To the West Woods: The Correspondence of Henry Ropes, 20th Massachusetts, Entry 6

This is the sixth entry in the correspondence of Lieutenant Henry Ropes to his family between September 3 and October 5, 1862. Ropes was a Second Lieutenant in Company K of the 20th Massachusetts, Dana’s Brigade, Sedgwick’s Division, II Corps. 

Field near Sharpsburg, Va.⁠ [1]

Friday, September 19th 1862.

My dear Father.

We have had a tremendous battle and again I have been mercifully preserved from all harm. It began at 6 a.m. On Wednesday, day before yesterday, and we have been on picket ever since the fight⁠.[2] Last night the enemy left and have probably crossed the river. We are drawn back, our forces in pursuit. Col: Palfrey⁠ [3] is wounded in shoulder, and I believe missing; Capt. Holmes⁠ [4] in neck; Capt. Hallowell⁠ [5] in arm; Lt. Milton⁠ [6] slightly in three places; Lt. Col: Revere⁠ [7] in arm; Col: Lee⁠ [8] safe and well; Genl. Richardson⁠ [9] mortally; Genl. Sedgwick⁠ [10] badly; Genl. Dana⁠ [11] in leg; Col: Hinks⁠ [12] killed. Our Division suffered awfully. I was bruised slightly twice, once by a spent ball in the shoulder, and once by a cannon shot which passed between my legs, just grazing my Knee. Herbert⁠ [13] and all the rest safe. Abbott⁠ [14] and Macy⁠ [15] not there.

Most affectionate son

Henry

P.S. Have just heard that Dr. Revere⁠ [16] is killed, may not be true.

Source Note
The source for Henry Ropes’ correspondence is the three volume transcription of Ropes outbound correspondence to his father, mother, and his brother, John C. Ropes. The original transcription can be found at the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department, Boston Public Library.

Henry Ropes was killed at Gettysburg on July 3 and from that point on, John C. Ropes undertook a life-long pursuit to memorialize his brother’s life and the regiment’s history. The transcription volumes are the center piece of John C. Ropes work and his legacy. Each of the three transcribed volumes are organized chronologically: Volume 1 is Henry Ropes’ correspondence to his father and mother, and Volume 2 and 3 to his brother, John C. Ropes. For more on the Ropes correspondence, see Richard F. Miller’s excellent essay on historical bibliography at pages 495-499 in his superlative study on the 20th Massachusetts in Richard F. Miller, Harvard’s Civil War: A History of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 2005). Any errors in transcribing and annotating the selected correspondence are mine.

Notes

1 Maryland. This is probably an error in transcription.
2 Cope Carman Map location of the 20th Massachusetts.
3 Col. Francis Winthrop Palfrey (1831-1889), Harvard College, 1851, Harvard Law School, 1853. He would be hit with grapeshot in his shoulder in the West Woods on September 17.
4 Capt. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935). For more on Holmes in the West Woods, see posts on this blog entered on July 21, August 13, August 29, and October 29, November 11, 2010.
5 Capt. Norwood Penrose Hallowell (1839-1914), Harvard College, 1861 was severely wounded in the arm in the West Woods
6 Lt. William F. Milton, Harvard (1858). Richard F. Miller, Harvard's Civil War: A History of the Twentieth Massachusetts (Lebanon, N.H., University Press of New England, 2005), p. 54.
7 Lt. Col. Paul Joseph Revere, grandson of Paul Revere and Harvard graduate (1862). He will be killed at Gettysburg.
8 Colonel William Raymond Lee (1807-1891), attended West Point but dropped out in 1829. John C. Ropes, “William Raymond Lee,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 28 (May, 1892-May, 1893), pp. 346-348.
9 Maj. Gen. Israel Richardson (1815-1862), West Point (1841), commanded the First Division, II Corps. He would die of his wound at Pry House on November 3. See further, biographical entry in Cullum’s Register.
10 Major General John Sedgwick (1813-1864), West Point (1837), commanded the Second Division of the II Corps (Sumner). Shot in the wrist, leg, and shoulder in the West Woods on September 17, he survived, but lost his life at Spotsylvania Court House on May 9, 1864. See further, biographical entry in Cullum’s Register.
11 Brig. Gen. Napoleon J.T. Dana (1822-1905), West Point (1842), commanded the Third Brigade of John Sedgwick’s Second Division, II Corps. He was seriously wounded in the leg. See further, biographical entry in Cullum’s Register.
12 Colonel Edward Winslow Hinks (Hincks) (1830-1894) commanded the 19th Massachusetts, Third Brigade (Dana’s), Second Division (Sedgwick), II Corps. He was seriously wounded, but not killed, in the West Woods.
13 Lt. Herbert Cowpland Mason (1840-1884), Harvard College, 1862, was severely wounded in the West Woods.
14 Lt. Henry Livermore Abbott (1842-1864), Harvard (1860).
15 Lt. George Nelson Macy (1837-1875) from one of Nantucket’s oldest families would rise to General by war’s end.
16 Dr. Edward Hutchinson Robbins Revere, was the older brother of Major Paul Revere. A graduate of Harvard Medical School (1849), maintained a practice in Greenfield, Massachusetts at the outbreak of the war. He was "performing field surgery when he suddenly found himself in front. He remained and calmly finished the operation before he was shot and killed." Richard F. Miller, Harvard's Civil War: A History of the Twentieth Massachusetts (Lebanon, N.H., University Press of New England, 2005), pp. 25-26, 177.

Memorial Day 2011 West Woods

On Memorial Day, May 30, 1884, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. addressed the John Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the Republic at Keene, NH. Holmes, as is well noted, fought with the 20th Massachusetts in the West Woods. Below, as a Memorial Day tribute, are the first three paragraphs of his address.

"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."

"For this our son and brother was dead and is alive again:" Oliver Wendell Holmes' Hunt for the Captain, Part 4

Sometime between 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. on the morning of September 17, Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. advanced to the West Woods with his regiment, the 20th Massachusetts. As they neared the western edge of the Woods, they closed up to a bayonet's length between the 15th Massachusetts and the 82nd New York, Gorman's Brigade, who were busily engaged with what was left of the Confederate left then situated in and around the Alfred Poffenberger farmstead. Sixty-eight years later, Holmes remembered the moment: "Sumner who was an old cavalry officer I believe shoved our second line (I am talking of lines not ranks), a quasi reserve, up so close to the front line that we could have touched them with our bayonets, and we got hit about as much as they did, but of course could do nothing." [1]

Holmes and his men were in this position for only a few minutes when Confederate brigades, "broke through on our left we were surrounded with the front. Whereas had we been a little further back they would have got a volley." What, to then, had been an orderly advance, turned for many in the 20th Massachusetts, a disorderly retreat.[2]

Illustration 1.
Holmes drew the trajectory of the bullet
through his neck in a letter to his
father on September 22, 1862.

