Clark, and the 155th, the three-year men, by Col. Allen. Gen. Hooker prepared for his attack by concentrating all the artillery fire he could upon the Confederate position, and then directed Humphrey's division, consisting of Alibaugh's second and Tyler's first brigades, to move to the assault by way of Telegraph Road. About 2 o'clock Col. Alibaugh ordered us to cross the river. This was done under fire from the enemy's guns, from the battery on the heights, with but one man killed while crossing.
We filed through the streets until we reached Prince Ann street, where we halted a short time, and then were ordered to move by way of Hanover street, which led across the canal to the base of the heights. We double-quicked on this street about 400 yards across the canal, filed to the left into the field, unstrung our knapsacks, fixed our bayonets, and charged over the hill. He led his second brigade, Alibaugh's, rapidly forward to the position occupied by Couch's men, lying down, sheltering themselves behind a slight rise, about 150 yards from the stone wall. Alibaugh's men followed their example by lying down and opened fire. As soon as Humphrey had ascertained their position he became satisfied that his fire could have little effect upon them, and he perceived the only move of attacking them successfully was with the bayonet. With great difficulty he stopped the firing and made the second charge past the brick house [The Stratton house] to within 50 yards of the stone wall; we held this position for nearly one hour, under the most terrific fire from the enemy's infantry and artillery, when we were ordered to withdraw and re-form our brigade, retiring in good order to the brow of the hill, and reformed our line on the right of the road, where we remained awhile... [sentence cut off in copying by USAMHI]...sending out squads to bring in the dead and wounded. Capt. Jones was brought in and buried just to the rear of our company.
Gen. Humphrey then rode to Tyler's brigade and directed his men not to ["fire," but sentence cut off] as it was useless, and ordered them to charge with the bayonet. He ordered the officers to the front and made the charge over the heaviest fire yet opened. The fire of the enemy's musketry and artillery became still hotter; the stone wall was a sheet of flames that enveloped the head and flank of the column, and, in spite of all the effort, the column turned and retired, his force being too small to try another charge. He was directed to bring in Alibaugh's men from the line of natural embankment, retiring slow and in good order, singing and hurrahing. This Junco march of Alibaugh's men must have been what the Confederate General, in his official report, referred to when he said: 'This last desperate and maddened attack met the same fate that had befallen those preceding, and were sent back to their beaten comrades in town.
On Sunday, at 3 o'clock, the 133d was ordered to the river to get a fresh supply of ammunition, and was returned to the battlefield on picket until Sunday evening at 7 o'clock, when we were ordered back to town with the rest of the brigade, where we remained until Monday night, when we were ordered to cross the river and return to camp.
With the repulse of Humphrey's Division, the fighting came to an end. Gen. Humphrey had one horse disabled by wounds and another killed under him. He had but one remaining officer mounted and his horse was wounded in three places. More than 1000 men were killed and wounded in his two brigades. The loss of the regiment was three commissioned officers killed, eight wounded, 17 enlisted men killed, 129 wounded, and 27 missing. Among the many who deserve mention are Adj. James C. Noon, of Company B, who fell urging the men to the fatal charge, and Capt. John Jones and Lieut. Scott, of Company F, who fell while nobly leading their command.
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Below is the moving and famous Touched with Fire speech delivered by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in his May 1884 Memorial Day speech in Keene, New Hampshire. The speech makes reference to the Battle of Fredericksburg, which Col. Holmes missed only because he was recuperating from his own wounds. Fredericksburg haunted Holmes; he was grief-stricken at not having been with his comrades in the Twentieth Massachusetts, so many of whom fell in that terrible slaughter.
Unbeknownst to me at least, this speech also contains what is surely the inspiration for the most famous part of President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, for the president, an avid reader of history, could not have been unaware of Holmes' words here, "to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire"
An address delivered for Memorial Day, May 30, 1884, at Keene, NH, before John Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the Republic.
Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to each other-not the expression of those feelings that, so long as you live, will make this day sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth--but an answer which should command the assent of those who do not share our memories, and in which we of the North and our brethren of the South could join in perfect accord.
So far as this last is concerned, to be sure, there is no trouble. The soldiers who were doing their best to kill one another felt less of personal hostility, I am very certain, than some who were not imperilled by their mutual endeavors. I have heard more than one of those who had been gallant and distinguished officers on the Confederate side say that they had had no such feeling. I know that I and those whom I knew best had not. We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win; we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluable; we, or many of us at least, also believed that the conflict was inevitable, and that slavery had lasted long enough. But we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred conviction that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them as every men with a heart must respect those who give all for their belief. The experience of battle soon taught its lesson even to those who came into the field more bitterly disposed. You could not stand up day after day in those indecisive contests where overwhelming victory was impossible because neither side would run as they ought when beaten, without getting at least something of the same brotherhood for the enemy that the north pole of a magnet has for the south--each working in an opposite sense to the other, but each unable to get along without the other. As it was then , it is now. The soldiers of the war need no explanations; they can join in commemorating a soldier's death with feelings not different in kind, whether he fell toward them or by their side.
