Caption: Flag
of the Petersburg City Guard, Company A, 12th Virginia Infantry
Credit:
Virginia Historical Society
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Flags of the 12th Virginia Infantry ("Petersburg Regiment"), Part 1: Banner of the Petersburg City Guard, Company A
Friday, October 11, 2019
Faces of the 12th Virginia Infantry ("Petersburg Regiment"): The Man Who Shot Sergeant Donnelly
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.
Saturday, October 5, 2019
Faces of the 12th Virginia Infantry ("Petersburg Regiment"): John Pegram May, Killed at Second Manassas
Caption: John Pegram May
Credit:
National Archives
Born in 1829, John Pegram May was a Petersburg lawyer. In 1852, he raised the Petersburg City Guard, which at the time of John Brown's raid in 1859 formed part of the 39th Regiment Virginia State Militia. The
City Guard served in the security detail at Charles Town, Virginia, for Brown's
hanging on December 2, 1859. By April 20, 1861, the City Guard formed part of the Petersburg Battalion, which departed Petersburg that day to help capture Gosport Navy Yard near Norfolk, Virginia. By that time, May had three brothers in the City Guard. In Norfolk the battalion formed the nucleus of the 12th Virginia Infantry, also known as the Petersburg Regiment. May was a very conscientious officer who would not apply for leave as the evacuation approached in early 1862. On May 1 of that year he was elected major of the Petersburg Regiment. On May 7, he departed Norfolk for Petersburg with a battalion of the regiment, arriving next day.
At Second Manassas, command of the 12th Virginia devolved upon May after its colonel moved up to brigade command when the brigadier was wounded after crossing the Manassas-Sudley Road. The regiment reached the woods’ edge at
Henry House Hill’s southern base. There,
facing the Federal army’s extreme left, the 12th halted. Its brigade soon entered the trees, where it confronted Regulars from Sykes’
division. The Unionists were
hurrying into line fifty yards away. The Petersburg Regiment's men fired first. The 12th’s
soldiers received deadly enemy musketry while lying down on Henry House
Hill’s slope. The Federal volleys
devastated the regiment. The Regulars
killed two color bearers and another member of the color guard. Enemy bullets also killed May and wounded two of his brothers, one of them mortally. The only
three captains present with the 12th went down wounded. Command of the regiment fell to a first lieutenant.
Monday, September 23, 2019
"Little Extras" Virginia's Cities and Counties Provided Their Soldiers
Caption: Captain
Nathaniel Harris’ Sketch of the Petersburg Regiment’s Battle Flag
Credit: George
S. Bernard Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Dr. William Glenn Robertson, author of The
First Battle of Petersburg, thought The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil
War: A History of the 12th Virginia
Infantry from John Brown’s Hanging to Appomattox “especially useful
in delineating the hometown support system that sustained the regiment
throughout the war.” I thought that justified concentrating the material on the hometown support system into the form of an article.
Soldiers began referring to the 12thVirginia Infantry as “the Petersburg Regiment” as early as May 1861 because
most of the regiment’s companies haled from the Cockade City.[1] The 12th belonged to Mahone’s (later
Weisiger’s) brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia. The Petersburg Regiment was unusually
literate and its soldiers left a small library of diaries, letters and memoirs
which document many aspects of soldier life, including the system developed to
supplement their rations.
Living was easy for the 12th Virginia
Infantry’s men during garrison duty in Norfolk from April 1861 until May
1862. They daily drew as much beef,
coffee and sugar as they wanted. Once a
week they received a day’s worth of bacon, rice and molasses. Boxes of delicacies from home such as eggs and
pound cake supplemented their rations. “We
have fried ham & eggs every day for dinner,” wrote First Sgt. James Edward
“Eddie” Whitehorne of Greeneville County in the 12th’s Company F, the Huger
Grays.[2]
Messes employed cooks and dining room
servants. Most of the men could afford
to purchase their own provisions and scorn government issue.
