12th Virginia Calendar: May 12, 1864, Spotsylvania, Heth's Salient, Pvt. Leonidas H. Dean Captures 51st Pennsylvania Infantry's Flag

Escaping from the Fire in the Woods--"Wilderness" by Alfred Rudolph Waud

Library of Congress

Ambulance Corps men had to be the bravest of the brave.  They had to pick up the wounded under fire, lest the unwounded become demoralized.  Pvt. Leonidas H. Dean of the 12th's Company B, the Petersburg Old Grays, a member of the ambulance corps, had distinguished himself on May 6, 1864 in the Wilderness, dragging many wounded Yankees out of the burning woods, but he could not rescue them all.  Some perished in the flames.

Flag of the 51st Pennsylvania Infantry

On May 12, east of Heth's Salient at Spotsylvania, Weisiger's brigade of Mahone's division and Lane's brigade of Cadmus Wilcox's division engaged Orlando Willcox's division and Federal batteries.  Weisiger's brigade and Lane's brigade captured flags and prisoners in an enormous melee.  Dean grabbed a musket and captured a beautiful stand of colors from the 51st Pennsylvania Infantry along with eight Keystoners.[1]  During the following months Dean would continue to distinguish himself and justify being named after the Spartan king who perished at Thermopylae.

Map by Hampton Newsome

---

[1] OR 36, 3:802; Statement of Napoleon Bonaparte Simmons, Notes of St. George Tucker Coalter Bryan; John Horn, 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 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History, 232, 249.