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PHOTOGRAPH 166. Case of Recovery after a Penetrating Gunshot Wound of the Ascending Colon.

Colonel Edward W Hincks, commanding the 19th Massachusetts Infantry, was severely wounded at about noon on 17 September 1862 at Antietam. He was hit by a bullet that went through his right forearm, then through his body, exiting very near his spine.

A gunshot through the abdomen was almost invariably fatal in that era, but Hincks survived to serve through the war as a Brigadier General of Volunteers, and afterward, to retirement in 1870, as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Regular Army.

Here he is, in his Colonel’s uniform, with his wife* in a photograph taken in Boston, probably before his Antietam experience.

* The Library of Congress identifies this woman as his (second) wife Elizabeth Pierce Nichols (1842-1890). They married in Cambridge in September 1863 – almost a year after he was appointed Brigadier General. I wonder if, instead, this is a photograph taken after he was appointed Colonel (May 1861) but before his first wife, Ann Rebecca “Annie” Dow (c. 1838-1862), died (August 1862). In which case, Annie’s more likely the woman in the photograph with him.

Here’s the case history posted to the back of that photograph at the top of the page, text largely taken from the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. The original narrative in the MSHWR, though, says all that damage was made by one bullet.

Both the case history and the photograph at the top are from Volume 4 of Photographs of Surgical Cases and Specimens published by the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army sometime after 1870. It’s online from the Internet Archive.

The photograph of General Hincks and his wife is from the Library of Congress.

Tompion: a plug pushed into the muzzle of a rifle to keep out dirt and water.

This example, probably for an English-made Enfield model of 1853, made of brass and cork, was sold by the Horse Soldier in Gettysburg.

The soldier’s culpable negligence in failing to remove the tompion before firing, resulted sometimes in the bursting of the piece; sometimes in the projection of the tompion with sufficient force to penetrate, within short range, a man’s body; almost always, unfortunately, in more injury to others then to himself. The following is one of those cases …

Private George Meyers of the 13th New Jersey Infantry was accidentally wounded by one of his comrades’ tompion at Antietam on 17 September 1862 and he died in a hospital in Philadelphia about a month afterward.

Here are the woodcut illustrations which accompany the description of Private Meyer’s somewhat unusual case in the Army Surgeon General’s Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1870-1883).

It occurs to me that the outcome might not have been much different if the man in the rank behind poor George had removed his tompion …

17 year old farm boy Thomas E Sims enlisted as a Private in the Orange Guards – Company G of the 27th North Carolina Infantry – in March 1862. Which is probably when this photograph was taken.

He survived the terrible combat at Sharpsburg in September that year but was mortally wounded in a little known skirmish at Gary’s Farm near Richmond, VA on 15 June 1864. Captain John Sloan of Company B later described the action there:

Our brigade, as yet, in the swamps of the Chickahominy, was almost daily employed in skirmishes with the enemy’s cavalry. On the 15th of June we came across a large force of cavalry at Gary’s farm. They had met a small force of our cavalry and had been driving them. When we arrived they dismounted and sent their horses to the rear, formed their lines and showed fight. After a sharp struggle their lines gave way, and we pursued them some distance through the woods. Their sharpshooters were armed with seven shooters, and they used them against us on our advance with telling effect. When they reached their horses they quickly remounted and were soon beyond our reach.

Young Thomas was taken to the Camp Winder hospital in Richmond and died there the next day, 19 years old.

This compelling photograph of him is from the Vanatos Archive, shared to his memorial on Findagrave.

John A Sloan’s narrative, based on his wartime notes, was published in his Reminiscences of the Guilford Grays, Co. B, 27th N.C. Regiment (1883).

In 1882 one-legged Sharpsburg veteran Willie Thomas Patterson was appointed Bursar of the University of North Carolina, and served in that post for most of the rest of his life, to 1909.

He was raised the 5th of 7 children by wealthy parents James Newton (1806-1865) and Lucy Hawkins Couch Patterson (1808-1848) on their large plantation at Durhamville in Orange County (now Durham, Durham County), North Carolina.

He was of the 5th generation on the place, all born in North Carolina. His great-great-grandfather John B Patterson (1717-1787) first owned and farmed there before 1770, followed by John Tapley Patterson (c. 1743-1781), who had slaves working the land by 1781, then Mann Patterson (1772-1835), his grandfather.

John B Patterson

In 1850 Willie’s father James owned 63 slaves, the second largest number in the county, and by 1860 had 112, 6 of them in trust for his children. The US Census that year reported the value of those people at $77,000 (equivalent to about $3 million in 2024). His real estate holdings were worth $26,500, by way of comparison.

Soon after the start of the war in 1861, 20 year old Willie and his orphaned cousin James Newton Faucette, who lived with the Pattersons, enlisted in the Orange Guards, who became Company G of the 27th North Carolina Infantry. They first saw combat together at Newberne, NC in March 1862.

