Local casualties in Civil War remembered
It’s fitting that the Civil War generation was the first to observe Memorial Day. The war was so awful and the slaughter went on for such a long time, it only seems right
Letters written from southern battlefields arrived days, sometimes weeks, later in homes across the North, carrying word of the fallen. It is little wonder that home front morale plummeted to a point three years into the war that President Lincoln despaired of re-election. A string of Union victories in the summer of 1864 saved the day. Without them, it’s likely we would be two countries today — the United States and the Confederate States of America.
As Lincoln said, “Honor to the Soldier, and Sailor everywhere, who bravely bear his country’s cause.”
Hundreds of thousands of men died. Many of them would have lived into the 20th century.
The suffering was tremendous. The death of Robert J. Brownfield, the son of the Fayette County sheriff, was one more confirmation of the horror of the war.
A corporal with the 116th Pennsylvania Regiment, Brownfield was shot in the arm near Spotsylvania Courthouse. In the confusion of battle, he went untreated for three days. Taken to Fredericksburg, then to a hospital in Washington, D.C., the young man died before his anxious parents could reach his side.
A short while later, one of Brownfield’s regimental comrades, John Inks, of “near” Uniontown, also died in Washington, following a fight with the Rebels close to Richmond, Virginia, on May 31, 1864.
Cared for by a Mrs. Morse, Inks remained coherent for some days before he began to sink. On June 16, he slipped into a semi-coma. It was not easy, Mrs. Morse reporting that “it seemed hard for the spirit to free from the body.”
Cpl. Inks died in the morning in a “scene of great suffering,” according to Mrs. Morse, hearing “constantly the cries and groans” of other dying men.
In a sense, the fates were merciful to five men of the 85th Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment during skirmishing at Bermuda Hundred June 17-18. They didn’t suffer, not for long, anyway.
Patterson Jones, Jacob Deselms of Uniontown, Henry Fry and Jesse Dial of Smithfield and Ross Rush of Harnedsville were killed outright.
In the course of its service, which began on a training field close to where Uniontown High School stands, the 85th grew accustomed to hard times. In the summer of 1863, it stood guard on Morris Island, South Carolina, as sappers dug a line of trenches toward Battery Wagner, occupied by Rebel sharpshooters at the entrance to Charleston Harbor.
The closer the trenches crept toward Battery Wagner, the more Union forces were endangered. George Grim, one of seven relatives from Springfield Township to serve in Company K, died instantly when he was shot through the right eye.
Two men from Company E were killed by an exploding shell.
A Confederate “torpedo” planted 100 yards from the Battery blew up a black soldier. The explosion threw the dead man 25 yards in the air, ripping off his clothes and severing his right arm. When the body was discovered with the butchered remains resting on the torpedo plunger, the rumor spread that the Rebs had tied him there before detonation.
One of the more popular regimental officers was Lt. Henry A. Pursuance of “little” Washington. Pursuance was killed on Morris Island on a Sunday in August, after a dud Union shell detonated overhead, carrying off the back of his head.
Two others died in the same friendly-fire incident, including 20-year old George W. Grover of Uniontown.
In all, the 85th, the 100th New York, and the 3rd New Hampshire, guards for the advanced trenches, suffered 105 casualties, 10 percent of their strength, in the space of several weeks.
The regiment’s commander, Col. Joshua Howell, was wounded when an enemy shell splintered a wooden shelter he was crouching in. Howell survived until the following year, when he was crushed beneath his own horse during the siege of Petersburg, Va.
The struggle for Battery Wagner was made into the 1989 movie “Glory” and told through the actions of the 54th Massachusetts, a black regiment led by white officers. The regiment offered 20 men killed, 125 wounded and 102 missing on Lincoln’s “altar of freedom” — roughly 40 percent of its strength.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail .com.