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Again, Bill, thank YOU for this marvelous view of these soldiers lives. In reading about George Hobson, could you possibly tell me what is meant by "broom squad"?
Thanks.
__________________ Thea
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Born in Connecticut. Graduated from Bowdoin College. Planter in Union Parish, La. Captain, Co.A, 6th La. Inf.: 4th June 1861. Major: spring 1862. Killed at Winchester on 25th May 1862. Cornelia McDonald, a Winchester resident, viewed his body: “I could not at first believe he was dead – so natural were his features and so easy and restful was his posture. He was dressed in a beautiful new uniform, grey and buff; a splendid red silk scarf was around his waist, and his sword was lying by his side. He was very tall and slender with regular features and dark hair – very fine soft hair – his face was noble looking and must have been very handsome. I took one of his hands (such small white hands). It was still warm and it was difficult to believe he was not asleep. No wound could be seen, and not a drop of blood stained his clothing. The poor soldier who watched him, and who wept constantly, showed me a small gun shot wound in his chin hidden by the long jet black beard. But that was his death wound….Betty and I wept over him tears of sincere sorrow, the more so as we thought that perhaps ours and those of the poor soldier would be all that would fall on his lonely bier. I wiped the pale forehead, and smoothed the hair and the man arranged his dress with some articles we had brought. In the afternoon I brought some white roses and laid them in his cold hand. By his side sat four or five rough looking soldiers, men of his regiment. They, his regiment, had raised money enough among them to buy an elegant metallic coffin for him, and were about to put him into it. That evening he was buried, and a small board placed at his head was inscribed: “Arthur McArthur, aged 27”. We planted some violets and lilies of the valley at his head.” [McDonald, A Woman’s Civil War, pp.53-54; Gannon, Irish Rebels, Confederate Tigers, p.330; family papers are held at Bowdoin College]
Born in c.1832. Son of Governor Henry Wise. Educated at Bloomington, Indiana, and at William & Mary, where he read law. Secretary to the U.S. legations in Berlin and Paris for about six years. Returned to Virginia in 1857: “he at first entered upon the practice of law; but although he secured reasonable employment, and was thoroughly trained in common, civil, and international law, he found the practice irksome, and lacking in excitement.” He then became editor of the Richmond Enquirer, and developed the habit of challenging every critic of his father to a duel. This resulted in his fighting eight duels in less than two years, a practice which baffled his younger brother: “I would read, and read again, the publications leading to these fearful duels; and for the life of me I could not comprehend what there was in them to drive men to seek each other’s lives. I could not conceive the mental or moral processes by which my sweet brother, who never quarreled with anybody, could bring himself, without anger, to shoot at another man with deadly intent. And when he returned, laughing at the eagerness of my embraces and welcome, and apparently bearing no ill-will towards anybody or anything on earth, and when I saw him say his prayers at night, and go to church, and mingle in gay society, just as he had done before, the mystery only deepened.” This policy caused Wise to become extremely unpopular in some circles: “the sins of passion and the heated arena were regarded as the coolly planned and deliberately designed crimes of a moral monster, who had never felt the emotion of pity or love for his brother man. Intelligent and honourable persons believed that all the young man’s instincts were cruel; that his hatreds were capricious and implacable; that his nature was that of the tiger, thirsting for blood; his conscience paralysed or warped by a terrible moral disease.” What made this fondness for duelling the more remarkable was that he was a terrible shot: “my brother most certainly seemed to bear a charmed life, for no one ever hit him in these many encounters. On the other hand, it was no mystery to me that he hit nobody himself, for I knew that a more execrable shot never went afield…I saw enough of his bad marksmanship to know that if he hit anybody it would be by accident…” On 28th January 1858 Edmund Ruffin noted in his diary: “For the last few days the most interesting subject with everybody, is the fight which took place between the son of Gov. Wise & [Robert] Ridgway, the editor of the Whig, & the subsequent reports of the parties, published in the newspapers…” In December of the same year Ruffin wrote that Wise had opposed the nomination of John Letcher for Governor of Virginia “in the most indecent manner”. And on 16th August 1859 he wrote: “Was much concerned to hear from [F.G. Ruffin], confidentially, that a duel is impending between young Wise, the editor of the Enquirer, & Wm. Old, the editor of the Examiner, for their writings