behind AotW

Private Thomas Henry Green of the 16th Mississippi Infantry survived a chest wound at Sharpsburg in 1862 and returned to duty to serve to the surrender at Appomattox Court House in 1865.

Here he is somewhat post-war from a photograph contributed to the FamilySearch database [free membership required] by Katherine L Brister.

From the Augusta, GA Weekly Constitutionalist of 22 October 1862, online from Georgia Historic Newspapers:

John Garland Markham was 5th Sergeant of Company F, 16th Mississippi Infantry when he was killed at Sharpsburg.

First Lieutenant Charles Henry Wilson of Company F was thought to have been killed there also, but was wounded and captured, losing his leg to amputation. He survived the ordeal and resigned his commission in May 1863.

From left to right: Standing, Mrs. Leach [Martha Capers “Mattie”], Mrs. West [Adelaide Celestia], Mrs. Boon [Alice Ann Black], Mrs. Moore [Augusta Letitia]; Sitting, Rev R. A. [Robert Alexander] Shirley, Mrs. Coalson [Mary Eleanor], Rev J.J. [Joseph Jonathan] Shirley, Mrs. Potts [Elizabeth Matilda].

Robert was a private in the 16th Mississippi Infantry during the Civill War and was slightly wounded at Sharpsburg in 1862.

This image kindly shared online by the Shirley Family Association.

Two young farmers from Lancaster, PA, Abraham and Noah Zook, went to Mississippi in 1866 and invested more than $3000 in a cotton plantation near Vicksburg in partnership with local men, Sharpsburg survivor Cyrus Lafayette Broome and his brother(s) Elliott and/or William (all also known by Brown).

The Zook brothers were found to have been murdered about 1 November 1866, probably by the Broomes, who sold the crop, took the proceeds, and fled the area. No one was arrested or charged in the case.

I couldn’t find Cyrus L Broome/Brown in the US Census until 1900, when he is listed as a livestock commission agent in Crockett County, TX. All 6 of his children were born in Texas, between 1868 and 1881, so it’s reasonable to believe he did in fact go to Texas as early as 1866.

The murders and lack of justice in Mississippi was exciting news in Pennsylvania. So much so that Governor John W. Geary made a request for action to the State Legislature in March 1867:

The Zook clipping above is from the Shippensburg News of 26 January 1867.

The text of Governor Geary’s statement is from the Memphis Daily Post of 26 March 1867 (touch to enlarge).

18 year old Benjamin David Hennington enlisted as a Private in Company C, 16th Mississippi Infantry in April 1861. He survived a wound at Sharpsburg in 1862, by then a Sergeant, was appointed 2nd Lieutenant in 1863, and was wounded again and lost his sword at Spotsylvania Court House, VA in May 1864.

In 1913, James R. Woods, who had served in the 6th US Cavalry during the Battle of the Wilderness [sic], put an advertisement in the Times-Picayune of New Orleans seeking to return to its rightful owner a sword he had picked up during the fighting. He was able to identify the Confederate soldier by the name and unit engraved on the scabbard: “B.D. Hennington, 16th Mississippi.” Apparently Woods was successful in his efforts, for Hennington proudly posed for this portrait holding his long-lost sword.

This photograph was contributed to the FamilySearch database by J.K. Walters.

The sword’s story is from Jeff T. Giambrone in his Remembering Mississippi’s Confederates (2012). He credits Larry and Gayle Van Horn for the picture. Gayle posted a fine bio sketch of Hennington on her genealogy blog in 2008.

From the New Orleans Daily Picayune of 29 October 1862, online from Newspapers.com, casualties among the troops of the 16th Mississippi Infantry at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862:

I’ve looked into each of these names and improved the roster of men I have for the regiment in Maryland in 1862.

Captain Eugene A. Hawkins, Colonel William H. Willis, and Captain Howard Tinsley of 4th Georgia Infantry Regiment in uniform: a photograph in the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs at the Library of Congress.