Things changed after Norfolk’s evacuation
in early May 1862. “We could not get any
eatables and suffered more than we had done before,” recalled Sgt. James Eldred
Phillips of the 12th’s Company G, the Richmond Grays.[3] In July, after the fighting around Richmond, the
men lacked cooking utensils and mixed their flour in wagon buckets, baking it
on smooth rocks collected in the fields. They had a monotonous diet. “We do not get anything but salt bacon and
flour,” Sergeant Whitehorne groused. “I
would give anything on earth to get some vegetables.”[4]
Before July’s end, the situation improved
for most of the regiment. Commissioned
by the City of Petersburg, Capt. Nathaniel Harrison started making trips from
Petersburg to Mahone’s brigade driving a wagon loaded with “good things for the
boys,” recalled Sgt. George S. Bernard of the 12th’s second Company I, the
Meherrin Grays or “Herrings,” which replaced the Hargrave Blues in the spring
of 1862.[5]
The Commissioner’s full name was
probably Nathaniel Cole Harrison, who had a son, Pvt. William Henry Harrison,
in the 12th Virginia’s Company A, the Petersburg City Guard.[6]
Caption:
William Henry Harrison, probably the son of Petersburg's Commissioner
Credit: The
Progress-Index (Petersburg, Va.), April 30, 1961
Captain Harrison brought food and clothing
from citizens of Petersburg to their friends and relatives in Mahone’s brigade,
including soldiers who did not belong to Petersburg companies. The townspeople adopted the Norfolk Juniors,
the Petersburg Regiment’s Company H. Besides
any goods that Harrison might bring to individual Norfolk men from friends or
relatives in Petersburg, the Cockade City sent shipments of food and clothing
for the whole company. The Richmond
Grays fared at least as well. Less than
10 miles from their hometown, they could expect friends and relatives to
deliver packages in person as well as through a commissioner.
Commissioners from Brunswick and
Greensville counties also began making trips to the 12th. Greensville bought an ambulance which shuttled
back and forth between the county and Mahone’s brigade once a week, keeping the
Huger Grays and the Herrings well supplied with vegetables and fresh meat. First Lieutenant Joseph Richard Manson of the
Herrings received more fresh vegetables than he could eat and distributed the
surplus to his friends. Enough meat
arrived to feed the Herrings for two or three days at a time. “This enables the men to sell their rations
which helps out the poor soldier’s small pay and enables him to send some home
to his family,” wrote Manson.[7]
The regiment’s conscripts from
southwest Virginia fared poorly. Distance
prevented the commissioners of their counties from frequently visiting these
troops. “They look so dejected,” Lieutenant
Manson wrote. “You can tell one as far as you can see him. They are so troubled
that they become fit subjects for disease and so many of the poor fellows will
die in camp....”[8]
After the privations of the Maryland
Campaign, Captain Harrison arrived at the 12th’s camp near Fredericksburg on
December 22. He drove in with a wagon
piled high with boxes and bundles. “No
children...ever examined their stockings in the morning with greater glee and
frolic than did ‘the boys’ exhibit as they gathered around Mr. Harrison’s
wagon, listening for their names to be called out,” Pvt. Westwood A. Todd of
the Petersburg Riflemen, the 12th’s Company E, recalled.[9] Each box made someone’s heart glad. The wagon carried shoes, shirts, drawers,
socks and soap for the Petersburg men, the Norfolk troops and any soldiers of
the regiment’s three other companies whose relatives in Petersburg remembered
them. The extra clothing turned the tide
in the struggle against lice. The wagon also brought a heavy load of liquor for
the Petersburg men. They kept the
alcohol to themselves, guzzling it next day.
In the regiment’s camp near United States
Mine Ford in March 1863, the men went on short rations—a quarter pound of bacon
and a pound and a half of meal or flour. Boxes of food still arrived from friends and
relatives. One came for Sergeant John F.