As Holmes made his way to safety, a bullet sliced through his neck. "When I was hit, we were getting it all around and I remember chuckling to myself as I was leaving the field, to remember that Harper's Weekly was flamboyant on my first wound at Ball's Bluff--about Massachusetts hit in the breast, etc. I though to myself this time I am hit in the back, and bolting as fast as I can--and it's all right--but not so good for the newspapers."[3] "Usual luck," he wrote his parents the day after the battle, "[The] ball entered at the rear passing straight through the central seam of coat & waistcoat collar coming out towa[rd] the front on the left hand side--yet it don't seem to have smashed my spine or I suppose I should be dead or paralysed or something--It's more than 24 h'rs & I have remained pretty cocky, only of course feverish at times--& some sharp burning pain in left shoulder Pen [3a] & I singular to say are the hardest hit officers [--] he I think will lose his left arm--bone smashed above elbow--We lay together for a while in a little house[4] on the field and were one time within the enemies lines, heard their orders &c (there were all round us) but they fell back & we escaped. Only one doct Haven the Surgeon of the 15. Mass[5] has yet looked--he glanced hastily yesterday & said it wasn't fatal--I shall try to get home as soon as poss. but have no plans yet." [6]

Somehow Holmes made his way to the Nicodemus farmhouse about 300 yards north of where he was wounded. Norwood Penrose Hallowell, Holmes' close friend and a fellow officer of the 20th Massachusetts, picks up the narrative. "Before long I gained the little farmhouse marked on the maps as the Nicodemus House. The yard was full of wounded men, and the floor of the parlor, where I lay down, was well covered with them. Among others, Captain O. W. Holmes, Jr., walked in, the back of his neck clipped by a bullet. "[7]


The Nicodemus farmhouse was soon overrun by Confederates (probably from Paul Semmes' brigade) in pursuit of remnants of Sedgwick's men. Hallowell recalled that "The first Confederate to make his appearance put his head through the window and said: 'Yankees?'" "Yes," came the reply from the farmhouse occupants. "'Wounded?' 'Yes.' 'Would you like some water?' A wounded man always wants some water. He off with his canteen, threw it into the room, and then resumed his place in the skirmish line and his work of shooting retreating Yankees. In about fifteen minutes that good-hearted fellow came back to the window all out of breath, saying, 'Hurry up there! Hand me my canteen! I am on the double-quick myself now!' Some one twirled the canteen to him, and away he went." Hallowell and his comrades were for "some fifteen or twenty minutes only we were within the rebel lines."  Sometime during his stay at the Nicodemus house, Holmes fearful that he would lose consciousness, scribbled on a scrap of paper "I am Capt O W Holmes son of Oliver Wendell Holmes MD Boston. 20th Mass Capt" [8] Late that afternoon ambulances carried Holmes, Hallowell and others to Keedysville.[9]

In Keedysville, William LeDuc, Dana's brigade quartermaster, took charge of the wounded streaming from the field. One of those was Holmes. Le Duc recounted years later that "a surgeon, who had looked at his wound and found that the ball had entered his neck, shook his head when I urged him to give attention to Holmes, and said his duty was to try to save those who had a chance of recovery--that Holmes had none. Then I said: 'Tell me what to do for him.' [The surgeon replied] 'Wash off the blood, plug up the wound with lint, and give him this pill of opium'--handing me a little brown pill--'and have him keep quiet."[10]

Illustration 2.
William LeDuc

"I put my arm around him, and got him into the first vacant house (that is, not occupied by soldiers) I came to, and told the woman of the house to bring down the softest bed she had, as there was no bed on the lower floor, and I thought it better for him be be on the ground floor; and when she objected to bringing down any of her feather beds, I told her I would take the place for a hospital, and turn the family out; this threat was sufficient, and the good feather bed was made ready on the floor, and I washed and bandaged the wound, and gave the pill, and left him in care of the family." [11]

"While fixing him up, and washing the wound, I noticed that the ball had struck the middle seam of his coat squarely, and was amazed at his escape from instant death, but as he seemed cheerful, and amused himself with jokes, saying: 'Shot in the neck (Army slang for being drunk)--disgraceful for a temperance man!' and: 'I'm glad it's not a case for amputation, for I don't think you'd be equal to it, Le Duc,' and: 'Say, Le Duc, do you think it will be good for a ninety-day leave?' I thought possibly the surgeon was wrong, and that the boy's vitality might carry him through. So, in making up my telegram to send to his father, Doctor Holmes--lecturer on anatomy in Harvard Medical School--I ran it over mentally in several ways, and finally decided on: 'Captain wounded, shot though the neck, thought to be not mortal' and sent it to Doctor Holmes, Boston."[12]

On Saturday, September 20th, Holmes traveled to Hagerstown on a milk cart (See previous post, Part III). That afternoon, Mrs. Howard Kennedy took her children to the front gate of her house to hear a military band pass by. Years later, one of those children recounted what happened next. 

Illustration 3.

"[We] were at the gate and waved to the soldiers. My mother noticed a young officer across the way, evidently wounded, as he had a bandage around his throat and was walking very languidly. He and his companion sat down to rest. My mother sent my brother, who was about fourteen years old, to ask him if she could do anything for him. He came over to thank her; said he had been wounded by a bullet which had gone through his neck, and that he was suffering greatly at times; that he had gone to the railway station to inquire about trains, as he wanted to go to his home in Boston as soon as he was strong enough to travel. [13]


At this time there was no Union hospital in the town and he was in wretched quarters, with little care and attention. My mother asked him to come to our home until he was able to travel. He accepted the invitation and introduced himself as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Of course we recognized him as the son of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes."[14]

"He was a delightful guest, and the whole family enjoyed his stay with us. My young cousin from Philadelphia—a very brilliant young woman[15]—sang and played and entertained him, and helped to divert his mind when he suffered from his wound. He said it hurt him to write, so she offered to write for him. He dictated in Latin, a letter to his father; but she understood Latin as well as he did, as she confessed when she cautioned him that he was becoming a little too personal concerning herself in moods and tenses." [16]

My mother was a good nurse and dressed his wound every day, and it began to heal very quickly. He begged to be allowed to read after he retired, and one night swung a gas jet against a door and set the door on fire. He was so absorbed in his book that the smell of the burning paint penetrated through the house before he was aware of what he had done. The scar on the door was allowed to remain untouched for many years. [17]

The Captain was gaining in strength every day. He was enjoying himself and was evidently loath to leave; but Doctor Holmes had heard from Philadelphia that the Captain was at our house and it was my mother who insisted, in reply to a telegram from Harrisburg, on sending the following, which
ended Dr. Holmes' "Hunt": Captain Holmes still here. Leaves seven tomorrow for Harrisburg. Is doing well. (signed) Mrs. Howard Kennedy." [18]

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. watched the train slide into the Harrisburg station. Climbing aboard, there "in the first car, on the fourth seat to the right, I saw my Captain... even my first-born, whom I had sought through many cities." The simple exchange "How are you, Boy?" was met with "How are you, Dad?"[19] 

On Monday evening, September 29, eleven days after the start of his journey, Dr. Holmes was able to shelter his son once more. I "lay him in his own bed, and let him sleep off his aches and weariness. So comes down another night over this household, unbroken by any messenger of evil tidings,--a night of peaceful rest and grateful thoughts; for this our son and brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found."[20]

=====
Notes

1. Oliver Wendell Holmes to Frederick Pollock, June 28, 1930, Holmes-Pollock Letters: The Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock. Volume II. Edited by Mark DeWolfe Howe, (Cambridge Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1941), pp. 269-270 (hereafter, Holmes-Pollock Letters).

