lelliott19
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During the Battle of Gettysburg, Tomlinson Fort Newell was 1st Lieutenant of Company G, 45th Georgia (Ed Thomas' brigade.) He was badly wounded by shrapnel in the foot, which resulted in amputation. After the Confederates retreated, Lieut. Newell was captured and spent time at Camp Letterman. He was imprisoned at Fort Delaware and paroled on September 28, 1864, three months after his promotion to captain. He matriculated at Oglethorpe University in 1855, but graduated from Franklin College (now the University of Georgia) in 1861 with a law degree. He became mayor of Milledgeville after the war and died on August 7, 1912. [Thanks to @Tom Elmore for this brief biography.]
About a year before his death, T F Newell traveled to Gettysburg with his son, Captain Isaac Newell, who was then a tactical officer at West Point accompanying the graduating class on a trip to the battlefield. It was T F Newell's first return to Gettysburg since he was removed as a wounded prisoner, nearly forty-eight years earlier.
I cannot tell my feelings as I stood once more upon the hills of Gettysburg. I went at once to the high school hospital, where I was a patient after falling into the hands of the Federals. I could not sleep for the memories that came thronging through my mind as I thought of my old comrades and members of my company who had fallen there...
In the evening, Major Richardson, one of the commissioners, a federal soldier who was also wounded at Gettysburg, called on me, and insisted that I should go with him to the rooms of the commissioners. Here I met General Lomax, who was a federal soldier, and Captain Pope, the engineer in charge of the battlefield. He showed me the topographical maps of the government.
Monday morning at six o'clock a special train with [his son] Isaac [Newell], Colonel Febegen and eight officers, with the first class from West Point arrived. Eighty six cadets made up the class. After breakfast, we got vehicles and took up the problem of the first day's battle. I was treated with great consideration by both the commissioners and the West Point officers.....On Thursday, we did the second and third day's battles. I found the exact spot where I was wounded. I went to 'Devil's Den' at the foot of 'Little Round Top,' which Benning's brigade and Tige Anderson's brigade captured and held until General Lee withdrew his army from the field. My brother, Joe, was in Benning's brigade and Judge Hillyer, I believe, was in Tige Anderson's brigade.
As I stood at the foot of 'Little Round Top' and saw how far our forces had driven the federals, how far they had penetrated their lines, over what ground they had to fight, my old heart glowed with secret pride and I felt that we had nothing to be ashamed of, so far as the record of the Battle of Gettysburg is concerned. [Union Recorder. (Milledgeville, Ga.), May 23, 1911, page 4.]