growing out of the letter of Gov. Wise, lately exposed. The former, as well as his father, is a professional duelist, & a bravo, bully & designed murderer upon system, & calculation. I hope that the son may yet meet the bloody doom, which he has so well deserved long ago, & the father suffer the remorse that will follow the using his son as his partisan & bravo, & by both precept & example, to make him a professional bully for political gain, & a murderer in intention, if not yet in deed.” Captain, Co.A, 46th Va. Inf.: August 1861. Killed at Roanoke Island on 8th February 1862. “Captain Wise, scorning the protection of the trees behind which, by his command, his men were concealed, passed back and forth along his attenuated line, counseling the men to keep cool and fire close. In such a position, under the fire of two regiments concentrated upon a single company, his conduct was almost suicidal. It was not long before his sword arm fell helpless by his side, fractured near the wrist by a minie-ball. Untying a handkerchief about his neck, he bandaged the wounded limb, laughingly remarking that he was fortunate it was no more; but he had scarcely resumed command of his men when he fell mortally wounded.” His brother wrote that, “when, in the Capitol of Virginia at Richmond, I gazed for the last time in the cold, calm face; when I saw the black pageant which testified to the general mourning as they bore him to his last resting-place in beautiful Hollywood, I began to realize as never before that war is not all brilliant deeds and glory, but a gaunt, heartless wolf….” [Wise, The End Of An Era, pp.89-97, 188-189; Cooke, Wearing Of The Gray, pp.147-155; Scarborough, The Diary Of Edmund Ruffin, I, pp.151, 252, 329-330.] A photo of an epaulette taken from his body can be seen at http://home.earthlink.net/~sandfidler1/page9.htm
Last edited by bill_torrens; 03-20-2005 at 07:45 AM.
Born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in October 1832 [or 1834]. Son of Col. Augustine Leftwich, a tobacco planter & exporter, and Ann Elizabeth Williams Clark. As a young man he travelled on a whaling veseel to New Zealand, where he spent time on a sheep ranch. He returned to sea as first mate on a Baltimore clipper; in Paris he attended the Ecole Polytechnique and studied civil engineering. He returned to Virginia in 1850 and became the Australian agent for his father’s business. In 1860 he was studying at St Joseph’s College, Mobile. 2nd Lieut., Latham’s battery: 23rd April 1861. Commanded a gun in Capt. G.S. Davidson's section of artillery at 1st Manassas. Davidson reported that "From this position you ordered my second piece, under Lieut. Clark Leftwich, to advance along the turnpike and up the Sudley road. He accordingly took position about one hundred yards east of the Sudley road, bearing nearly five hundred yards north from the stone house of Mathews. From this position [he] opened upon the enemy, advancing along the Sudley road, about one thousand yards distant. He inflicted considerable injury upon them, and maintained his position until our infantry had retired. He then retired to a hill south of the turnpike, and about one thousand yards distant from and west of Robinson's house. Here he remained, firing upon the enemy until he had expended all ammunition from his limber chest. The horses of the caisson having run off, Lieutenant Leftwich came to ask me for ammunition, which I being unable to furnish him, he proceeded to the Lewis house, where he rejoined and reported to Captain Latham." Major & C.S. to Gnl. McCulloch: 1862. Commended by Earl Van Dorn for his performance at Elkhorn Tavern. Severely wounded in lung at Farmington, near Corinth, Miss., on 9th May 1862. Commended for performance at Thompson’s Station, Tenn., on 5th March 1863. Chief of Ordnance at the Montgomery Arsenal in April 1863. Later served in the 38th Virginia Light Art. Bn. Resigned on 27th April 1864, in order to accept a commission as Lieut. in the Navy. On 13th May 1864 he was captured on board the C.S.S. Minnie. One of “The Immortal 600”. Paroled for exchange at Charleston Harbour on 15 December 1864. Requested reinstatement to the army on 21st February 1865: “I again entered the army and commanded the last pickets of Lee’s army at Lynchburg.” The Confederate Veteran of June 1897 has two photos of "the coat worn by Maj. Clark Leftwich, of Virginia, who 'fired the first shot in the first battle of Manassas and commanded the last picket post of Lee's army at Lynchburg'. Holes in [the] breast and back of the coat indicate where a bullet tore it and passed through his lungs at the battle of Corinth. Maj. Leftwich still survives and is raising tobacco for the Lynchburg market." Married Susan Jackson in c.1866. Had no children. Post-war proprietor of several tobacco factories. Retired to a farm in Amherst Co., Virginia Died on 14th June 1907. Buried in Westminster Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Lynchburg. [Joslyn, Biographical Roster of the Immortal 600, p.168; Moore, The Richmond Fayette, Hampden Thomas, and Blount’s Lynchburg Artillery, p.160.]
Last edited by bill_torrens; 03-22-2005 at 08:42 AM.
