Rebel Hospitals, Part 1

Earlier this week, I was contacted through this website by Bill Miller, (William J.), who has written extensively about the war, most of it focused on the campaigns fought in Virginia, where he now lives. For a new project he is working on, Bill was hoping I could supply him with some information about a couple of men who were with the 46th at the Battle of Cedar Mountain, August 9, 1862. The soldiers he mentioned were Cpl. James A. Shipp of Company K, Pvt. John S. Smith, Co. D., and Captain William Foulk, Co. B.

All three of these men were wounded and captured during the fighting that day. From my research in their pension files I knew that. I also knew the nature of their wounds, and the ultimate result. Smith and Shipp were both discharged for their injuries the following winter. Foulk returned to the regiment after a nine-month absence, was promoted, based on seniority, to lt. colonel, and late in 1863 was detached to command a hospital. I had never looked for nor noticed the particulars about the medical treatment they received after the battle, which had to have been provided by the Confederacy.

A total of thirty-three 46th soldiers were wounded and captured at Cedar Mountain. Such was the fate of only one man in each of Companies E, G, H and I, and but two each in Companies A and B. But, Company C lost six, D lost eight, and F seven. The initial rolls listed seventeen additional men as wounded and/or captured who were in fact killed during the fighting or, as was learned when information was exchanged with the rebels, were never accounted for and remain to this day missing in action.

One of the questions that came to mind after talking with Bill was this: how well did these wounded and captured men make out? A total of fifty-seven men in the regiment either died on the field at Cedar Mountain, were missing and never accounted for, or died of their wounds prior to the Battle of Antietam a month later. Of those, eighteen were thought to have fallen into rebel hands. In one case, that was a mistake. Pvt. Franklin Arter of Co. K in fact died in a Union hospital in Culpeper the day after the battle. One other, 1st Sgt. William Gracie, was known to have died at the Belle Isle prison in Richmond on September 4.

As time passed, the powers that be concluded that nine of the remaining number had been killed, but their bodies had gone unidentified. Still, there were seven others who remained “missing.” When the fighting ended on August 9, the Confederates occupied the field. It would be reasonable to assume that as they gathered up the wounded, many of those who were taken behind the lines were very seriously hurt, and that some would not survive. If we also assume that about half of the men later listed as killed or fate unknown failed to make it to the rebel hospitals, then it would also be fair to conclude the other half died either on the way to hospitals well behind the lines or shortly after their arrival. If they were the only member of their unit being transported in a particular ambulance train, their identity would have been easily lost, if ever known. Still, if these seven or eight men were among those who made it to a rebel hospital, it would mean the survival rate of those who got there was over 80%, pretty respectable in an era of poor sanitation and little understanding of infection.

Many of the wounds these men survived were very serious. Captain Owen Luckenbach’s lower left leg was shattered and would be taken off. His companion, Robert Williams, had been shot through the liver. George Hoffmaster had been shot through the side. John McEliece was hit twice, one breaking his right clavicle, the other hitting his left hand. In all, thirteen of these wounded and captured soldiers would be discharged for the wounds received at Cedar Mountain, the last of them in April 1863. Five others served out their original terms of enlistment, while eleven volunteered as veterans in January 1864, and served to the end of the war. Next time, thanks to Bill Miller, we will get a glimpse of the life experienced by these men while they were under the care of the rebels.

The man who went all the way: Alpheus Williams

Alpheus Williams was born into a well-to-do Connecticut family in 1810. Orphaned at the age of seventeen, he inherited the modern-day equivalent of $1,700,000. He used it to attend Yale College, tour Europe, where he met the “Citizen King,” Louis Philippe, and, (after sailing on a Navy ship to Mexico with his brother), resettling in the new boom town of Detroit, Michigan, where he spent the rest of his life.

Williams was active in the civic life of early Detroit, serving as a member of the school board, judge and postmaster, publisher and banker. He was also active in the local militia, serving as a lieutenant colonel of a Michigan regiment in the Mexican War, and leading a reorganized militia company in the late 1850s. His prominence in such matters led to his early appointment as a brigadier general in the volunteer army of the United States shortly after the Civil War began. The facts that he did not politic in army circles, failed to seek publicity for his efforts on the battlefield, was relegated to serve with Nathaniel Banks, and not in the Army of the Potomac, coupled with the fact that he was a Democrat known to have a taste for whisky, meant that he would never muster the support in Congress needed to advance in rank to major general, despite the recommendations of most of the men he served under, including Henry Slocum and William T. Sherman.

Williams began the war sleeping in comfortable homes. But he quickly learned to be with his men, sleeping on the ground just as they did. He was a familiar sight in all the camps of the regiments who served under him, chewing on unlit cigars, peering from under the brim of his hat through reading glasses at his maps, always attentive to the things his men needed.

At the battles of First Winchester and Cedar Mountain, riding literally in the company of Nathaniel Banks, he could only respond to orders, and never had the opportunity to show any initiative. At Antietam, he was saddled with several regiments that were so green they could not advance over a fence, a situation made far worse when their field officers were killed. When the corps commander, Major General Joseph Mansfield, fell early in the fighting, Williams succeeded to corps command, and he did a credible job maintaining the pressure of the attack on the Confederate left, and building a line that withstood the last Confederate counterattacks.

Perhaps Williams’ finest hour came at Chancellorsville, when his division stopped the advance of Jackson’s Corps on May 2, after the Eleventh Corps had collapsed, and held that line during the entire morning of May 3, until he was forced to retire for want of ammunition.

He and his men were sent west to relieve Chattanooga in September 1863, and stayed there for the rest of the war, fighting with Sherman in the Atlanta Campaign, the March to the Sea, and the Campaign in the Carolinas. During much of that time, he again led the corps. The severest fighting they saw was on July 20, 1864 at Peach Tree Creek, just north of Atlanta. After riding at the head of the corps all through the Carolinas in 1865, and during the battle of Bentonville, he was replaced by Major General Joseph Mower, whom Sherman preferred for his aggressive shows of initiative.

Williams returned, at the request of all of the brigade commanders, to lead his old division for the little that was left of the war: Johnston’s surrender of his army, the march back to Washington, and the Grand Review of Grant’s and Sherman’s armies. He finally received his second star, by brevet (honorary), at long last having the rank of major general. His post-war career included stints as a military supervisor in Arkansas, minister to San Salvador, gubernatorial candidate in Michigan and finally as an elected congressman from Michigan’s first district, and the state’s only Democrat in Congress. He died of a stroke in the US Capitol on December 21, 1878.

He is the only corps commander at Gettysburg without a statue standing in his honor. Williams Avenue, near Culps Hill, is named for him, but it is a pathway with no monuments along it. No Union general appears to be more forgotten or ignored by the historians and students of the Civil War Era than “Ol’ Pap” Williams. His hometown, on the other hand, did not forget him, although the push to erect a proper memorial did not begin until he had been gone for thirty years, and the centennial of his birth approached. The magnificent equestrian statue pictured above, was designed and built in 1921 by Henry Shrady, who also did the monument to General Grant in front of the US Capitol. Williams’ statue stands in Belle Isle Park in the middle of the Detroit River, in the city he called home, far away from the battlefields where Williams and his men fought and won the American Civil War.