Pollock replied to Holmes's June 28th letter on July 17, 1930 and wrote: "And so you were nearly killed at Antietam because your superior had never learnt the use of supports: even the old Roman disciplines of the wars as preached by Capt. Fluellen might have taught him better. Certainly a considerable interval was prescribed and observed in our infantry drill of the 1870's. A supporting battalion was normally, I think , in open column of companies ready to deploy as might be needful and if all went well finally to deploy to the front and reinforce the attacking line." On July 27, Holmes sent Pollock a "post-script" to a letter written the day before. "Let me protect the reputation of my Superior at Antietam, our corps commander General Sumner, an experienced old soldier who I don't doubt knew as well as anyone the use of supports. That he was wrong in shoving us up onto the first line I can't doubt. Whether being an old cavalry man he thought he could slam right through the other line or what I don't know. It may have been hot-headedness, but it can't have been ignorance--except ignorance that I find it hard to believe that some of the higher powers weren't responsible for, viz. that Longstreet's corps was on the other side of a little hill, ready to walk into our rear as it did." Pollock to Holmes, July 17, 1930 and Holmes to Pollock, July 27 and July 30, 1930, Holmes-Pollock Letters, pp. 271, 273.

2. Holmes to Pollock, June 28, 1930, Holmes-Pollock Letters, p. 269-70. With Sedgwick's Division stretched on an arc running from the Dunkard Church to the south to 200 yards northwest of the Locher cabin, regimental experience of the action in the West Woods varied. The 72nd Pennsylvania on the division's extreme left was quickly overrun and broken while the First Minnesota on the division's far right undertook an more orderly withdrawal. For the 20th Massachusetts experience, see further, Richard F. Miller, Harvard's Civil War: A History of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Hanover, NH, University Press of New England, 2005), pp. 154-180.

3. Holmes to Pollock, June 28, 1930, Holmes-Pollock Letters, p. 269-70

3a. Norwood Penrose Hallowell.

4. The "little house" was the Nicodemus farmhouse, approximately 800 yards north of where the 20th Massachusetts was positioned in the West Woods.

5. This was Dr. Samuel Haven, 15th Massachusetts.

6. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. to Parents, September 18, in Mark De Wolfe Howe (ed.), Touched With Fire: Civil War Letters and Diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1861-1864 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), pp. 64-65.

7. Norwood P. Hallowell, Selected Letters and Papers of N.P. Hallowell, (Peterborough, N.H., The Richard R. Smith Co., Inc., [1897]), p. 17 (Hereafter, Hallowell).


8. Illustration. OWH Jr. at Nicodemus.  Holmes Collection, Harvard Law School Library. Years later, Holmes would add a note to the scrap "I wrote the above when I was lying in a little house on the field of Antietam which was for a while within the Enemy's lines, as I thought I might faint & so be unable to tell who I was."

9. Hallowell, pp. 17-18.

10. Alice Sumner Le Duc, "The Man Who Rescued 'The Captain,'" The Atlantic Monthly, August 1947, p.  80.  In 1910, Le Duc in a memoir to Holmes in which Holmes is referred to as "him," recalled this episode as: "When I was doing my level best to dress the wound and fix him up safe for the night or until a surgeon could take him in hand. 'I'm devilish glad it ain't a case for amputation LeDuc for I haven't much confidence in your skill as surgeon.' Mark De Wolfe Howe (ed.), Touched With Fire: Civil War Letters and Diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1861-1864 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), p. 66, note 1). In Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.'s account, he noted that "The bullet had gone smoothly through, dodging everything but a few nervous branches, which would come right in time and leave him as well as ever. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Soundings from the Atlantic (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864), p. 111 [Hereafter, Soundings].

In 1910 Le Duc wrote holmes of the events of that day at Keedysville "[We were at the house] where I exercised my clumsy surgery and where the mistress of the mansion when I ordered her to bring down her bigest [sic] & best feather bed and place it on the floor for this wounded officer objected in Pennsylvania idiom 'Nah I dinks not I prings mine fetter bet on dem floor,' I puts im on der petshtet'--'No that won't do I want it here where is plenty of fresh air.' 'Nah!' -- 'Well then I'll have to turn you all out and take your place for a hospital.' So the feather bed came, and the boy was washed as to wound and face and given an opium pill prescribed by old Doherty I think--and left in care of the dutchwoman and her children, no man was seen." Mark De Wolfe Howe (ed.), Touched With Fire: Civil War Letters and Diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1861-1864, (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), p. 66, note 1). 

Alice Le Duc explained the source of the Le Duc memoir in the preface to The Atlantic Monthly article. She wrote: "Recent examination of our family papers brought to light some correspondence between my father, General William Gates Le Duc, and the Holmses, both father and son. ... From the unpublished volume of recollections that my father has left to his family I extract his brief account of what he was able to do for Captain Holmes, whom he found unattended just after the battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862. Alice Sumner Le Duc, "The Man Who Rescued 'The Captain,'" The Atlantic Monthly, August 1947, p. 80.

Le Duc's original manuscript, however, is in the Huntington Library. A copy of the Huntington manuscript is at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Library, Greenbelt, Maryland.

11. Le Duc, Op. Cit., p. 80



12. Le Duc, Op. Cit., p. 80.



13. Anna Howell Kennedy Findlay, "Where 'The Captain' Was Found," Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol 33 (June, 1938), No. 2, pp. 117-18 (Hereafter, Findlay).

14. Findlay, p. 118.

15. This was Ellen Jones. Findlay writes: "The head of the house was my mother, Mrs. Howard Kennedy, my father having died in 1855. Others of the family at the house at the time were my two brothers, Howard, aged sixteen, and Frank, aged fourteen, and I, a small girl of ten. A sister of my mother's, Mrs. Campbell, who was also a widow, was with us, with her two sons, Ben aged fourteen, and Hamilton, aged nine. At the time of the invasion, a cousin, Ellen Jones, from Philadelphia, a very brilliant and attractive young girl, was visiting us, and my first cousin, Benjamin Howell Griswold, whose mother's house was nearby, was constantly at our home during the Captain's 'visit.'" Findlay, pp. 114-115.

