Map by Hampton Newsome
Rarely can we identify the slayer of any
particular soldier in a Civil War action, but this is possible in the case of
Sgt. Peter Donnelly of the 1st Vermont Heavy Artillery, also known as the 11th Vermont Infantry. The killing
occurred in the course of a disaster for the renowned Vermont Brigade of the
Army of the Potomac’s VI Corps on June 23, 1864, when the Green Mountain State
suffered one of its most terrible blows of the war. On the Weldon Railroad near Globe Tavern six
miles south of Petersburg, Virginia, Mahone’s division of the Army of Northern
Virginia surrounded and captured most of Vermont Brigade’s reinforced picket
line. The Green Mountain Staters lost
about 500 killed, wounded and captured, mostly captured, and mostly from the 4th
Vermont Infantry and the 1st Vermont heavies.[i] Many of the captured died or never recovered
from their ordeals in Southern prison camps.
The inexperienced 1st Vermont heavies, also known as the 11th Vermont
Infantry, had reached Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s army group earlier that
month, summoned from the Washington defenses to replace the terrible losses of
the Overland Campaign.
Sergeant Peter Donnelly of the 1st Vermont
Heavy Artillery’s Company C numbered among the killed. Born in 1842 in Castleton, Vermont, he
enlisted in the 1st Vermont heavies’ Company C on July 17, 1862. He belonged to the battalion of the 1st
Vermont heavies holding open the southern escape route of the reinforced
pickets from the hollow in which they were captured after the Confederates
killed Donnelly and drove back his battalion.
He died unmarried and childless.
None of the surviving Vermonters saw
Donnelly fall. His companions found and
buried him the following morning and a friend marked Donnelly’s grave beside a
gigantic pine tree. In December 1864
Donnelly was exhumed by his stepfather Edward Burns and reburied in St. Mary’s
Cemetery in Fair Haven, Rutland County, Vermont.
During the summer of 1865, Donnelly’s
sister received a letter from the rebel who had encountered and killed her
brother. The Confederate returned to her
a letter her brother had written to her hours before his death. The Southerner offered to return to her
Donnelly’s pocketbook and other effects, and to furnish the particulars of
Donnelly’s death. “He expressed regret
for the deed, but considered it one of the results inseparable from the
fratricidal struggle they had been engaged in, and hoped the people of the
North and South would soon be one in every thought and feeling.”[ii] Donnelly’s sister took the rebel up on his
offer, and he sent her all of Donnelly’s effects, including a copy of Casey’s Tactics
found in Donnelly’s pocket.
The Southerner encountered Donnelly on the
Gurley farm, about a mile east of Globe Tavern. “I supposed him to be a scout
sent out to make a reconnaissance, and as that was my business also, I ordered
him to halt,” the Confederate recalled.
“He defiantly refused the second time and he turned to leave when I
fired and he fell.” A minie ball entered
Donnelly’s abdomen about an inch to the left of his navel and came out just to
the right of the spinal column and just below the right hip.[iii] The rebel approached Donnelly, who could no
longer speak but made signs for water.
The Southerner gave the handsome, well clothed and well-equipped Donnelly
water but he soon died. “I deeply
regretted that I had no time to bury him,” the rebel remembered.[iv] Passing the spot the next day, he noticed
Donnelly’s new grave beside a gigantic pine.
“I am glad you have his body and can forgive me for the deed, as you
well know it might, under the same circumstances, have been my lot to be slain
by him,” wrote the Confederate.
Though he may have disclosed his name to
Donnelly’s sister, it did not make its way into the Vermont newspapers that
reported the story, but they reported some telling details about him. Born and raised near Richmond, Virginia, he
enlisted in the Richmond Grays in April 1861, when the Grays became part of the
12th Virginia Infantry. The 12th
belonged to Weisiger’s brigade of Mahone’s division on June 23, 1864. Known as the Petersburg Regiment because most
of its companies hailed from the Cockade City, the veteran 12th and its
division were establishing themselves as some of the Army of Northern Virginia’s most renowned shock
troops.[v] The Virginian suffered
two severe wounds, one of them at the battle of the Crater about five weeks
after he killed Donnelly. The Virginian
never fully recovered from those wounds.
