Gen. Alexander comments on Ellerson's Mill...

[Bruce Vail]

Confederate Gen. Edward Porter Alexander left a rich record of his war experience.

I take this quote from his writings about the battle of Seven Days as published by the Library of America:

"But somehow it happened that two regts. of Ripley's brigade of D.H. Hill's division were ordered to charge it. It was a tragic illustration of the absurdities which often happen upon battlefields. Fitz John Porter had about 25,000 men sheltered and inaccessible and about 1,500 are launched into his fire and told to charge him home. The regiments sent were big green regiments never before under fire but full of the spirit and prestige given to our whole army by our former successes."

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[Bruce Vail]

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"Had these green troops been given anything to do which was within the bound of possibility it seems reasonable to believe that they would have done it, and in doing it, acquired a self confidence which would have made them ever afterward as near as invincible as soldiers can get to be. For their charge was indeed a glorious one. Across the level meadows which stretched from Mechanicsville to the edge of the rather deep and narrow Beaver Dam valley, where even every occasional shattered shade tree had been previously cut down by the enemy to give a free field of fire, they swept without a break though all the fire the enemy could throw. And when they finally reached the rather steep descent into the valley, with its swamp and felled timber and creek and race -- all within 200 yards of Fitz John Porter's intrenched 20,000 -- they knew too little of war to turn back but plunged on down and into the entanglement."

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[Bruce Vail]

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"There is no wonder that, as the Federal officer wrote, their dead laid 'like flies in a sugar bowl.'"

 

[Bruce Vail]

Ellerson's Mill photo dated about 1868 (LOC)

 

[Bruce Vail]

Great post from 2015 here on the 44th Ga. Vol. Infantry at the fight:

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/th...giment-at-ellersons-mill-june-26-1862.115096/

 

[DR_Hanna]

The graves of the survivors of Company C, 44th are found in grave sites all over Clarke and Oconee Counties. GA - (Oconee split from Clarke after the war) , many living to ripe old ages. I wonder if and how many of the dead of Ellerson's Mill and Malvern Hill every made it home? What a shock it must have been to the folks at home - these boys were killed within 3 months of enlisting.

 

[Bruce Vail]

The graves of the survivors of Company C, 44th are found in grave sites all over Clarke and Oconee Counties. GA - (Oconee split from Clarke after the war) , many living to ripe old ages. I wonder if and how many of the dead of Ellerson's Mill and Malvern Hill every made it home? What a shock it must have been to the folks at home - these boys were killed within 3 months of enlisting.

Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond has the graves a lot of the Confederate soldiers killed in the fighting around the city. After the war many graves were moved to Hollywood from the makeshift cemeteries scattered across the Richmond area. Hollywood is best known as the final resting place of some very famous Confederates -- Jefferson Davis, etc. -- but there also many for the common soldiers who fought and died.