In OWH, Sr.'s account, he described how his son came into the Howard household: "The Captain had gone to Hagerstown, intending to take the cars at once for Philadelphia, as his three friends actually did, and as I took it for granted he certainly would. But as he walked languidly along, some ladies saw him across the street, and seeing, were moved with pit, and pitying, spoke such soft words that he was tempted to accept their invitation and rest awhile beneath their hospitable roof. The mansion was old, as the dwellings of gentlefolks should be; the ladies were some of them young, and all were full of kindness; there were gentle cares, and unasked luxuries, and pleasant talk, and music-sprinklings from the piano, with a sweet voice to keep them company." Soundings, pp. 110-11.

16. The original letter is in the Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Digital Collection, Harvard Law School Library, Oliver Wendell Holmes to Parents, Sept 22, 1862; Findlay, p. 118. 

17. Findlay, p. 118. Toward the end of Holmes' life, Anna Findlay saw Judge Holmes in Washington. On meeting him once again, she wrote: "I could not feel that his boyish spirit had changed very much. I recall that in one of his letters to my mother he referred to himself as the "erstwhile soldier boy," and I think he was still just that in spirit." Findlay, p. 124.

18. Findlay, p. 119.

19. Holmes, Soundings, pp. 106-107.

20. Holmes, Soundings, p. 123.

Illustrations

1. Detail from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. September 22, 1862. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Digital Collection, Harvard Law School Library. Civil War Letters and Telegrams. Folder 18-11. OWH to parents 1861-1864, seq. 184-188.
At http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/8620153?n=186.

2. Detail of William LeDuc about 1862. The Dakota County Historical Society.

3. The house of Mrs. Howard Kennedy, Hagerstown, Maryland. The house has since been torn down and the lot is now a parking lot.

"I will keep this stained letter for them until peace comes back:" Oliver Wendell Holmes' Hunt for the Captain, Part 3

Elizabeth Wright to James Wright, August 13, 1862.
Letter found on battlefield by O.W. Holmes, Sr.
Harvard Law School Library Digital Suite: 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. John G. Palfrey (1875-1945)
 collection of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. 
Papers, 1715-1938: Civil War telegrams, 1862,
 http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HLS.LIBR:8597952 seq. 42; direct URL 
http://library.law.harvard.edu/suites/owh/index.php/item/43275364/42

On Sunday, September 21st, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and two companions[1] set out for the battlefield with his driver, James Grayden, at the reins. "We followed the road through the village for a space, then turned off to the right, and wandered somewhat vaguely, for want of precise directions, over the hills. Inquiring as we went, we forded a wide creek in which soldiers were washing their clothes, the name of which we did no then know, but which must have been the Antietam. At one point we met a party, women among them, bringing off various trophies they had picked up on the battle-field. Still wandering along, we were at last pointed to a hill in the distance, a part of the summit of which was covered with Indian-corn. There, we were told, some of the fiercest fighting of the day had been done. The fences were taken down so as to make a passage across the fields, and the tracks worn within the last few days looked like old roads. A board was nailed to the tree, bearing the name, as well as I could make it out, of Gardiner, of a New-Hampshire regiment.[3]

On coming near the brow of the hill, we met a party carrying picks and spades. "How many?" "Only one." The dead were nearly all buried, then, in this region of the field of strife. We stopped the wagon, and, getting out, began to look around us. Hard by was a large pile of muskets, scores, if not hundreds, which had been picked up, and were guarded for the Government. A long ridge of fresh gravel rose before us. A board stuck up in front of it bore this inscription, the first part of which was, I believe, not correct: "The Rebel General Anderson and 80 Rebels are buried in this hole."[4] Other similar ridges were marked with the number of dead lying under them. The whole ground was strewed with fragments of clothing, haversacks, canteens, cap-boxes, bullets, cartridge-boxes, cartridges, scraps of paper, portions of bread and meat."

As he walked the field, Holmes picked up "a bullet or two, a button, a brass plate from a soldier's belt." He also picked up a letter "directed to Richmond, Virginia, its seal unbroken. 'N.C. Cleveland County. E. Wright to J. Wright.' On the other side, 'A few lines from W.L. Vaughn,' who has just been writing for the wife to her husband, and continues on his own account. The postscript [written by Vaughn], 'tell John that nancy's folks are all well and has a very good Little Crop of corn a growing.' [Holmes wrote] I wonder, if, by one of those strange chances of which I have seen so many, this number or leaf of the 'Atlantic' [Atlantic Monthly] will not sooner or later find its way to Cleveland County, North Carolina, and E. Wright, widow of James Wright, and Nancy's folks, get from these sentences the last glimpse of husband and friend as he threw up his arms and fell in the bloody cornfield of Antietam?[5] I will keep this stained letter for them until peace comes back, if it comes in my time, and my pleasant North Carolina Rebel of the Middletown Hospital will, perhaps, look these poor people up, and tell them where to send for it."[6]

That afternoon, September 21, Holmes turned away from the Antietam. After spending the night at Middletown, he continued his search for the Captain--a search with more false leads and dead ends. Four days earlier, on the morning of September 17, his son, whom he called Wendell, began a journey under very different circumstances--one that took him from a near-death experience in the West Woods through the Maryland countryside to a reunion with his father.

To be continued...

Notes:

[1] Oliver Wendell Holmes, Soundings from the Atlantic (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864), p. 67 [hereafter Soundings]. In Soundings, Holmes writes: "On the battle-field I parted with my two companions, [the 'Chaplain and the Philanthropist'] they were going to the front, the one to find his regiment, the other to look for those who needed his assistance." Holmes mentioned in Soundings that they exchanged cards on parting. In the Harvard University Library, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Civil War Letters and Telegrams, Folder 18-12, Sequence 217-18 is the calling card of William Henry Rice, Chaplain of the 129th Pennsylvania Vols. The 129th was part of Humphrey's Division, V Corps. The "Philanthropist" was probably Frank B. Fay who in his Reminiscences describes a journey to the battlefield (see previous post, August 13, footnote 9).

[2] Holmes identified his driver, James Grayden, as "born in England, Lancashire; in this country since he was four years old." Soundings, 67-68.

[3] Soundings, 58, 62-64. The identify of "Gardiner" is a mystery. The board that Holmes describes was probably near the Sunken Road since he later describes area in some detail. If so, then the only New Hampshire regiment engaged in that part of the field was the Fifth New Hampshire (there were a total of four NH outfits at Antietam: the Sixth and the Ninth, part of the IX Corps, were engaged at the Burnside Bridge, and the 2nd Company NH Light Artillery, part of the I Corps, Doubleday's Division, were operating near the North Woods and reported three wounded only). There was an Isaac L. Gardiner, serving in the Fifth New Hampshire, Richardson's Division, but he survived the battle and was mustered out later as a Second Lieutenant. There is a possibility that this was Corporal O. Winslow Garland of Company D, 5th N.H., who was killed in action. Thanks to James Feindel and James Blake, Fifth New Hampshire Volunteers for their research and correspondence related to this individual's identity. For more on the 5th New Hampshire, click here. Any further information on this individual will be added if it comes in.