But Memorial Day may and ought to have a meaning also for those who do not share our memories. When men have instinctively agreed to celebrate an anniversary, it will be found that there is some thought of feeling behind it which is too large to be dependent upon associations alone. The Fourth of July, for instance, has still its serious aspect, although we no longer should think of rejoicing like children that we have escaped from an outgrown control, although we have achieved not only our national but our moral independence and know it far too profoundly to make a talk about it, and although an Englishman can join in the celebration without a scruple. For, stripped of the temporary associations which gives rise to it, it is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return.
When it was felt so deeply as it was on both sides that a man ought to take part in the war unless some conscientious scruple or strong practical reason made it impossible, was that feeling simply the requirement of a local majority that their neighbors should agree with them? I think not: I think the feeling was right-in the South as in the North. I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.
If this be so, the use of this day is obvious. It is true that I cannot argue a man into a desire. If he says to me, Why should I seek to know the secrets of philosophy? Why seek to decipher the hidden laws of creation that are graven upon the tablets of the rocks, or to unravel the history of civilization that is woven in the tissue of our jurisprudence, or to do any great work, either of speculation or of practical affairs? I cannot answer him; or at least my answer is as little worth making for any effect it will have upon his wishes if he asked why I should eat this, or drink that. You must begin by wanting to. But although desire cannot be imparted by argument, it can be by contagion. Feeling begets feeling, and great feeling begets great feeling. We can hardly share the emotions that make this day to us the most sacred day of the year, and embody them in ceremonial pomp, without in some degree imparting them to those who come after us. I believe from the bottom of my heart that our memorial halls and statues and tablets, the tattered flags of our regiments gathered in the Statehouses, are worth more to our young men by way of chastening and inspiration than the monuments of another hundred years of peaceful life could be.
But even if I am wrong, even if those who come after us are to forget all that we hold dear, and the future is to teach and kindle its children in ways as yet unrevealed, it is enough for us that this day is dear and sacred.
Accidents may call up the events of the war. You see a battery of guns go by at a trot, and for a moment you are back at White Oak Swamp, or Antietam, or on the Jerusalem Road. You hear a few shots fired in the distance, and for an instant your heart stops as you say to yourself, The skirmishers are at it, and listen for the long roll of fire from the main line. You meet an old comrade after many years of absence; he recalls the moment that you were nearly surrounded by the enemy, and again there comes up to you that swift and cunning thinking on which once hung life and freedom--Shall I stand the best chance if I try the pistol or the sabre on that man who means to stop me? Will he get his carbine free before I reach him, or can I kill him first? These and the thousand other events we have known are called up, I say, by accident, and, apart from accident, they lie forgotten.
But as surely as this day comes round we are in the presence of the dead. For one hour, twice a year at least--at the regimental dinner, where the ghosts sit at table more numerous than the living, and on this day when we decorate their graves--the dead come back and live with us.
I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw them on this earth. They are the same bright figures, or their counterparts, that come also before your eyes; and when I speak of those who were my brothers, the same words describe yours.
I see a fair-haired lad, a lieutenant, and a captain on whom life had begun somewhat to tell, but still young, sitting by the long mess-table in camp before the regiment left the State, and wondering how many of those who gathered in our tent could hope to see the end of what was then beginning. For neither of them was that destiny reserved. I remember, as I awoke from my first long stupor in the hospital after the battle of Ball's Bluff, I heard the doctor say, "He was a beautiful boy", [Lt. William L. Putnam, 20th Mass.] and I knew that one of those two speakers was no more. The other, after passing through all the previous battles, went into Fredericksburg with strange premonition of the end, and there met his fate. [ Cpt. Charles F. Cabot, 20th Mass.]
I see another youthful lieutenant as I saw him in the Seven Days, when I looked down the line at Glendale. The officers were at the head of their companies. The advance was beginning. We caught each other's eye and saluted. When next I looked, he was gone. [Lt. James. J. Lowell, 20th Mass.]
I see the brother of the last-the flame of genius and daring on his face--as he rode before us into the wood of Antietam, out of which came only dead and deadly wounded men. So, a little later, he rode to his death at the head of his cavalry in the Valley.
In the portraits of some of those who fell in the civil wars of England, Vandyke has fixed on canvas the type who stand before my memory. Young and gracious faces, somewhat remote and proud, but with a melancholy and sweet kindness. There is upon their faces the shadow of approaching fate, and the glory of generous acceptance of it. I may say of them , as I once heard it said of two Frenchmen, relics of the ancien regime, "They were very gentle. They cared nothing for their lives." High breeding, romantic chivalry--we who have seen these men can never believe that the power of money or the enervation of pleasure has put an end to them. We know that life may still be lifted into poetry and lit with spiritual charm.
