behind AotW

In a December 1905 piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Senator John W. Daniel, introducing Emmett M. Morrison’s memoir of the Battle of Sharpsburg, wrote

… In many a nook and cranny in Virginia, too, is a valiant leader of his neighbors, who commanded and guided them in the battle shock, and stepped behind the scenes to the work of restoration when war’s dread thunders stormed no more.

One of these is Colonel E. M. Morrison, of the 15th Virginia Infantry, who now resides at Smithfield, in the Isle of Wight County, and who is yet busy with his tasks.

The 15th Virginia lost at Sharpsburg 58 per cent. of its men, which is 23 per cent. more than the Light Cavalry Brigade of the English army, lost in the world-heralded “Battle of Balaklava.” Our folks write poems in honor of the Light Brigade and our schoolboys declaim Tennyson’s verses; but what do we know of our own boys who stood proof on this red day at Sharpsburg?

Lt. Colonel Emmett Masalon Morrison (c. 1863-65)

At Antietam on the Web we’ve made it our mission to remember some of those ‘boys’, like Emmett Morrison, who indeed stood proof …

This is Assistant Surgeon Simon Baruch (‘ba-rook’) of the 3rd South Carolina Battalion. I found him by following a thread in a CW Society post, part of their recent conversation about Jewish Confederates. Among those prominent in that service it mentioned

… Nahum Baruch, the father of financier Bernard Baruch, was a doctor and Colonel in Barksdale’s Mississippi Brigade. He was present at Gettysburg.

As is my wont, I saw the thread sticking out and gave it a yank. Who was this Nahum?

It turns out this Baruch was not Nahum, actually. Nor a Colonel, though he ended the War in Barksdale’s famous Brigade. He did have a successful son, was a doctor, and was at Sharpsburg and that other northern battle, too. There’s lots more to his story.

Where the Muse points, you shall go.

I was in my local library Sunday and saw this volume* displayed on the wall. I was immediately drawn to the book by the face on the cover; also thinking, at first, that it was Harry’s tousled Senator Jim Lane. By the time saw it was otherwise, it was too late: the book was in my hand and I was browsing.