“His letter seemed to indicate a man of naturally refined and kindly
nature,” the papers reported.[vi]
Who was this Virginian? Three soldiers in the 12th Virginia Infantry connected
with the Richmond Grays were wounded at the Crater. They are the candidates for the man who
killed Sergeant Donnelly. We will
consider them in alphabetical order.
The first candidate for the man who shot
Sergeant Donnelly, Pvt. Edward Burke, joined the Grays as a substitute in 1863,
was seriously wounded at the Crater, and died of his wound August 3, 1864. He cannot be Donnelly’s killer. Burke did not enlist in the Grays, did not
join them in 1861, and died too soon to write to Donnelly’s sister after the
war.
The second candidate, William H. Forde, a
Richmond carpenter, enlisted in the Grays in April 1861 and suffered a wound
that broke a bone in his right forearm at the Crater, resulting in his
discharge later in 1864. Forde is a
better candidate for Donnelly’s killer than Burke, but Forde’s service file
does not contain a record of a second wound.
The third candidate, Second Lt. John E.
Laughton, Jr., a Richmond clerk born in March 1844, enlisted in the Grays as a
private in April 1861 and was wounded on June 25, 1862 at a fight alternately
known as King’s School House or French’s Farm.
He became second lieutenant of the 12th’s Company D, the Lafayette
Guards, on March 3, 1863, and moved up to command Company C (the 12th’s
Company) of the sharpshooter battalion of Weisiger’s brigade in April 1864.[vii] Reconnaissance would have been one of the
duties of the sharpshooters at Gurley farm on June 23, 1864. At the Crater, the brigade sharpshooters were
on the right of the brigade and thus closer to the Crater than was the 12th,
which was on the brigade’s left. An
enemy bullet broke his right arm, then burrowed into one of his lungs.[viii] He recovered sufficiently to surrender at
Appomattox. During the war he suffered
seven wounds.
Lieutenant Laughton was the man who shot Sergeant
Donnelly. Active in veterans affairs
after the Civil War, Laughton died in April 1913 in the District of
Columbia. His wife, Emma Wood Bailey
Laughton and three sons survived him. He
is buried in Shockoe Hill Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.[ix]
The 12th Virginia and its brigade suffered
no loss on June 23, 1864.[x]
Caption: John
E. Laughton, Jr.
Credit:
Virginia Historical Society
[i] David Faris Cross, A Melancholy Affair at the Weldon Railroad: The Vermont Brigade, June 23, 1864
(Shippensburg, PA, 2003), 72, 74.
[ii] “Two Castleton Soldiers,” The Rutland Weekly Herald, October 12,
1865, p. 3, cols. 3-4; “A Courteous Rebel.” The Burlington Free Press,
October 13, 1865, p. 2, col. 4.
[iv] Cross, A Melancholy Affair at the Weldon Railroad, 35; “Two Castleton
Soldiers,” The Rutland Weekly Herald,
October 12, 1865, p. 3, cols. 3-4; “A Courteous Rebel.” The Burlington Free
Press, October 13, 1865, p. 2, col. 4.
[v] Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study In Command (3 vols.) (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942-1944),
3:xxxviii.
[vi] “Two Castleton Soldiers,” The Rutland Weekly Herald, October 12,
1865, p. 3, cols. 3-4; “A Courteous Rebel.” The Burlington Free Press,
October 13, 1865, p. 2, col. 4.
[vii] John E. Laughton, “The
Sharpshooters Of Mahone’s Brigade: A
Paper Read by Captain John E. Laughton, Jr., Before Pickett Camp, Confederate
Veterans, Richmond, Va.” Southern Historical Society Papers XXII
(1894), 98-105.
[viii] Statement of John E. Laughton, No.
55, September 19, 1903, Crater Collection, American Civil War Museum, Richmond,
Virginia.
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