One of My Goals in Writing about Petersburg

Recently I've been devouring Silent Hunters (Theodore P. Savas, ed., Savas Beatie, 2013). In that book, my friend, publisher and fellow lawyer Ted Savas brings to light the stories of half a dozen formidable but otherwise unknown warriors.

For me, singing the unsung is one of the things that writing history is all about. (Why else would anybody write about Peterrsburg? So much there remains unsung.) 

Thomas Gray wrote in his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751):

"Full many a gem of purest ray serene

"The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear;

"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen

"And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

One of my goals in writing about Petersburg is to show the reader that gem and and make him see and smell that flower. 

Take Pvt. Leonidas H. Dean of Company B, the Petersburg Old or 'A' Grays, in the 12th Virginia Infantry, the Petersburg Regiment. Born in 1839, Dean had enlisted on April 19, 1861, the day before the Old Grays departed for Norfolk. Wounded at Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862, he did not make his mark until May 6, 1864, when as a member of the ambulance corps--who had to be the bravest of the brave to retrieve the wounded quickly and thus keep up morale--he distinguished himself by dragging many wounded Federals out of the burning woods. On May 12, 1864, in a melee with IX Corps east of Heth's Salient, Dean picked up a musket and captured a beautiful stand of colors from the 51st Pennsylvania Infantry along with eight Keystoners. 

At Cold Harbor, a wounded Yankee private lay between the lines begging his friends to retrieve him. Dean, who had just narrowly escaped capture during a reconnaissance, asked the officer of the day for permission to fetch in the wounded Federal. The officer refused permission, warning that the Unionists would shoot Dean. The wounded bluecoat overheard this conversation and begged his friends not to fire. Dean dropped his musket, shucked his equipment and slipped out between the lines. The Unionist was suffering so much that he begged Dean to shoot him. Dean brought in the wounded Northerner, who gave his watch and knapsack to Dean in gratitude. 

Map by Hampton Newsome

At home on leave in Petersburg when the Mine exploded early on July 30, 1864, he rushed back to his regiment despite the entreaties of his mother and sisters to remain. Wearing a white calico shirt with red stripes from the knapsack of the Yank he had rescued at Cold Harbor, he reached the 12th in time to join his comrades on their trek to the Crater. 

"Do you want any prisoners?" Dean asked as he passed Brig. Gen. William Mahone while the regiment formed line. The answer was no; Mahone wanted flags, not prisoners. 

Diagram by Hampton Newsome

Company B formed on the right of the 12th. In line there, Dean pointed to a Unionist banner. "I mean to take those colors," he said to the man next to him. As the 12th charged the Federals in the Crater, a ball fired by one of the United States Colored Troops in the Crater mortally wounded Dean in front of a messmate who took Dean's testament and some other personal effects, then rejoined the charge. That night the messmate and another man crawled out and rolled Dean's body into a blanket. With one of them pushing and the other pulling, they slid the corpse into the Confederate works. 

Dean's story is just one of the many in The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2019), winner of the Army Historical Society's 2019 Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History. 

What forename could have suited Dean better than Leonidas?