[4] Holmes is correct: Brigadier General George Burgwyn Anderson was seriously wounded but not killed in the Sunken Road action. He later died of his wounds on October 16, 1862 in Raleigh, N.C. Brian Downey's Antietam on the Web under Anderson's biography at http://antietam.aotw.org/officers.php?officer_id=1

[5] This may have been James Wright of the 14th North Carolina. A James D. Wright from Cleveland County NC enlisted as a private on Feb. 6, 1862 in Company D, North Carolina 14th Infantry Regiment (Cleveland Blues) on June 2, 1862. The 14th NC fought in the Sunken Road. The 1860 Census of Cleveland County North Carolina, records that James Wright (46, born Virginia about 1814) resided with his wife Elizabeth Wright (43, born Virginia about 1817). He gave his occupation as a wagon maker. They listed in their household a Nancy Wright (19 years, born Va.) and seven other children. James Wright survived the war and is listed in the 1870 Census of Township 9, Cleveland, North Carolina along with his wife Elizabeth, his daughter Nancy and seven children. James' brother, John, also served in the same regiment and was killed at Antietam.

As for W.L. Vaughn, the 1860 Census for Cleveland, Co. shows a William Vaughn, 35 years old, living in Cleveland County.  Later a William L. Vaughn of Cleveland County enlists in the 34th North Carolina in April 1864, survives the war, and is mustered out on June 17, 1865. 1860, 1870 U.S. Census, N.C., Cleveland County; Historical Data Systems, comp.. U.S. Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA; Harvard Law School Library Digital Suite at http://library.law.harvard.edu/suites/owh/index.php/item/43275364/42

[6] Soundings, 66-67. Holmes noted in his memoir an encounter in Middletown with a lieutenant from North Carolina: "He was of good family, son of a judge in one of the higher courts of his State, educated, pleasant, gentle, intelligent." Soundings, 57.


Images: Elizabeth Wright to James Wright and (verso) W.L. Vaughn to James Wright: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Civil War Letters and telegrams, Folder 18-12, Sequence 235-238. Retrieved at:
http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/8620153?n=235&imagesize=1200&jp2Res=.5

"I started as some faint resemblance…recalled the presence I was in search of:" Oliver Wendell Holmes' Hunt for the Captain, Part 2

Col. Edward A. Wild

By the evening of September 20, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and his traveling companions reached Middletown. [1]. There the “gentle lady who had graced our homely conveyance with her company here left us. She found her husband, the gallant Colonel, in very comfortable quarters, well cared for, very weak from the effects of the fearful operation he had been compelled to undergo.” [2].

Late the next day he searched the town’s churches that had been turned into hospitals. [3] “Boards were laid over the tops of the pews, on these some straw was spread, and this the wounded lay, with little or no covering other than such scanty clothes as they had on.”[4] As the elder Holmes searched, he thought “was it possible that my Captain could be lying on the straw in one of these places? …Many times as I went from hospital to hospital in my wanderings, I started as some faint resemblance…recalled the presence I was in search of.” [5]

On Sunday morning, the 21st, Dr. Holmes set out from Middletown for Keedysville. Along the way, he searched all the Boonsboro hospitals with no result.

At Keedysville, Holmes met “the tall form and benevolent countenance, set off by long flowing hair, belonging to the excellent Mayor Frank B. Fay of Chelsea, who had come promptly to succor the wounded of that great battle. It was wonderful to see how his single personality pervaded this torpid little village; he seemed to be the centre of all its activities.”[6]

Frank B. Fay

Francis Ball Fay (1821-1904), mayor of Chelsea, Massachusetts, traveled with the Army of the Potomac looking after the boys in Chelsea's regiment, the 35th Massachusetts. The Thirty-Fifth, less than a month after leaving home, received their baptism of fire at Fox’s Gap on South Mountain. [7]. On reading about the South Mountain battles in the papers the morning of the 15th, Fay hurried by train to Frederick from Washington. There he met Dr. Lewis H. Steiner, Inspector of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, who asked him to wait until the next day to bring a wagonload of supplies to the front. When the wagons did not arrive, Fay set out for Middletown by foot “hearing the guns of the battle of Antietam not far away.” At Middletown, Fay “began to work at once among the wounded at that place.” That evening the wagons came up and he went on with them reaching Keedysville at dawn on the 18th. There he set up his headquarters in the home of a “Mr. Keedy” whom he found “generous and hospitable.” [8]. It was there that he met Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Years later, Fay recollected their meeting: “We were strangers, but I ventured to ask if I could help him, and he replied, ‘Yes, I am anxious to go through the hospitals, if you can point them out to me.’ I replied that every house, barn, mill, and church within a radius of miles was a hospital, but that we could undoubtedly find his son. I then remembered that I had seen some of the wounded men of the 20th regiment in a house near by, and we went in search for him.” [9]

As the men visited the Keedysville locations were the wounded and dying lay, Fay answered all of the Doctor’s questions “clearly and decisively, as one who knew everything going on in the place. But the one question I had come to ask, Where is Captain Holmes ? he could not answer.“ [10]

Finally they ran into a medical officer “who answered my question by pointing to a house, saying he is staying there.” Holmes described the house as “a cottage of squared logs, filled in with plaster, and whitewashed. A little yard before it, with a gate swinging.” He described what happened next: “the door of the cottage ajar,--no one visible yet. I push open the door and enter. An old woman, Margaret Kitzmuller …is the first person I see.

‘Captain Holmes here?’[10a]

‘Oh, no, sir; he left yesterday morning for Hagerstown in a milk-cart.’” Furthermore, he “was in good condition—good spirits—wound doing well.” [11]

51 N. Main Street, Keedysville, MD

The Keedysville home of Margaret Kitzmiller is located at 51 North Main Street. Margaret and her two daughters, Malinda, 21, and Margaret, 17, tended to Holmes there until he was strong enough to continue northward in the hopes of catching a train in Hagerstown and then on to Philadelphia where he could recuperate at the home of his friend Norwood Penrose Hallowell. [12]

Satisfied that his son was headed to friends and sure he could not catch up with him given his 36 hour head start, Holmes decided to return north by way of Frederick and Baltimore and reunite with his son in Philadelphia. But before doing so, he thought it “impossible to go without seeing” the “great battlefield” only a few miles away. [13]

To be continued…

Notes

1. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Soundings from the Atlantic (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864), p. 51 (hereafter, Soundings).

2. This was Col. Edward Augustus Wild, 35th Massachusetts, who was wounded at Fox Gap on South Mountain. His left arm was severely injured by the explosion of a shell and was amputated at the shoulder after three surgical operations. Two months earlier, he had nearly lost his right hand at Fair Oaks. A graduate of Harvard University, Wild was a homeopathic physician before the war and resided in Brookline, Massachusetts with his wife Frances Ellen (Sullivan). Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. to Amelia Lee Jackson Holmes, September 22, in the Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Civil War Letters and Telegrams, Harvard Law School Library at http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/special/exhibits/digital/owh-digital-col.html; Brian Downey's Antietam on the Web bio for Wild; Thomas Clemens, The Maryland Campaign, Vol. 1, Fox’s Gap map, 3 p.m. until dark; Bradford Kingman, Memoir of Gen. Edward Augustus Wild (Boston: Privately Printed, 1895), pp. 4, 6, 7. For more on Wild, see Frances H. Casstevens, Edward A. Wild and the African Brigade in the Civil War (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Publishers, 2003).

