Read Ebook: Joseph K. F. Mansfield Brigadier General of the U.S. Army A Narrative of Events Connected with His Mortal Wounding at Antietam Sharpsburg Maryland September 17 1862 by Gould John Mead

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We also buried the Confederate dead that fell in our immediate front, but somehow the cracker-box head boards were marked , and this little error made trouble enough for me as Historian of the regimental association.

At night we bivouacked north of Sam Poffenberger's woods, and on the 18th marched into East Woods, just beyond where we fought, halted, stacked arms, and during the truce dispersed to look at all the sights in our neighborhood.

On the 19th we were moved into the woods again and took a more extended view of the field.

In June, 1863, the 10th Maine Battalion, in its march to Gettysburg, passed near the field, and four or five of those who had been in the battle turned aside to see the old grounds. The graves near "the bushes" and those of the "20th Georgia" were just as we left them.

Lt.-Col. Fillebrown also visited the field some time during the war, and a party was sent out to bring home the remains of Capt. Furbish, which had been buried near Sam Poffenberger's.

It will therefore be seen that almost every one of the 10th Maine, who came out of the battle unharmed, had a chance to view the field and to impress its topographical features in his mind. Therefore, when a dozen or more of us who had fought in the battle, visited the field in 1889, we had no difficulty whatever in finding our locality, and our testimony is sufficient; but more can be cited.

Mr. Sam Poffenberger, by whom I have been most hospitably entertained in two of my trips , assures me that the 10th Maine graves remained near "the bushes" until removed to the National Cemetery. He also says the graves of the 111th Penn. Vols., during all that time, were under the ledge where the left of our regiment rested. The 111th Penn. Vols. relieved us.

The course of the march of the 107th N. Y. has been identified by members of that regiment who have visited the field; and letters from several of them confirm the statements made on page 17.

The line of march of the 3d Maryland and 102d N. Y., who were on the left of the 111th Penn. Vols., has been fully identified and exactly joins our identification.

For substantial evidence of the truth of our narrative we will say that Maj. Jordan still has the cord which fell from the General's hat as he waved it at our left companies in trying to make them cease firing.

The hat itself, which fell off inside the fence when the General gave himself into the care of Joe Merrill and the others of us, got into the hands of Gen. Nye and he forwarded it to the family, and has the acknowledgment of receipt of the same.

Geo. W. Knowlton, Esq., Boston, Mass., has a pair of blood-stained gloves sent home by his father, Maj. Wm. Knowlton, who wrote and afterward explained to Mrs. Knowlton that one of his men picked them up and gave them to him.

On September 17, 1891, Maj. Jordan, Surgeon Howard and myself accepted the invitation of the 125th Penn. to visit the field with them. Major Jordan readily found the ledge without my assistance, on the afternoon of the 16th, but "the boulder" was not visible. During the evening Mr. Sam. Poffenberger told of the change of fence and the building of the new road.

Early in the morning we went again, and there under the fence, with a small red cedar growing over it, was "the boulder." We easily changed the fence and obliterated the road in our mind's eyes, and thereupon everything came out clearly. We know precisely where the General sat on his horse when he talked with Jordan, and there it is, as we understand it, he was wounded. We borrowed tools from our host and set up our marker forthwith for the edification of our 125th Penn. comrades, who soon came trooping down on us. Maj. Jordan staid by his marker all day, defending the truth most vigorously. I went with Capt. Gardner and Lieut. Dunegan to the place where they say Mansfield fell from his saddle and was borne off by two of their men. The place is about 600 yards from where Mansfield was shot. From others of the 125th it was evident that Gen. Mansfield's riderless horse did bring up at about the place pointed out, but we know the fatal shot came to the General himself while he halted in front of Captain Jordan.

The thoroughly good feeling shown to us by all of these good fellows of the old 125th has not been forgotten, and never can be; and in telling the true story I am not a little embarrassed with the fact that I seem to make reflections upon some of them.

THE CONFEDERATES.

It has been stated that the 10th Maine was the extreme left of Hooker's command during the 40 minutes, more or less, the regiment was engaged. The Confederate troops opposed to us and to our neighbors on the right were from Hood's division.

