Civil War Bookmarks

Despite the occasional tendency towards romanticism, the American Civil War was a brutal, sanguinary conflict. One description of the sad carnage comes from Stephen Sears excellent book “Chancellorsville” in which he describes the consequences of the ferocious fighting.

“The concentrated artillery fire was taking an unusually high toll in this battle. In his notes on the day’s fighting, Colonel Regis de Trobriand of the 38th New York reported a caisson blown up by a Rebel shell; a gunner from the battery, terribly burned by the explosion, “runs shrieking towards the ambulances.” Soon afterward he witnessed a lieutenant in the 3rd Maine cut in two by a bursting shell, “legs thrown to one side,the trunk to another.” Brigadier Jim Lane of A. P. Hill’s division came on a section of the battlefield pounded by the guns of first one side and then the other, “a ghastly & sickening sight…Brave men were laying everywhere,…some with the backs of their heads blown off, others with their faces gone & still others with no heads at all.”

Despite the gruesome depictions, not everyone proved so unlucky. During the same fight, Colonel Henry Madill, 141st Pennsylvania, had “his horse killed under him, (and) picked himself up and counted seven harmless bullet holes in his coat.”

Mr. Sears also described the experiences of an especially fortunate officer. Of Captain Jonathan Hager, 14th US, he would say, “this was his first time he had commanded in battle. When he deployed his men they were in the open and close to Watson’s battery and squarely in the line of fire of the Rebel battery. One shell struck amidst the 14h’s color guard, wounding five of its nine men. A second hit within ten feet of Captain Hager, showering him with dirt. A third exploded directly under a battery caisson, Hager wrote, “& I thought my time had come.” But miraculously the caisson did not not explode, and he decided that a “kind Providence protected me.” After that he felt no fear.”

Respectfully,

Randy