behind AotW

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.