3. Soundings, 55.

4. Soundings, 55.

5. Soundings, 56

6. Soundings, 59-60; In his letter to his wife Amelia, Holmes describes Fay as “the benevolent general of the place.” Oliver Wendell Holme to Amelia Holmes, September 22, 1862, Harvard Law Library online at http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/special/exhibits/digital/owh-digital-col.html.

7. The 35th Massachusetts recruited at Boston and Chelsea and Company H originated as The Chelsea Light Infantry. The 35th, part of the IX Corps, participated in the action around Burnsides Bridge. 35th Massachusetts, Civil War Archive at http://www.civilwararchive.com/Unreghst/unmainf3.htm; Clemens, The Maryland Campaign, Vol. 1, p. 343; Brian Downey's Antietam on the Web at http://antietam.aotw.org/officers.php?officer_id=322.

8. There were a number of Keedy families residing in Keedysville in the 1860s. Christian Keedy appears to have held the most property, and the most likely location for Fay's operations, but there were others: Samuel Keedy, a retired farmer, John Keedy, a physician, Alfred Keedy, a carpenter, and Jacob Keedy, a farmer. U.S. Census, Maryland, 1860 and 1870; U.S. Tax Records, 1862 and 1863; My Families at Antietam: A Genealogy Website at http://servalstudios.com/antietam/keedy/.

9. William Howell Reed (editor), War Papers of Frank B. Fay With Reminiscences of Service in the Camps and Hospitals of the Army of the Potomac, 1861-1865, (Privately Printed, n.p., 1911), p. 41 ff.

10. Soundings, 60.

10a. Holmes described Margaret Kitzmiller [not Kitzmuller] as a “beady-eyed, cheery-looking ancient woman [who] answers questions with a rising inflection, and gives a good account of the Captain, who got into the vehicle [the milk cart] without assistance, and was in excellent spirits.” Soundings 61.

11. Soundings; Holmes to Amelia, September 22, 1862, Harvard Law Library and posted at http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/special/exhibits/digital/owh-digital-col.html.

12. Norwood "Pen" Hallowell served with Holmes in the 20th Massachusetts. He was wounded in the West Woods. U.S. Census, Maryland, 1860; Kathleen Ernst, Too Afraid To Cry: Maryland Civilians in the Antietam Campaign (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1999), p. 174; Keedysville: An Illustrated Atlas of Washington County, Maryland (drawn by Margaret Burtner Moats from surveys by Lake, Grifing and Stevenson, Philadelphia, Pa. 1877)—special thanks to Thomas Clemens for providing this map; William LeDuc to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1910 and cited in Mark De Wolfe Howe, editor, Touched With Fire: Civil War Letters and Diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), pp. 65-66.

Images 

First. Edward Augustus Wild, ca. 1863.
Second. Frank B. Fay, Jr. This photo is not contemporary to 1862.
Third. No. 51 North Main Street, August 2010. Perhaps somewhere within the remodeled current house are remnants of the original home of Margaret Kitzmiller.

"It was a pitiable sight...this great caravan of pilgrims:" Oliver Wendell Holmes' Hunt for the Captain, Part 1

As the guns grew quiet on Antietam Ridge the evening of September 17th, the telegraph carried the news of the great struggle that day. Correspondents, when they could find an open line and cooperative telegrapher, filed stories with their papers late that evening and into the next morning. Comrades of the fallen also dispatched telegrams to small towns and big cities alerting distant families of the fate of their loved ones.

Early on the morning of September 18, a messenger from the American Telegraph Company knocked on the door of Oliver Wendell Holmes in Boston. The telegram, sent by William G. Leduc{1} from Hagerstown at 11:45 PM on September 17 , brought news of his son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., of the 20th Massachusetts Regiment that had fought in the West Woods that day.{2}

The father took the envelope from the messenger's hand, opened it, and read: "Capt. Holmes wounded, shot through the neck. Thought not mortal at Keedysville." The father, a distinguished surgeon, knew all too well that a bullet wound through the neck "ought to kill at once" and in any event was serious in nature. "Thought not mortal, or not thought mortal--which was it?" the elder Holmes anxiously wondered.{3}

Later that day, the doctor climbed aboard a southbound train where he joined William Dwight who had also received a telegram that night informing him that his son, Wilder, also of the 20th, was lying "grievously wounded" at Boonsboro.{4} Also joining was Dr. George H. Gay "an accomplished an energetic surgeon" who would attend to Wilder Dwight when found.{5} In Philadelphia, they were joined by Dr. William Hunt "on an errand of mercy to the wounded" and by an unnamed "lovely, lonely lady, the wife of one of our most spirited Massachusetts officers" then lying wounded in Middletown.{6}

Transferring to a carriage in Baltimore, Holmes headed west to Frederick where he ran into Lt. Henry Wilkins of the 20th who was accompanying the body of Regimental Assistant Surgeon Edward H.R. Revere home to Boston. Wilkins "mentioned incidentally having heard a story that recently that [Wendell] was killed."{7}

Upset but undaunted, the senior Holmes pressed on by wagon to Middletown. This step in the long journey from Boston would be one of the hardest: "As we emerged from Frederick, we struck at once upon the trail from the great battle-field. The road was filled with straggling and wounded soldiers. All who could travel on foot--multitudes with slight wounds of the upper limbs, the head or face--were told to take up their beds--a light burden or none at all--and walk. ... Through the streets of Frederick, through Crampton's Gap, over South Mountain, sweeping at last the hills and the woods that skirt the windings of the Antietam, the long battle had travelled, like one of those tornadoes which tear their path through our fields and villages. ...[and] those who could walk were meeting us at every step in the road. ...It was a pitiable sight...so vast...this great caravan of maimed pilgrims."{8}

To be continued...

