Adjutant Albert L. Peel, 19th Mississippi Infantry.

CSA Today

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Honored Fallen Comrade
Joined
Dec 3, 2011
Location
Laurinburg NC
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Killed at the Bloody Angle, Spotsylvania Court House, VA, 12 May 1864.


“Adjutant Peel had thrown aside his sword and with a very fine rifle, captured from the enemy, he was shooting as rapidly as he could reload. He fell, shot through the head at the foot of an oak tree which had been cut down by deadly missiles. His body was found by his brother, Dr. R. H. Peel, who was then surgeon of the regiment, and it was buried after dark. The stump of this oak tree at the root of which Adjutant Peel fell measured at the time Twenty-two inches in diameter, and is now among the war relics in the museum at Washington City. We buried Adjutant Peel’s body beside his colonel, the gallant T. J. Hardin, who was also killed in the battle.”

Excerpt from Confederate Veteran, Volume 10, Page 367: “THE LAST ROLL.”


Peel’s transcribed war diary is available here: http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~peel/peeldec.html
 
Albert and Addison ("Add") Peel were first cousins of Lt. William H. "Billy" Peel and his brother Eli, who served in Company C of the 11th Mississippi. See Albert's diary entry of 8 June 1863 in which he mentions a visit by his "cousins Bill and Elie Peel ... "

William H. Peel's diary can be found in Far From Home, The Diary of Lt. William H. Peel, 1863-1865, transcribed by Ellen Sheffield Wilds (Carrollton, MS: The Pioneer Publishing Co., 2005) The latter book states that in 1861, Albert was 19 years old, Addison was 18, William was 23, and Eli was also 19 years old. On 3 July 1863 at Gettysburg, their respective brigades (Davis and Posey) were for a time nearly adjacent on Seminary Ridge. William often noted in his diary whenever Posey's brigade was encountered. Albert's diary likewise has entries about the Mississippians in Barksdale's Brigade, so it is clear that the three Mississippi brigades in the Army of Northern Virginia kept an eye out for each other, especially companies raised in the same county, which contained old friends and even family members as per the above example.
 
There's more. Albert and Addison's older brother, Robert H. Peel, became an Assistant Surgeon in the 19th Mississippi. Robert graduated from the New Orleans School of Medicine - he was about 30 years old in 1861.

In addition, William H. Peel's sister, Molly, married Radfird Greene Gunn in 1860. Radfird and his brother Lundy Reid Gunn both served in Company A, 17th Mississippi. William H. Peel stopped to speak with the two Gunn brothers in the early evening of 1 July 1863, on the Chambersburg Pike west of Gettysburg. William must have got rather involved in his conversation, because when he returned he found that his company had in the meantime been sent out on picket and he had to run a mile in the dark to catch up with it (source: Far From Home; see my previous post).
 
The 19th Mississippi Infantry was in Brig. Gen. Nathaniel H. Harris' Brigade, i.e. the Featherston/Posey/Harris Mississippi Brigade - 12th, 16th, 19th, and 48th Miss. Inf.

After Hancock's assault on May 12 broke through the Mule Shoe, Harris' Mississippi Brigade was one of those sent in to counter-attack the Federal assault and retake the angle. Actually IIRC they were sent in to support Ramseur's NC Brigade, which had already retaken a portion of the Confederate entrenchments (at the western side of the Mule Shoe, the "Bloody Angle") and was barely holding onto its ground there. After Harris' Brigade reached the angle the slugfest began, both sides fighting hand to hand and firing into each others faces over the earthworks in the mud and rain for the rest of the day.

I remember someone here had an ancestor in Harris' Brigade who had fought at Spotsylvania, can't remember who though. There was a thread posted a long time ago; I'll post the link if I manage to find it again.
 
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