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Bold language is rare in military communications, so I thought I’d share this instance so both of my readers can enjoy it with me. It’s a clipping from the back of Captain Joseph E Knotts‘ letter of resignation of 14 November 1862. Knotts was Captain of Company K of the First (Hagood’s) South Carolina Infantry.

[touch the image to see the whole sheet]

The back of the letter includes the signatures of Knott’s higher chain of command – brigade commander Micah Jenkins (excerpted above); George Pickett, division; James Longstreet, army corps; and (I think) Robert Chilton, AA&IG on behalf of Robert E Lee, commanding the Army of Northern Virginia.

General Jenkins’ comment here hints at poor leadership in the regiment more generally during and after the Maryland Campaign – that of all three field officers (Col. Duncan, Lt. Col. Livingston, Maj. Grimes) and at least two of the senior Captains (Knotts and Stafford, Co. I).

Jenkins was not in Maryland on the Campaign, he’d been wounded at 2nd Manassas in August, and his brigade was commanded by senior colonel Joseph Walker of the Palmetto Sharpshooters. In his after-action report of 24 October 1862, Walker noted:

I regret, however, to be called upon again to refer to the conduct of a large portion of the officers and privates of the First Regiment South Carolina Volunteers in this battle in terms of censure. The commanding officer reports that the regiment entered the fight with 106 men, rank and file, lost 40 men killed and wounded, and at the close of the day but 15 enlisted men and 1 commissioned officer answered to their names. Such officers are a disgrace to the service and unworthy to wear a sword …

For more, see the regiment’s page and officers’ capsule bios over on AotW.

For a deeper dive, I recommend James R Hagood’s Memoirs of the First South Carolina Regiment of Volunteer Infantry … an unpublished manuscript he wrote shortly before his death in 1870. It’s online and downloadable [17MB pdf] from the University of South Carolina. JR Hagood was Sergeant Major and acting Adjutant of the regiment at Sharpsburg in 1862 and was appointed Colonel in November 1863 over half a dozen officers senior to him.

Knotts’ resignation letter is from his Compiled Service Records; I found it online from fold3 (subscription service). Here’s the useful part of the front of the page:

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Brig. Gen. Jenkins’ comments transcribed:

Nov. 14, 1862
Capt. Knotts being totally useless as an officer, it is recommended that his resignation be accepted, & he be allowed to join the Ranks.
M. Jenkins
Brig. Genl.

Thanks to Jim Smith for locating Hagood’s manuscript, an excellent resource with details about the regiment, its officers, and individual casualties.

Nathan Andrew Feaster was from a prominent family in the Fairfield District, SC; his father Andrew was a wealthy planter, his grandfather John reached Fairfield from Lancaster, PA sometime before 1810.

In 1844 an itinerant portrait artist named George Williamson Livermore Ladd painted several members of the Feaster family, including Nathan. He was then about 23 years old and a retail merchant in Columbia, SC, the state capital.

18 years later in May 1862, then 41, he enlisted in the First South Carolina Infantry and was appointed First Sergeant of Company F. He was wounded at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862 and was killed by enemy fire while going to the rear for treatment.

Portrait of Nathaniel Andrew Feaster (1820–1862) by George W. L. Ladd, c. 1844. Oil on canvas; HOA: 28-3/8″, WOA: 24-1/4″. Collection of the Fairfield County Museum, Winnsboro, SC.

There’s much more about George Ladd and those Feaster portraits online from the Journal of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, NC.

(touch for full article)

23 year old Lieutenant Colonel William H Betts, a former farmer from Tuskegee, AL, led the 13th Alabama Infantry in combat at Sharpsburg, MD on 17 September 1862 and was wounded there. His brigade and division commanders, Col. A.H. Colquitt and Maj.Gen. D.H. Hill respectively, spoke highly of him and his men.

Betts had quite a different life in peacetime after the war. He was accused of murdering at least three men in his lifetime, and acknowledged killing them. He was excused in each case as “justified.”

The first murder, according to the New York Times piece above, was of a soldier of his regiment who had somehow insulted his wife in camp at Pensacola, FL. Betts was said to have shot him on the spot (or to have stabbed him with a knife when the soldier pulled a gun). The story has at least one problem – I can find no point at which Betts and his regiment were ever in Pensacola. Perhaps it’s a mis-translation of an event at another camp in another place.

In any case, if this New York Times article is to be believed, Betts had quite an adventure in the years after the war and before his death in 1884 of kidney disease, at the relatively young age of 45 years.

See also the San Jose (CA) Daily Morning Times of 14 April 1882 and the Albany (GA) Weekly News and Advertiser of 8 April 1882, in which Betts, while testifying in someone else’s murder trial, acknowledged killing 3 men, and briefly describes the circumstances. These accounts bears only passing resemblance to the NYT story.

His death notice in the Columbus (GA) Daily Times of 1 August 1884 has him killing 6 men in his lifetime, but does have a good description of his death.