Sale of the Norfolk Juniors in mid-March. Manson got something every time Harrison
reached the 12th’s camp. Greensville’s
commissioner, on the other hand, failed to satisfy at least one of his county’s
soldiers. “I dont see why Col S[pratley]
cant bring us boxes,” groused Sergeant Whitehorne. “Mr H[arrison] brought Billy Mitchell a bundle
of nic nacs. I tell you we did certainly enjoy it....”[10] Colonel Spratley may have been related to the
first of the 12th’s soldiers to see combat while a member of the regiment, Pvt.
William W. Spratley of the 12th’s first Company I, the Hargrave Blues. Spratley
helped man one of CSS Patrick Henry
guns in the battle of Hampton Roads.[11]
After Chancellorsville, the miserable Confederate
supply system would not permit Lee to subsist his army in northern Virginia
much longer. Petersburg and its adjacent
counties did their best to supplement the 12th’s short rations. Their
commissioners visited the army monthly and brought their men “car loads of
provisions &c,” wrote Whitehorne, who remained unhappy with Greensville’s
commissioner. “I haven't had enough to
eat since the battle,” he complained on May 13.[12] Six days had elapsed since his company’s last
mouthful of meal.
The countryside surrounding the regiment’s
camp lay destitute in December. “Our
prospects are very hard for a Christmas,” Sergeant Sale wrote on December 23.
“We can procure nothing scarcely here and what we can the most enormous prices
are charged for them.”[13]
But 10 wagons were rolling up from
Petersburg. They arrived on a very cold
Christmas Eve. Almost every soldier with
relatives in Petersburg received a bundle. The townspeople forwarded parcels smuggled
through enemy lines from Norfolk. Sale
received a package containing boots, a suit of clothes, a hat, underclothes,
socks, soap and thread, among other items. “Everything suited to a fraction fitting as if
they were made for me, as well as could-have been done had I been where they
were made,” he commented.[14]
The boxes for the Petersburg troops far
outdid the bundles for the other men and contained “anything you might name not
forgetting a liberal supply of Liquor,” wrote Sale.[15] The Petersburg soldiers did not wait for
Christmas but promptly got drunk.
On June 18, 1864, the regiment returned to Petersburg
and occupied its fortification two miles south of town. That night the soldiers enjoyed a barrel of coffee and
copious crackers sent by the townspeople.
Phillips, now a first lieutenant, recalled of June 19, “Eatibles was
being brought out all day.”[16]
Captain Harrison paid the regiment his
last recorded visit on June 24, riding out to Wilcox’s farm with what Sergeant Sale
termed “little extras.”[17] Local bakers occasionally came out to the
lines to peddle their pies. Most of
regiment’s men could go home for little extras.
Men from other cities or counties had the option of visiting friends or
relatives in the Cockade City.[18] With the Petersburg Regiment so close to its
hometown, it did not require a commissioner any longer.
COPYRIGHT JOHN HORN
[1] William Mahone to Francis H.
Smith, May 8, 18 61,
Preston Library, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia; James E.
Whitehorne to Sister, June
9, 18 61, James E. Whitehorne Papers, Library of Virginia (LV),
Richmond, Virginia; “Casualties In The Petersburg
Regiment, Correspondence of the Petersburg Express, ‘On the Wing,’ Below Richmond, June 2d, 1862,” Bird
Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia.
[2] Whitehorne to Sister, October 15, 18 61.
[3] James Eldred Phillips, “Sixth
Corporal,” James Eldred Phillips Papers, Virginia Historical Society (VHS),
Richmond, Virginia, 5.
[4] Whitehorne to Sister, July 15,
1862.
[5] George S. Bernard Notebook, George
S. Bernard Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, 59.
[7] Letter, Joseph R. Manson to
Mother, August 9, 1862, The Lewis Leigh Collection—Book 41, #112, U. S. Army
Heritage Educational Center (AHEC), Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.
[8] Joseph R. Manson to Mother, July
27, 1862, The Lewis Leigh Collection—Book 41, AHEC.