But the men, not less, perhaps even more, characteristic of New England, were the Puritans of our day. For the Puritan still lives in New England, thank God! and will live there so long as New England lives and keeps her old renown. New England is not dead yet. She still is mother of a race of conquerors--stern men, little given to the expression of their feelings, sometimes careless of their graces, but fertile, tenacious, and knowing only duty. Each of you, as I do, thinks of a hundred such that he has known. I see one--grandson of a hard rider of the Revolution and bearer of his historic name--who was with us at Fair Oaks, and afterwards for five days and nights in front of the enemy the only sleep that he would take was what he could snatch sitting erect in his uniform and resting his back against a hut. He fell at Gettysburg. [Col. Paul Revere, Jr., 20th Massachusetts].
His brother , a surgeon, [Edward H.R. Revere] who rode, as our surgeons so often did, wherever the troops would go, I saw kneeling in ministration to a wounded man just in rear of our line at Antietam, his horse's bridle round his arm--the next moment his ministrations were ended. His senior associate survived all the wounds and perils of the war, but , not yet through with duty as he understood it, fell in helping the helpless poor who were dying of cholera in a Western city.
I see another quiet figure, of virtuous life and quiet ways, not much heard of until our left was turned at Petersburg. He was in command of the regiment as he saw our comrades driven in. He threw back our left wing, and the advancing tide of defeat was shattered against his iron wall. He saved an army corps from disaster, and then a round shot ended all for him. [Major Henry Patten, 20th Mass.]
There is one grave and commanding presence that you all would recognize, for his life has become a part of our common history. [William Bartlett, 20th Mass.]. Who does not remember the leader of the assault of the mine at Petersburg? The solitary horseman in front of Port Hudson, whom a foeman worthy of him bade his soldiers spare, from love and admiration of such gallant bearing? Who does not still hear the echo of those eloquent lips after the war, teaching reconciliation and peace? I may not do more than allude to his death, fit ending of his life. All that the world has a right to know has been told by a beloved friend in a book wherein friendship has found no need to exaggerate facts that speak for themselves. I knew him, and I may even say I knew him well; yet, until that book appeared, I had not known the governing motive of his soul. I had admired him as a hero. When I read, I learned to revere him as a saint. His strength was not in honor alone, but in religion; and those who do not share his creed must see that it was on the wings of religious faith that he mounted above even valiant deeds into an empyrean of ideal life.
I have spoken of some of the men who were near to me among others very near and dear, not because their lives have become historic, but because their lives are the type of what every soldier has known and seen in his own company. In the great democracy of self-devotion private and general stand side by side. Unmarshalled save by their own deeds, the army of the dead sweep before us, "wearing their wounds like stars." It is not because the men I have mentioned were my friends that I have spoken of them, but, I repeat, because they are types. I speak of those whom I have seen. But you all have known such; you, too, remember!
It is not of the dead alone that we think on this day. There are those still living whose sex forbade them to offer their lives, but who gave instead their happiness. Which of us has not been lifted above himself by the sight of one of those lovely, lonely women, around whom the wand of sorrow has traced its excluding circle--set apart, even when surrounded by loving friends who would fain bring back joy to their lives? I think of one whom the poor of a great city know as their benefactress and friend. I think of one who has lived not less greatly in the midst of her children, to whom she has taught such lessons as may not be heard elsewhere from mortal lips. The story of these and her sisters we must pass in reverent silence. All that may be said has been said by one of their own sex---
And even despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.
Then did I check the tears of useless passion, weaned my young soul from yearning after thine,
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten,
Down to that tomb already more than mine."
Comrades, some of the associations of this day are not only triumphant, but joyful. Not all of those with whom we once stood shoulder to shoulder--not all of those whom we once loved and revered--are gone. On this day we still meet our companions in the freezing winter bivouacs and in those dreadful summer marches where every faculty of the soul seemed to depart one after another, leaving only a dumb animal power to set the teeth and to persist-- a blind belief that somewhere and at last there was bread and water. On this day, at least, we still meet and rejoice in the closest tie which is possible between men-- a tie which suffering has made indissoluble for better, for worse.
When we meet thus, when we do honor to the dead in terms that must sometimes embrace the living, we do not deceive ourselves. We attribute no special merit to a man for having served when all were serving. We know that, if the armies of our war did anything worth remembering, the credit belongs not mainly to the individuals who did it, but to average human nature. We also know very well that we cannot live in associations with the past alone, and we admit that, if we would be worthy of the past, we must find new fields for action or thought, and make for ourselves new careers.
Such hearts--ah me, how many!--were stilled twenty years ago; and to us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year--in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life--there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death. Year after year lovers wandering under the apple trees and through the clover and deep grass are surprised with sudden tears as they see black veiled figures stealing through the morning to a soldier's grave. Year after year the comrades of the dead follow, with public honor, procession and commemorative flags and funeral march--honor and grief from us who stand almost alone, and have seen the best and noblest of our generation pass away.
