Thursday, November 4, 2021

A Pleasant Time Talking about the 39th Illinois at Kankakee Valley Civil War Round Table

We had a pleasant time discussing the 39th Illinois Veteran Volunteers ("Yates Phalanx") at the meeting of the Kankakee Valley Civil War Round Table last night, November 3, 2021, in the Bradley, Illlinois Public Library.  Ted Linton, who is related to five members of the 39th, drove all the way from Minneapolis to hear my talk.  (Ted has helped me significantly with my current project, a history of Grant's second offensive at Petersburg, June 20-July 1, 1864.)

The 39th was a Fighting 300 Regiment, having lost more than 10 percent of its complement or 130 men to death in battle or from wounds.  It was called the "Yates Phalanx" because Governor Yates of Illinois pulled strings to get it into Federal service after Illinois' complement was filled.

My talk focused on the 39th at Fussell's Mill, about 12 miles southeast of Richmond on August 16, 1864.  A charge in which the regiment participated broke the Confederate line and briefly threatened Richmond before the Southerners sealed the breach.  The 39's color bearer, Pvt. Henry Hardenbergh of Company G, was wounded in the shoulder but picked himself up and advanced, capturing the colors of the 10th Alabama after killing its color sergeant.  He was awarded the Medal of Honor and a battlefield commission but they arrived posthumously because a Rebel sharpshooter picked him off on August 28 in the Bermuda Hundred Lines.  He lies in Poplar Grove National Cemetery, about six miles south by southwest from Petersburg. 

Fussell's Mill was part of Grant's fourth offensive at Petersburg, which I described in my book The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864.  The dust jacket is based on a Keith Rocco painting of Hardenbergh in the 39th's charge at Fussell's Mill on August 1864.  The book is available from Savas Beatie



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