The 4th Alabama was the right regiment of all, and they came up the Smoketown road from the West Woods in a hurry. On reaching East Woods they deployed and advanced "in line." On nearing the woods Maj. Robbins met what he understood at the time was a half regiment of Georgia troops, who told him they had already been in the fight and would go in again. He ordered them to form on his right and advance in line with him. All was done in great haste, and in consequence of this and the broken character of the woods and the rush for shelter, the two commands were mixed all together, the Georgians, however, being naturally in preponderance on the Confederate right. Some time after they had been engaged the 5th Texas, under Capt. Turner, was sent in by Gen. Hood, and they mixed in with the others wherever a chance offered. All this I have learned by correspondence with many members from each of Hood's regiments.

After a long and intensely exciting hunt for the Georgia regiment that this battalion belonged to--Major Robbins remembering only that their number was "in the twenties"--I have learned that it was the skirmisher battalion of Gen. Colquitt's brigade of D. H. Hill's division, composed of one company each from the five regiments of his brigade, viz: 6th, 23d, 27th and 28th Georgia and 13th Alabama, under Capt. Wm. M. Arnold, of the 6th Georgia. We therefore made a mistake in the number only when we marked those head boards "20 Georgia." This battalion got into the fight an hour or more before their brigade and fought independently of it. The troops under Robbins, Turner and Arnold are the only Confederates, so far as I can learn, that did heavy fighting in East Woods. There were no better troops in the Confederate army; they suffered a loss in killed and wounded of nearly one-half, and probably inflicted a still larger numerical loss upon the Union troops.

OFFICIAL REPORTS.

We will next look at the Official Reports bearing on the subject.

Ordinarily he was one of the most genial and accommodating of men; but when sick and vexed, as plainly he was when he made that report, he could dash off just such a jumble, and send it in to head quarters before the ink was dry.

It is due to him to say that he was run over and kicked in the bowels by Col. Beal's horse just at the moment Col. Beal himself was wounded; and when, but for the untimely kick, "Jim" might have led us on to victory and covered himself with glory.

"Previous to this Gen. Mansfield fell, some of my men carrying him off the field on their muskets until a blanket was procured."

It cannot be determined from the report, exactly when or where "this" was; but it was plainly early in the morning and before the 125th entered West Wood, where they fought.

This report annoyed me much when I first saw it in 1887, but Col. Higgins has written to me that he knows nothing personally of the event but reported it because officers whom he trusted assured him it was so.

"Gen. Mansfield, the corps commander, had been mortally wounded, and was borne past my position to the rear."

This "position" is not defined further than to state that it was "Miller's" woods, or "East woods," as we now call them.

"While the deployment was going on and before the leading regiments were fairly engaged, it was reported to me that the veteran and distinguished commander of the corps was mortally wounded."

"Gen. Mansfield had been mortally wounded at the commencement of the action, while making a bold reconnoissance of the woods through which we had just dashed."

"General Mansfield, a worthy and gallant veteran, was unfortunately mortally wounded while leading his corps into action."

"During the deployment, that gallant veteran, Gen. Mansfield, fell mortally wounded while examining the ground in front of his troops."

Besides these unsatisfactory official reports, we have the following authentic accounts, that have been made public from time to time, and should have furnished the world with the truth. I noticed that the newspapers of the day had little to say about the event; accordingly, a few weeks after the battle I wrote an account and forwarded it to my father, who sent it to the Hon. Benjamin Douglas, a prominent citizen of Middletown, Conn.--Mansfield's home. Mr. Douglas acknowledged the receipt, and showed his appreciation when we were publishing our regimental history, by furnishing gratis the portraits of the general. This letter was published in the Portland, Me., papers.

The regimental history, published in 1871, has a very minute account of the event. About 700 copies of it were sold.

The report for 1862 of the Adjutant General of Maine also has a narrative of the battle, embraced in the report of Col. Beal, who returned to duty before the end of the year.

GENERALS AND STAFF DID NOT WITNESS.

A singular phase in this case is the fact that none of Gen. Mansfield's subordinate commanders excepting Gen. Crawford, and none of Mansfield's staff, witnessed the wounding. In the three days he was our commander none of us saw a staff officer with him. It was only a vague memory of a lost and forgotten general order, and the reference to "Captain Dyer" in the General's memorial volume, that suggested the possibility there was a staff. In 1890 to '94 I made a special and persistent effort to learn who his staff were; also who was the orderly and who the colored servant that we saw with him. The orderly and servant we have not found. After much writing I learned that Samuel M. Mansfield, a son of the General, had been appointed an Aide but had not been able to join his father. Maj. Clarence H. Dyer, at that time Captain and A. A. G., had accompanied the General from Washington and was on duty with him till his death.

