behind AotW

This post card depicting Robert Simpson Westbrook‘s place in Altoona, PA recently sold on eBay. It is likely that’s old Bob himself in the rocker out front.

Westbrook was an Antietam veteran who wrote the History of the 49th Pennsylvania Volunteers (1898). That volume is now online among many other Regimentals in the Antietam Institute’s Historical Research Center.

Sharpsburg veteran George Wise of Alexandria, VA published his History of the Seventeenth Virginia Infantry, C.S.A. in 1870, probably based on his wartime diary, and the more ambitious Campaigns and Battles of the Army of Northern Virginia in 1916.

His photograph is from his second book, and both volumes are online from the Internet Archive.

John Henry Ellsworth Whitney, Sergeant, Company B, 9th New York Infantry was seriously wounded in the pelvis during his regiment’s assault toward Sharpsburg on the afternoon of 17 September 1862, and was discharged, disabled, from a Frederick, MD hospital the following June.

An artist known particularly for wood engraving, he was magazine illustrator after the war. Here are some examples of his work from the 1880s. The first two, from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, are a finely-depicted monk and a self-portrait, “Artist at his Desk.”

He engraved this bullfight scene in 1880 and it was published in the Century Magazine in November 1883 (via GoogleBooks). This copy is online from Meisterdrucke Fine Art Prints in Villach, Austria. The original subject was drawn by Robert Frederick Blum (1857-1903).

Louis Nathan Chapin was a young printer before the war, survived combat at Antietam in September 1862, was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in December 1862, and mustered out with his Company in June 1863. He was a life-long newspaperman and publisher after the war.

He wrote and published a history of his regiment, the 34th New York Infantry – the Herkimer Regiment – in about 1903 on the occasion of the dedication of the monument to his regiment on the battlefield at Antietam.

His photograph here is from that volume, which is online from the Internet Archive.

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.