Willie was seriously wounded in the leg at Sharpsburg in September 1862, captured there, and lost his leg to amputation. He returned home in 1864.

His life was very different after the war: in 1870 he was an unemployed “cripple” living with his brother John, a physician in Chapel Hill, though by 1880 he was a bookkeeper in Durham making his own way. He never married.

His picture here from University President Kemp P. Battle’s History of the University of North Carolina (Vol. II, 1907), online from the Internet Archive.

Family details from genealogies and the Population and Slave Schedules of the 1850 and 1860 US Census.

The 1968 photo of the Patterson Plantation house, now called Holly Rock Farm, is online from Open Orange; original by the Durham Herald Sun.

The portrait of John B Patterson is of unknown provenance, shared to the FamilySearch database by Glen Robert Cary.

John Tapley Patterson’s 1781 will is also in that database.

Samuel Hodgman was First Lieutenant of Company I of the 7th Michigan Infantry at Antietam on 17 September 1862. He was wounded in both legs there and spent more than two months in hospitals recovering.

He wrote his father Moses (1804-1881), back in Michigan, from the US Army General Hospital in West Philadelphia, PA on 17 November 1862 with the latest news, including the recent history and whereabouts of many of the men of his Company.

This is fabulous material. See a list of his men …

This stunning work is by William Sadler II (c. 1782—1839). His father, an English portrait painter and engraver, brought him to Ireland as a boy.

William’s son Rupert (c. 1810-1892), also an artist, took his family to America from Ireland in about 1845 and worked in Boston.

Rupert’s son Rupert J Sadler (Ireland 1842-Gettysburg 1863) – not an artist – was acquitted on a charge of manslaughter sometime between 1857 and 1861, defended by Boston lawyer Wider Dwight. Young Rupert was a machinist in Boston when he enlisted in the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry in October 1861 and at Antietam in September 1862 helped bring mortally wounded Lt. Col. Wilder Dwight off the field.

He wrote home about that in a letter now in the Massachusetts Historical Society.

William II painted Waterloo in oil on canvas (32 × 70 inches) in June 1815. It was offered by Pyms Gallery, London in 1999. I do not know where it is now.

Private James Davis of the famed Irish Brigade was wounded at Antietam on 17 September 1862. His leg was amputated by his regimental surgeon the next day.

This photograph is in the National Museum of Health and Medicine’s Otis Historical Archives (posted to their Flickr account). Thanks to John Banks for the pointer to it.

This excellent portrait, from a steel plate engraving, is of Connecticut-born physician Charles Squire Wood, who was Assistant Surgeon of the 66th New York Infantry and treated wounded soldiers on the field after Antietam in September 1862.

This copy is from the Images from the History of Medicine (IHM) collection at the National Library of Medicine. There’s one for sale on eBay, if you hurry.

This evocative piece is from an etching by New York artist William Henry Shelton (1840-1932). He depicted horse artillery troops at Chancellorsville in May 1863, and had a run of 750 copies printed by Bryan, Taylor & Company in New York City in 1887.

He deposited this copy with the Library of Congress in September 1877 to protect his copyright (touch to enlarge).

Shelton was himself an artilleryman – a Private in a New York battery at Antietam and Chancellorsville, later First Sergeant, 2nd Lieutenant, and lastly First Lieutenant near the end of the war – so he had some idea about the subject matter.

Here he is in enlisted uniform.

Two intriguing details about this particular print of Going into Action are the small sketches William made in the margin below the main picture. At the left, a self-portrait of the artist, and on the right, a horse head.

This print is still in the collection of the Library of Congress, and is now online.

His wartime photograph hosted by William “Griff” Griffing on Spared & Shared accompanying a Shelton letter of 19 October 1862.

I’ve gone to Army Surgeon-General Joseph K Barnes’ Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1870-1883) many times over the years chasing Antietam casualties, but never done a systematic scrub through it. I’m underway on that now.

Among the first cases I found was that of Private Samuel Altman of the 50th Georgia Infantry, who was wounded by a gunshot to his head at Fox’s Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862. He was captured there and treated by US Army surgeons on the field and in hospitals in Frederick, MD and Philadelphia, PA. Despite their efforts, including trephining – boring a hole in his skull to relive pressure – he succumbed to the effects of his wound on 11 October 1862.

Here’s an illustration of part of his skull, post-mortem, which was kept in the collection of the Army Medical Museum as an aid to education of future combat surgeons.

A little later in that volume I found the fine illustration below, purported by Surgeon Bernard A Vanderkieft to be the skull of an unnamed Confederate sharpshooter knocked from a tree atop South Mountain at long range by Union skirmishers, presumably on 14 September 1862. Touch the image to read the accompanying text.

A fine presentation of all 6 volumes of the MSHWR is online from the National Library of Medicine.

Altman’s skull is found in Volume 2, Part 1 on page 123. The sharpshooter’s is on page 170.