Lt. Sidney Carter, 14th S.C. Inf., buried in Gettysburg Nat'l Cemetery

RobertP

Lt. Colonel
Joined
Nov 11, 2009
Location
Dallas
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Following up on Confederates buried in the Gettysburg National Cemetery we come to Lt. Sidney Carter of the 14th South Carolina. Lt. Carter was 29 years old when the war broke out, married with two very young children. All of the five brothers in the Carter family enlisted in the army, four in the 14th S.C. and the fifth in the 1st S.C. The 14th had coastal duty until the following Spring when it was called to Virginia and participated in the Seven Days Campaign where Sid Carter was severely wounded at Gaines Mill. At Gettysburg the 14th was part of Perrin's brigade, Pender's Division, that relieved Heth and pushed on through the town on July 1 to Cemetery Hill.
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According to Historian Rea Andrew Redd, Carter was mortally wounded on July 1 when Perrin's Brigade attacked the Union position near the Lutheran Seminary. The bullet entered his chest and passed downward through his internal organs. He died July 8.

Sidney Carter wrote regular letters to his wife Bet during the war, the last one on the march to Gettysburg on July 21. They were preserved by the family and published in a book called Dear Bet: The Carter Letters, 1861 - 1863. There is one copy available from Abe Books for $60 if anyone is interested. I say this because the topic of Confederates in the US Cemetery took on a life of its own last summer when a thread was devoted to these men solely on how many slaves each one's father owned or oversaw. A day later this same information verbatim was anomalously posted on each's Find a Grave memorial page. I suppose it was a sophmoric stunt to 'prove' a link to their service with slavery, one that in the original poster's opinion they would be proud of. I contend that there is much more to these soldier's lives and that is why I am attempting to add color to them. If someone actually wanted to do some real history and not a drive-by hit they might invest in the book and see what Lt. Carter actually thought in the letters to his wife before trying to put him in a little box.

 
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