Furthermore, Gen. James W. Forsyth, then a Captain, was temporarily assigned as aide-de-camp to Mansfield by Gen. McClellan, at whose head quarters Forsyth was then serving. These two were "present"; but Gen. Mansfield kept them flying so constantly that none of us recognized them as his staff.

There are also shadowy hints from various sources that a Lieutenant of cavalry, name and regiment not stated, lost his opportunity for a day of glory by too frequent sips of what was known as "commissary."

Gen. Forsyth writes that he was sent by Mansfield to "bring up the divisions of the corps" and that he "was not with Gen. Mansfield when he received his death wound."

Maj. Dyer writes :

Here is another instance how impossible it is to see everything as it is in battle. Apparently Maj. Dyer did not see the General hurrying the 10th Maine across the brigade front.

GEN. MANSFIELD'S MISTAKE.

The next question that arises is, why did Gen. Mansfield suppose the 10th Maine was firing into Union troops?

While the corps was waiting in the vicinity of Joe Poffenberger's, from about 6:20 to 7:20 A. M., Gen. Mansfield was seen frequently by almost every soldier of the corps. In hundreds of letters, from the various regiments and batteries, there is a common agreement that the General was moving around the field continually. He seemed to be everywhere. Although he appeared like a calm and dignified old gentleman when he took command of the corps two days before, on this fatal morning he was the personification of vigor, dash and enthusiasm. As before stated, he remained some minutes at the northwest corner of East Woods , observing the battle. One gets a fine view of the field from there and he must have got a good insight into the way Hooker's corps was fighting. Presumably the tide was turning against Hooker, and as likely Mansfield had been called upon by him for reinforcements, but when Mansfield left the northwest corner to set his corps in motion, the East Woods, if I have rightly interpreted the reports and correspondence, was still in possession of Union troops. Probably, almost at the same time that Mansfield quitted his lookout, the Confederate brigade of Law came charging out of West Woods, the 4th Alabama on the right running up the Smoketown road, as before stated, and entering the woods at the south-west corner where the Georgia battalion joined on its right. The movements of all of Hood's troops were exceedingly rapid.

How much time elapsed from Mansfield's leaving his lookout to his being wounded, I can only roughly estimate at from fifteen to twenty minutes, but it was time enough to change the condition of affairs very materially, and I cannot help thinking the time passed very quickly to him, and that he did not realize the fact that the remnants of Rickett's division had been driven out of the woods and cornfield, nor even did he suppose it was possible. Wise or unwise, it was entirely in keeping with everything else the General did during the three days he was with us, for him to come himself and see what we were doing; and like everything else, he did it with the utmost promptness. It was this habit of personal attention to details, and his other characteristic of rapid flying here and there, that make it so difficult for many of the soldiers of the 12th corps to believe he was wounded when and where he was.

A WORD IN CLOSING.

In this narrative it has been impossible to avoid frequent reference to myself and to my regiment, but there is nothing in the Mansfield incident of special credit to any of us. We were there and saw it; we live and can prove it; this is the whole story in a nut shell.

I have always regretted that I left the regiment even on so important a mission. At the time, I supposed it was only to be for a moment, and that with three field officers on duty I could be spared. As for the regiment, we succeeded so very much better later in the war, that we have not been in the habit of making great claims for the part we took in Antietam. Many other Union regiments fought longer, struggled harder, did more effective service and lost more men than we.

The Confederates opposed to us appeared to be equal to us in numbers and they were superior in experience and all that experience gives. On all other fields, from the beginning to the end of our long service, we never had to face their equals. Everybody knows that troops fighting under the eye of Stonewall Jackson, and directed by Hood, were a terrible foe. Our particular opponents were all good marksmen, and the constant call of their officers, "Aim low," appeared to us entirely unnecessary.

It was an awful morning; our comrades went down one after another with a most disheartening frequency, pierced with bullets from men who were half concealed, or who dodged quickly back to a safe cover the moment they fired. We think it was enough for us to "hold our own" till Greene's men swept in with their "terrible and overwhelming attack."

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