behind AotW

I’ve been spending more time than I used to with each soldier I enter into the database, so it’s taken almost two years to add the last thousand. There are now just over 21,000 people-pages on Antietam on the Web.

The latest additions are from the 5th Alabama Infantry, who suffered more than 150 casualties in Maryland, notably at Turner’s Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862, where most of three Companies were killed or captured.

Sharpsburg veteran Private Sanford A Walker of the 5th Alabama Infantry was returning from a furlough home in October 1864 aboard the steamboat Senator #2, on the Alabama River, when her boiler exploded. He drowned attempting to swim away from the burning vessel.

The first clipping is from the Richmond Sentinel of 26 October 1864, which is online from the Library of Virginia. The second is from an unknown newspaper of 3 November 1864 shared to Sanford’s Find-a-grave memorial by Mo Baxter and Dave Gates.

William R DeLoach was a Private in Company G, 5th Alabama Infantry when he was wounded at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862. He was a staff officer late in the war and survived a stint as a prisoner at Johnson’s Island, OH to go home to Sumter County, Alabama in 1865.

His 1911 obituary described post-war Sumter County from his and many white residents’ perspective:

But it was after he returned home in 1865 that the real test of manhood came to DeLoach and to the men of his class.

How he met this trial is known only to those who touched shoulders and divided counsel with him at that time. From that day till 1873, when the white people of Sumter came into their own again, was the time that tried men’s souls in the Southland. From the town of Livingston, DeLoach’s home, to the northern boundary of the county the proportion of blacks to whites was larger than in any other county in Alabama. The negroes almost from the first were under the control of aliens and renegades, and the struggle for existence was on in earnest.

Reconstruction, with its deliberate plan to subject the native white people to their former slaves, was an unspeakable horror, to be resisted to the death. If the true story of reconstruction in the Black Belt of Alabama should ever be told, DeLoach’s name would be written high up on the roll of honor.

His judgment and courage were with him under all conditions. When the struggle was over, his kindliness made him resist any cruelty to, or oppression of the negroes, when control was absolutely in the hands of the whites …

An unspeakable horror, indeed, but not so much for Sumter’s white residents.

______________

DeLoach’s obituary, partially quoted here, and his post-war photograph are from the Confederate Veteran magazine, Volume 19, Number 4 (April 1911), pg. 177, online from the Hathi Trust.

Retired miller James Basset, late Private, Company F, 5th Alabama Infantry responded to the 1921 Alabama Census of Confederate Veterans in the following questionnaire, full of excellent personal details (touch images to enlarge).

He had been twice captured during the War, at Turner’s Gap in September 1862 and Gettysburg in July 1863, but survived unwounded to surrender in 1865.

I found these documents online thanks to the FamilySearch page for the Collection [free account may be required].

Here’s Captain John Kies‘ face, courtesy of this carte-de-visite’s owners Ken Tokarz and Audrey Kies-Tokarz. Captain Kies led Company F of the 11th Connecticut Infantry at the battle of Antietam.

Private William E. Cree of Company C, 5th Alabama Infantry was about 18 years old when he fought at Turner’s Gap on 14 September 1862 and was captured there.

He was taken again at Gettysburg in July 1863 and died of the effects of scurvy in a Richmond hospital in October 1864, just two weeks after being released for exchange from the Federal prison at Point Lookout, MD.

The assistant surgeon-in-charge, Dr Bartlett Anderson Curtis (1825-1866; Jefferson Medical College ’53), signed this form listing the only item of military clothing Private Cree possessed at his death: a blanket, valued at $6.00.

This Inventory and Appraisement of the Military Clothing of Private Cree is from his Compiled Service Records file at the National Archives; my copy from fold3 online.

Captain Antoine Leopold Gusman commanded Company A of the 8th Louisiana Infantry in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

Captain Gusman was captured in November 1863 and was held at Johnson’s Island for the rest of the war. He remained a prisoner much longer than most Confederate POWs, though – to November 1865 – because he refused to take an oath of allegiance to the United States.

Here’s the card from his Compiled Service Records describing that situation:

His photograph was shared to Ancestry.com by user Lancieux1962 in 2017. His CSR card is in the National Archives; I got my copy online from fold3.

Maryland Campaign veteran Christian Benjamin Deishler is probably among men of his company – “K” of the 5th Alabama Infantry – in this photograph taken sometime after 1900 at a unit reunion. Touch for a larger version.

Then-Corporal Deishler was wounded in action near Turner’s Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862 but survived the war and farmed for many years afterward in Texas.

Here he is in a 1901 picture with his wife Sarah Ann Doyle (1851-1943).

Both photos were posted to Ancestry.com by Christopher Eugene Holley in April 2022.

This post-war photograph of Sharpsburg veteran William R Stone, late of the 48th Mississippi Infantry, was posted online by family genealogist William R. Emanuel.

A widely re-printed newspaper piece contributed by an anonymous soldier of the 13th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry – the Bucktails – tells the story of the death of two soldiers, possibly of the 5th Alabama Infantry, near Turner’s Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862. It’s sounds apocryphal, but may be true.

The short version is that Colonel Hugh McNeil of the Bucktails made an amazing rifle shot, killing two of the enemy with one bullet, bounced off a rock. McNeil was himself killed two days later on the evening of 16 September at Antietam.

Here’s the version printed in The Democratic Press (Eaton, OH) of 1 January 1863. The paper is online from the Library of Congress (touch image for full story).

Thank you to Miles Krisman for poking me to look more carefully into the men of the 5th Alabama Infantry on the Maryland Campaign of 1862.