Notes
{1} Captain William Gates Leduc, later XI Corps Quartermaster, ended the war as a brigadier general. He went on to become the fifth Commissioner of Agriculture and in that post established the Division of Veterinary Science and organized the Division of Forestry. He died in Hastings, Minnesota in 1917. Biographical sketch from the National Agricultural Library, U.S. Department of Agriculture.
{2} Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 20th Massachusetts. The regiment, sometimes referred to as the Harvard Regiment, was part of Napoleon J.T. Dana's Brigade, and stood approximately 60 feet behind the 15th Massachusetts and the 82nd New York in the West Woods. Cope-Carmen Map, 1908.
{3} Telegram from William Leduc to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harvard Law School Library; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Soundings from the Atlantic (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864), p 24 (hereafter, Soundings).
{4} Lt. Colonel Wilder Dwight (1833-1862) did not survive his wounds and died in Boonsboro on September 19. His father, upon arriving in Baltimore, received a telegram telling him that his son's remains were on their way to him there. (Soundings, 37; biographical information at Brian Downey's definitive Antietam web site, Antietam on the Web, at http://antietam.aotw.org/officers.php?officer_id=1033); Soundings, p. 25.
{5} Dr. George H. Gay was a prominent Boston surgeon. William Richard Cutter, William Frederick Adams, Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of the State of Massachusetts (Boston: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1910), p. 2676.
{6} Soundings, pp. 34-35.
{7} Dr. Edward Hutchinson Robbins Revere, was the older brother of Major Paul Revere. A graduate of Harvard Medical School (1849), maintained a practice in Greenfield, Massachusetts at the outbreak of the war. He was "performing field surgery when he suddenly found himself in front. He remained and calmly finished the operation before he was shot and killed." Richard F. Miller, Harvard's Civil War: A History of the Twentieth Massachusetts (Lebanon, N.H., University Press of New England, 2005), pp. 25-26, 177; Soundings, p. 41.
{8} Soundings, 45-46.

Images: (Image 1) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. in 1862 and (Image 2) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., ca. 1861 (Harvard Law School Library Digital Collection).

"And I stood among strangers"--John Lemuel Stetson and the 59th NY in the West Woods

Traveling north from Sharpsburg along Route 65 you eventually come across a series of roadside markers on the right leading up to the 15th Massachusetts Monument. Before the markers, however, is an often overlooked memorial to John L. Stetson.

The monument, often mistaken for a tombstone, reads: "Here fell in the foremost of the advance of Sumner's Second Corps John Lemuel Stetson of Plattsburgh, N.Y. Lieut. Col. of the 59th New York 1862 - Volunteers - 1919." The year 1919 is the year the monument was placed by his family.

John Lemuel Stetson (March 8, 1832-September 17, 1862) was the son of Lemuel Stetson, an attorney, an Essex and Clinton County judge, and sometimes politician who served in the NY state assembly and in the 28th U.S. Congress (mid-1840s).

John married in 1856 Lucy Maria Platt (1835-1860) the great great grandaughter of the founder of Plattsburgh, Zephaniah. The photograph to the right was taken of the Stetsons in 1857. The couple set up their home and he his law practice in Plattsburgh. Maria died in February 1860 leaving no children.

With the outbreak of war, John helped raise the 59th New York and was commissioned as its Lieutenant-Colonel. The unit saw little action leading up to Antietam and spent most of its time on garrison duty in and around Washington.

In the days following the battle, families both north and south received telegrams telling of a son or husband's fate on September 17. Some received the news through the local newspaper's listing of the dead and wounded. If the family had the means, a father, mother, wife, or son traveled to Sharpsburg to their loved one. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., the father of Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes of the 20th Massachusetts (The Harvard Regiment), journeyed from Boston to Sharpsburg in search of his wounded son--he had received a telegram early on the 18th sent by Lt. Col. and Quartermaster W.G. LeDuc. The senior Holmes published an account of his journey in the Atlantic Monthly ("My Hunt After the Captain") and it represents the experience of those who hurried to the field to recover their own. While Holmes eventually reunited with his wounded son, Lemuel did not have as happy an outcome. What follows is a transcription of a remarkable letter Lemuel wrote to a friend and then published in the Albany Atlas & Argus of October 2, 1862 describing his journey and its sad ending. John Lemuel Stetson was the second son he had buried in the course of the then short war.

"Baltimore, September, 27, 1862.

Dear Sir:

I left Albany on the evening of the 19th quite abruptly and without seeing you as I desired. I had just seen my son's name, John L. Stetson, Lieut. Col. of the 59th, in the Journal's list of the casualties of the battle of Antietam; but it did not state whether killed or only wounded, and of course I went forward under anxious suspense. Arriving here the following afternoon I found at the U.S. Hospital two wounded privates of the 59th, just brought in from the battlefield. They left me little to hope; they reported him killed upon the field. I pursued my journey with many others, principally from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, who were equally anxious. We went by a special train to Frederick, and then via Middletown, Boonesboro, and Keedysville, by wagons and ambulances. At the latter place I came upon the hospital of Sedgwick's Division and found there a large number of wounded officers and men of the 59th. They confirmed the previous report. The Lieutenant Colonel was shot from his horse, in the heat of the action, at nine and a half o'clock A.M., Wednesday, the 17th of Sept. He was struck by a Minnie ball, in front, just below the pit of the stomach. The 59th stood in the center of Dana's Brigade; the 42nd N.Y. and the 7th Michigan being on the left, and the 19th and 20th Mass. on the right. They had pushed up the west bank of the Antietam two miles from Keedysville, crossed the turnpike leading from Sharpsburg to Hagerstown a mile and a quarter north of Sharpsburg, and entered the oak openings to the west of a broad cultivated filed a little way north of the Dunkard's Meeting House. They entered the forest under the direct order of Gen. Sumner, upon the doublequick. As they left the clear ground they passed a crest running north and south to which point they had been all the way ascending from the Antietam. This crest had protected them from the shot of the enemy--concealed by the forest to the west--while they were in the cleared field, except from shells thrown over the forest. Entering the forest the land descended considerably to the west, and then formed a plain some forty rods in width to the edge of the oak openings on the west side of the forest. This plain, however, was undulating and formed into gently rising mounds. At the edge (west) limestone rocks cropped out on the same level with the plain, and along this was a gully or ravine some six or eight feet deep, forming an impregnable line of defence for the rebels. From this ravine or natural wall or ditch, the land rose sharply to the west for half a mile, and upon this eminence the Confederates had planted batteries which raked the plain over the heads of their own men concealed behind the abrupt line of limestone ledge. Dana's Brigade, brought to the centre of the oak openings, received the double fire of cannon shot and small arms. But this was not all; the Divisions were not closed on the South, and the Confederates entering the opening flanked the Brigade as they stood exposed to the terrific cross-fire. The 7th Michigan and the [42nd N.Y.] {1} were turned, and General Sumner, ordered the line to fall back, which they did by moving hurriedly to the north upon their own line, under the pressure of the flank attack upon the left.

"The position of Lieut. Col. Stetson was at the right of his regiment, and as the men fell back to the point he changed front to the South, and earnestly stimulated the men to rally upon their colors. It was here that he received the fatal shot. He fell, and his horse galloped from the field. The Confederates occupied the spot until the following Friday morning, when the threatened pressure upon other parts of their line forced them to abandon this, the only point in the field from which they had been directly forced. Then the body of the Lieut. Col. was recovered, and was immediately interred, under the advice of Dr. Burr, the surgeon of the regiment.

"The rebels had rifled his pockets and turned them inside out. They had taken his hat and boots. But a Rebel Major returned his wallet, marked with his name and residence, to Lieut. Rosa, of the 59th regiment, lying wounded upon the same field, saying that it contained nothing of value which they wished to keep. They had emptied it of everything but Confederate notes, which had been procured near Richmond, and held as curiosities. Lieut. Rosa gave the wallet to Captain Lyne, and then died of his wound, and Captain Lyne placed the wallet in my possession.

