behind AotW

These elegant people are Andrew Jackson Mann and his wife Rosa about five years after the war. Five years later Andrew was dead.

Mann was a Sharpsburg veteran – a Private in Company B, 17th Mississippi Infantry – wounded in the arm and chest and captured there in September 1862. After the war he was a farmer in the Mississippi Delta. In 1875 …

at the age of 32 he brought in a bumper crop and was on his way home from the sale when he was set upon by thieves, robbed and severely beaten. “He dragged himself home, laid down and died,” according to his wife, Rosa Ward Mann, who had two small children, and was pregnant with her third.

The photograph above was shared online by family genealogist Mike Chapline.

Corporal Jesse Malcolm Carmichael of the 15th Alabama Infantry lost his right hand at Sharpsburg in September 1862, but led a full life afterward.

Here’s his death announcement from the Atlanta Constitution of 27 October 1908. His photograph was taken about 1880 while he was State Auditor of Alabama (1880-84, 1905-07), and is from the Alabama Archives.

Here’s a description of George W Gentle‘s medical treatment after Antietam, along with a picture of the top of his right thigh bone, post-mortem. Gentle, a Corporal in Company E of the 5th Ohio Infantry was shot through the hip and thigh on 17 September 1862 and died of his wound on 28 October 1862 after unsuccessful surgery to save him.

The image above is from a page in the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1870).

Former Harvard medical student Philon Currier Whidden, Private, Company B, 13th Massachusetts Infantry had an extraordinary experience at Antietam and afterward. On 17 September 1862 he was hit in the back of the leg by a piece of artillery shell.

The wound extended from just above the ankle joint about eight inches up the back of the leg, from which, within these bounds, the soft parts, integuments, tendons, muscles, both arteries, and the posterior tibial nerve were entirely carried away, exposing the bones through nearly the whole length of the wound …

He walked with great difficulty to the rear … a consultation as to the propriety of amputation was held, six surgeons being present. Four decided that amputation was necessary to preserve life; one assented to this under existing circumstances, but thought that under more favorable conditions there was a possibility of recovery without the operation; the other that amputation was uncalled for. The patient decided to retain the limb.

He recovered sufficiently to obtain a commission and serve as Acting Assistant Surgeon, USN aboard the gunboat USS Wando from December 1863 to October 1865. He then finished medical school at Harvard, practiced in Chicago for 30 years, and did eventually have the lower leg amputated, in 1891.

His picture here was hosted online by Brad Forbush on his 13th Massachusetts Volunteers website, from an original photograph in the Scott Hann Collection. His medical case history is from the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1870).

First Lieutenant Gerrit Van Ingen was acting Adjutant of the 89th New York Infantry when he was mortally wounded at Antietam on 17 September 1862. His leg was amputated but that did not save him; he died at a field hospital near Sharpsburg on 26 September.

His photograph is from family genealogist Peggy Weston Byrd, in a 2010 family presentation [pdf].

David Lang was a Captain in the 8th Florida Infantry at Sharpsburg in September 1862, and was wounded while in command of Company C there. He was Colonel of the regiment by May 1863 and commanded a Brigade at Gettysburg in July. He was in the Confederate delegation at the surrender at Appomattox Court House on 9 April 1865.

After the war he was a civil engineer, a member of the Florida legislature (1885-1893), and Adjutant-General of the state militia (1885-94).

This marker celebrating his life is next to his gravestone in Tallahassee’s Old City Cemetery; the photograph of it is online in the Historical Marker Database thanks to Mark Hilton.

His photograph below, in his Major General’s uniform, is from the Florida State Library & Archives.

There was no giving-up in this man.

He lost his left arm after being shot at Sharpsburg, so Lieutenant Joseph Lane Taylor of the University Greys – Co. A, 11th Mississippi – resigned and went home. Once there, though he …

… engaged in running the blockade to supply the great needs of his neighborhood, was arrested in Memphis as a spy, imprisoned in the old Irving Block Prison on Second Street and finally released [in January 1865] on $10,000.00 bond to report daily to the Federal provost marshal.

He took the oath of allegiance in Memphis on 12 April 1865 and died relatively young at age 38 in 1877.

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Thanks to Starke Miller (Miller Civil War Tours, Oxford, MS) for the copy of this photograph, from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Private John Ross Langford of the 10th Georgia Infantry had significant surgery in November 1862 to repair the damage from his Sharpsburg wounds of September. A month later he was “up and around the ward” but in March 1863 he suddenly worsened, with bleeding and high fever from infection, and he died on 15 March.

Some details of his medical care are seen here, in a page from the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1870).

Private Rhesa Read Hawkins of Company K, 11th Mississippi Infantry, was 17 years old when he was wounded at Sharpsburg in September 1862. He returned to duty but was captured at Gettysburg in July 1863 and spent the rest of the war a prisoner at Fort Delaware.

After the war, with help from family, he was a partner in the Kopperl & Hawkins general store in Vaiden, MS, seen above in a photograph taken sometime after 1870. Rhesa is in middle of the back row in the picture below, taken at his store in about 1890. Both photographs are online thanks to Ron Collins.

Thanks to Tom Rice for this 1864 photograph of Thomas H. Pressnell, from the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) in St. Paul.

Private Pressnell was in action with his Company – “C” of the First Minnesota Infantry – at Antietam on 17 September 1862, was slightly wounded in the right wrist. He later wrote:

…when we were about half way up the slight rise of ground over which we were retreating [in the West Woods] the Colonel [Sully] gave the order to face and fire with the result that a solid volley from about 300 muskets poured into the following enemy caused a quite appreciable check on their oncoming.

He thought the order to turn and fire was an order to stand and fight. So he reloaded and fired a second round before he found he was alone, the rest of the Company retreating. Colonel Sully was so impressed he later promoted Pressnell to Corporal over the objections of Pressnell’s Captain.

Had I realized that the boys turned back after they fired their volley, I would have been with them, and in the lead. So that foolish act of mine, under excitement, but misconstrued by Sully as bravery, that gave me my start in the line of promotion.