Born in Martinsburg, Va., on 6th July 1806. Graduate of Georgetown College. Served in the Mexican War. Lawyer in Martinsburg. U.S.Congressman from 1851-59. Appointed U.S. Minister to France in 1859. Upon his return to America in 1861 he was incarcerated in Fort Lafayette for 4 months before being exchanged for Congressman Ely [who had been captured at 1st Manassas]. As Jefferson Davis stated to the C.S. Congress on 18th November 1861:- "When Mr Faulkner...returned in good faith to Washington to settle his accounts and fulfill all the obligations into which he had entered, he was perfidiously arrested and imprisoned in New York, where he now is." V.A.D.C. to Stonewall Jackson: 28th December 1861. Lt-Colonel & A.A.G. to same: 15th November 1862. As Henry Kyd Douglas put it:- "This was manifestly wrong. Colonel Faulkner had had no military experience whatever, and was not qualified for the place, especially as the senior Adjutant General over [Sandie] Pendleton, who had just been made Major and was and would continue to be the head of the General's staff. It is true Colonel Faulkner was appointed for the sole purpose of preparing General Jackson's neglected reports, and intended to leave all other official work as A.A.G. to Major Pendleton. But Pendleton was entitled in every way to the promotion...Faulkner had never been in any of Jackson's battles...it was to him, at best, a perfunctory business. The reports, therefore, are very unsatisfactory and do both General Jackson and Colonel Faulkner great injustice...These reports were not yet finished when Jackson died. Colonel Faulkner furnished a rough copy of the last one, without the usual perfunctory appendix with regard to the staff, and then hastened his own resignation from the army. In fact, after the war he very truthfully insisted that whatever part he had taken in "the late Rebellion" was a very little one." Despite Douglas's comments, Henderson felt that Faulkner did a good job on the reports. Lt-Colonel & A.A.G. to Ewell. Campbell Brown described him as “useless but highly ornamental – suave & smooth to a painful extent….after Gettysburg, Faulkner (who had remained at home to recruit his strength after the fatigues of Winchester) resigned on account of his health & was quiet as a mouse until we gained some temporary advantage next spring – when he again loomed up in search of a commission, but immediately subsided on our being defeated somewhere else.” The Englishman Fitzgerald Ross met Faulkner shortly before Gettysburg: "He assured me that though he was a large slaveholder himself, and always lived amongst slaveholders, yet he had never in the course of his life even heard of a grown up slave being whipped. He said, too, that a man guilty of cruelty towards his slaves would incur such odium as he would never survive." He resigned on 23rd July 1863. Post-war lawyer and member of U.S.H.R. Died near Martinsburg on 1st November 1884. Buried in Norbourne Cemetery, Berkeley Co., W.Va. [Jones, Campbell Brown’s Civil War, p.195; Douglas, I Rode With Stonewall, pp.205-206; Krick, Staff Officers In Gray, p.125; Henderson, Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War, II, pp.379-380.]
Last edited by bill_torrens; 03-22-2005 at 03:01 PM.
Pardon, Bill. In your text on Col Faulkner, I know who Ely is, one of the congressional merrymakers at Bull Run to witness the end of the rebellion, instead ending up taken by the Rebel army. There is another, a reference to Henderson, i am not certain whom he might be- a fellow soldier or postwar historian maybe. Migh I ask your indulgence to enlighten me on this, i am curious. Many thanks for these very fine histories, they are quite enjoyable to read.
Sorry. I should have made it clear that the reference was to Lt-Colonel G.F.R. Henderson, a British officer who wrote a two-volume biography of Stonewall Jackson. I have amended the footnotes at the end of the post to reflect that fact.
Born in 1840. Graduated from Washington College in 1858. Then studied at the Union Theological Seminary in Farmville. He assisted Stonewall Jackson in organizing a Sunday school for negroes in Lexington. Pvt., Co.I, 4th Va. Inf.: 8th June 1861. Sgt.: 13th September 1861. Elected Captain on 21st April 1862. “Surprised at his election, [he] accepted the position with a great sense of responsibility. As he wrote to his brother Henry, ‘Promotion in itself brings neither peace nor happiness, and unless it increases one’s usefulness it is a curse. An opportunity is now afforded for exercising a wider influence for good, and if enabled to improve this aright I shall then be happier than before.’ ” Killed at 2nd Manassas on 30th August 1862: “A volley of gunfire almost lifted the charging Baylor off the ground. As his dead body slumped earthward, the colors were seized by Captain Hugh White – with whom Baylor had prayed the evening before. No sooner had White taken a step forward than he was riddled by several bullets and fell lifeless beside his companion in arms.” A photo can be seen at http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/perl...bject_type=all
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