"They buried the Lieutenant Colonel on the spot where he fell, upon a gently rising mound. Two trees stand to the west of the grave, the one, three paces from the head, and the other a like distance from the foot. The trees are scarred by shot, and the one at the south has three fresh hacks on the east side. Eight feet east of the grave lies and oak top, felled by a cannon shot. To the southwest and close upon the two oaks, the mound is skirted with several clusters (5) of dark brown moss covered limestone rocks, that crop out from one to four feet. Directly south on the next gentle mound or swell, is a long line of fresh earth; it covers the remains of the gallant men of the 59th, who perished in the same conflict. They were collected an interred by the burial party of the regiment, on Saturday. The forest is so open that you may drive a carriage almost in any direction; but the oaks are nearly every one marked with bullets, grape, cannon shot or shell. On some I counted over a dozen bullet marks. The marks upon the trees are so thick that it is wonderful that any one could have stood there in the conflict unharmed.

"I found the burial rude and imperfect, like all soldiers' graves upon the field. On Tuesday morning I returned from Sharpsburg with a burial party, and had a wall twenty inches high built around the grave, close to the vault. This was filled with fresh earth and raised above the wall, and completed in the usual form. Then along the sides to the crest I laid slabs of dark brown limestone, at at the head and foot stand heavy stones trenched into the ground. Over the whole I lad green boughs cut from the top of the white oaks felled by the cannon shot, nearby. The duty was ended; the burial was complete--complete as might be under an exigency, which cannot be understood without too long an explanation--and I stood among strangers,--the rank and file of the army,--to make my grateful heartfelt acknowledgments for their kind assistance.

"But you may in all times of affliction rely upon the the human and generous sympathy of the common soldiers. They have a respect for grief, and feel sympathy by instinct. I thank them again, one and all, for their kindness. The burial place and the field of battle at that point are owned by Colonel Miller, of Sharpsburg, now in the seventieth year of his age. He was a Captain in the war of 1812, in the 2nd Regiment Maryland Militia, and second under Colonel Richard K. Heath. I called upon him and received his own as well as the lively sympathies of his amiable family. His is a spirit of undoubted loyalty to the Union; and, I will say here that, I did not anywhere in all my journey and intercourse with citizens, from Baltimore to Harper's Ferry, meet any expressions or manifestations of feeling except of earnest loyalty. I have fixed your attention upon mine and myself--it was due to the occasion; but I do not desire you to think, that amidst my own profound grief, I was unmindful of the sufferings that everywhere, clustered along my path in the track of the army. I threaded the hospitals from Baltimore to Sharpsburg in search of a particular fact and the horrors that met my startled vision everywhere as I progressed were too appalling ever to be forgotten. Every church was a hospital. Private houses and barns were converted to the same use. Hundreds lay quietly upon the same church floor. The horror was not from any screeching or other manifestation of bodily pain. The wounded were without a solitary exception quiet and resigned. But it seemed that I had arrived among a race of men fashioned unlike the rest of mankind,--men with only one arm--men with only one leg--men with no arms--men with no legs--men with bodies otherwise disfigured, and yet men who talked and cheered, smiled and thanked God that it was no worse with them. Then again, in the vestibule of the church lay a naked body of a young man of exquisite form slightly covered with movable drapery. One large red dot in the breast marked the entry of the Minnie ball, another smaller one near it marked a slight bayonet wound, and the half closed eye and oppressed respiration told the beholder that his relief was nigh, and they he had given to the cause of the Union--all that a man could give--his life. I do not conjure up figures, I describe positive facts, unwelcome as they may be to the sensibilities of readers in the vale of comparative peace and happiness in the Northern States. Can you not see that when there are 10,000 killed and wounded, that there must be among the surviving sources of suffering and misery indescribable--not merely to themselves, but to anxious near relatives and friends?

"But I am departing from my purpose--the curse of mankind--war, is upon us; and yet it is only by war--vigorous, earnest, resolute war to the knife,--war in the minds and hearts of our people at home, as we see and feel the horrors of the front, and in the track of battle, that can save our nationality and preserve to us, or recover for us, the decent respect of mankind.

"From Sharpsburg, I returned by the way of Harper's Ferry, staying two nights on the crest of Bolivar Heights in Virginia, Sumner's Camp. The rebel pickets were two miles to the west. To get into camp I was forced to ford the Potomac, by the stupid driving of a full-blooded contraband. He did not know how to manage six mules with a single ribbon. He shut his eyes, threw up the rein, yelled and let the mules have their own way; they went wild and stuck fast against a heavy wagon loaded with part of a pontoon bridge. He lost his position in line of transportation, and wagons and artillery swept by for an hour. To extricate myself I took off my boots, put my sox in my pocket, rolled my pants up to my knees and took to the water. The water was warm and agreeable but the sharp stones in the bed of the river hurt my feet, but I had to bear it, for no teamster would take pity on me. I asked the passing artillery to let me mount a cannon, and offered money, but no, it was against orders,--red tape prevailed. I got three-fourths of the way over, and stopped on an island of small boulders, made by the low water, when a fine looking officer of the artillery recognized me, and asked if I could ride. I replied that I could ride better than I could swim or wade. He dismounted the private from a fine supernumery artillery horse, and I sprang into the saddle with the renewed horsemanship of youth and rode into camp at the very elevated Bolivar Heights with the pride and dash of a cavalry officer. My deliverer was Lieutenant Egan, of Rickett's Battery, a cadet of the last class at West Point--a native of my own village, a generous, whole-souled Irishman--a gentleman, soldier and humanitarian. I dined with his mess; and thanking him for his humanity, hope he will soon recover from fever and ague. Recovering the horse and accoutrements of my deceased son, I returned to this place last evening by train from Sandy Hook, one mile below Harper's Ferry. Some days may elapse before I can return North.

"The conduct of Colonel Tidball, and Major Northedge, of the 59th, is described as gallant and resolute in the action of the 17th. The regiment went into action with less than 400 men. It lost in killed 47; wounded 143; 13 of 21 officers were killed or wounded.

Respectfully yours, L. Stetson."

=====
Sources:
Stetson Kindred of America, Account of Second Reunion and Other Data, (n.p., n.d.); Brian Downey's Antietam on the Web at http://aotw.org/ (blog entry); Freepages Genealogy (listing for Riverside Cemetery); Touched with Fire: Civil War Letters and Diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., ed. by Mark De Wolfe Howe (NY: Fordham University Press, 2000), p. 65-66 notes; Freepages Genealogy (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hubbard/NNY_index/platt.html); Maj. William Glidden (Ret), letter to the editor, Albany Times Union (September 20, 2009. Retrieved 11/11/09 at TimesUnion.com); photo John Stetson from Antietam National Battlefield Library.

{1} In article, "62nd N.Y." The 42nd New York was on the right of the 7th Michigan.