Hawkins was First Lieutenant of Company H in Maryland in 1862. Willis was then Captain of Company I and commanded the regiment at Sharpsburg after Major Smith was killed there on 17 September.

Howard Tinsley joined the regiment in December 1862 as regimental Quartermaster and was probably not in Maryland in September 1862, but his younger brother William Davies Tinsley (1836-1879), a Private in Company I, was wounded at Sharpsburg and afterward disabled for field service.

Portrait paintings of Richard Henry Rush (1825 – 1893) and his wife Susan Bowdoin Yerby (1829-1889) done about 2 years after their marriage in Baltimore.

The Rush family had been prominent in Philadelphia since before the Revolution.

Richard was Colonel of his Lancers – the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry – from 1861 to 1864, and he led a 2 regiment brigade, his 6th and the 4th Pennsylvania Cavalry, on the Maryland Campaign of 1862.

Paintings by Thomas Sully (1783-1872).

A showing of Sully portraits, including Susan’s, was held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1922. Complete contents are found in the Catalogue (online from the Internet Archive).

James Gardner took this photograph at Brandy Station, VA in December 1863. The men in it are identified (left to right) as:

Captain Samuel A McClellan(d) – Battery G, First New York Light, 1861-65, formerly 2nd Lieutenant of Busteed’s Chicago Battery. He was with the 2nd Corps in Washington DC in September 1862 and not on the Maryland Campaign.

Captain J (Jacob) Henry Sleeper – 1st Lieutenant First (“A”) Battery, Massachusetts Light Artillery, 1861-62; Captain 10th Battery 20 Sept 1862-1865. He may have been in Maryland with Battery A, part of the 6th Army Corps; they were in reserve at Antietam.

Captain O’Neil W Robinson, Jr. – commanded the 4th Battery, Maine Light Artillery on the Maryland Campaign. Major and Artillery Chief, 2nd Army Corps in 1864. He died 4 months after this photograph was made, at home of disease, exactly 40 years old.

Alfred Waud – famed combat artist and newsman. Was present on the field and sketched extensively at Antietam.

This digital image is from Gardner’s original wet collodion glass plate negative, now in the collection of the Library of Congress.

Emory Upton graduated 8th in the May class of 1861 from the US Military Academy at West Point and was immediately at war. And he was very good at it.

For the whole of his 20 year military career thereafter he was recognized as a superior combat leader, tactician, and military thinker, and was rewarded by accolades and rank well beyond his peers.

He was a Captain and led an artillery battalion of the Sixth Army Corps on the Maryland Campaign of 1862, was made Colonel of the new 121st New York Volunteer Infantry about a month later, and had command of a brigade by July 1863 at Gettysburg. He was particularly noted for proposing successful new assault tactics which he first attempted against the Mule Shoe salient at Spotsylvania Court House, VA on 10 May 1864.

Here he is in the uniform of a Brigadier General of Volunteers, that appointment dating from two days after that Spotsylvania attack.

By the end of the war in 1865 he had commanded the First Division of the Sixth Corps in Virginia, and the 4th Division of Wilson’s Cavalry Corps in Alabama and Georgia.

He rose quickly in the Regular Army after the war, too, jumping from Captain of Artillery (1865) to Lieutenant Colonel of Infantry in just a year. He was Commandant of Cadets and instructor at West Point from 1870 to 1875 and appointed Colonel of the 4th US Artillery in 1880. Along the way he’d written 3 well-received books about military tactics and theory and was working on a fourth.

Tragically, he died “by his own hand” in his quarters at the Presidio in San Francisco on 14 March 1881, apparently tormented by migraine headaches. A San Fransisco Chronicle reporter speculated freely about the cause of his suicide:

(touch to see the complete article)

General Upton’s photograph is from the Library of Congress.

The clipping above is in the National Archives among Letters Received by the Commission Branch of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1863-1870, online via fold3.