[9] Westwood A. Todd, “Reminiscences
of the War Between the States April 1861-July 1865,” Southern Historical Collection, 80.
[10] Whitehorne to Sister, April 14,
1863.
[12] Whitehorne to Sister, May 14,
1863.
[13] John F. Sale to Aunt, December 23,
1863, John F. Sale Papers, LV.
[14] Sale to Uncle, December 28, 1863.
[15] Ibid.
[17] John F. Sale Diary, June 24, 1864,
John F. Sale Papers.
[18] Sale to Aunt, December 25, 1864.
Thursday, September 19, 2019
Faces of the 12th Virginia Infantry ("Petersburg Regiment"): William W. Tayleure, Reached Appomattox though Wounded Twice
Caption: William Watson Tayleure
Credit: Confederate Veteran, Vol. 4, No. 4
(April 1897), 170
At the battle of the Wilderness on May 6, 1864, he watched as the Petersburg Regiment's Color Ensign Benjamin Harrison May tried to stop the firing from the 41st Virginia that wounded Lt. Gen. James Longstreet. “Ben May stood upon a stump, with his lithe, graceful form, a smile upon his face, waving our battle-flag until it was recognized,” recalled Tayleure.
As combat began at Cumberland Church April 7, 1865, skirmishers from Miles’ division drove in the Petersburg Riflemen picketing the front of the 12th Virginia. An enemy bullet nicked Tayleure, the only man wounded in the 12th that day.
At Appomattox on April 9, whispers spread the report that Lee had surrendered
the army. The troops were thunderstruck. “We were profoundly convinced that Lee
would ultimately triumph in spite of all odds,” remembered Tayleure. But the reports proved true
.
On April 10 the Petersburg Regiment drew rations from the Unionists. “Nothing so well became the conquerors as their generous treatment of
their late adversaries,” remembered Tayleure. “Rations were promptly and freely
issued to our starving men, and in many instances money was given them to help
on their way homeward.
Tayleure noticed a distinct chill in relations
between North and South after Booth’s assassination of Lincoln. He moved back to
New York and managed public housing in South Brooklyn. There he may have rubbed
shoulders with his old comrades from the 7th New York National Guard.
Friday, September 13, 2019
Faces of the 12th Virginia Infantry ("Petersburg Regiment"): George Morrison, Wounded in the Wilderness
Caption: George Josiah Edwin Gray Morrison
Credit: Carol
Morrison, “George Joseph Morrison,” findagrave.com, May 26, 2017
Born in 1836, George Josiah Edwin Gray Morrison enlisted in the Petersburg City Guard, the 12th Virginia's Company A, as a private on June 11, 1861. He had been a clerk. Morrison was promoted to Sergeant on May 1, 1862. He suffered a severe right shoulder wound in the Wilderness on May 6, 1864. Nonetheless, he surrendered with the Petersburg Regiment at Appomattox. After the war, he went into the dry goods business in the Cockade City with James Edward "Eddie" Whitehorne, who had served as First Sergeant of the 12th's Company F, the Huger Grays.
Monday, September 2, 2019
Faces of the 12th Virginia Infantry ("Petersburg Regiment"): Augustus S. Andrews, Wounded at Bradshaw's Farm
Caption: Augustus Spencer Andrews
Credit: John
Early Andrews, “Augustus Spencer Andrews,” findagrave.com, May 26, 2017
On April 30, 1862, Augustus Spencer Andrews enlisted as a private in the 12th Virginia's Company K, the Archer Rifles, at Craney Island near the mouth of Elizabeth River near Norfolk. He was born December 21, 1841 in Chesterfield County, Virginia, across the Appomattox River from Petersburg. The Archer Rifles had been raised in May 1861 at Petersburg and were said to include every kind of man "from a Methodist preacher down to a horse thief." On May 8, 1864, at the beginning of the fighting around Spotsylvania, Andrews suffered a slight gunshot wound to the head at Bradshaw's Farm. He surrendered with the Petersburg Regiment at Appomattox. He died January 29, 1922.
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