Patton

WALLER TAZEWELL PATTON
GEORGE SMITH PATTON
HUGH MERCER

“I am crying because I have only seven sons
left to fight the Yankees.”

The train pulled into the station at Winchester, Virginia, hours late, having been delayed at several stops along the route from Baltimore. Dark had fallen and a steady rain pelted the roof of the railcar. Inside the dark baggage car, the teenage Virginia Military Institute cadet sat on top of the casket containing his uncle, a fallen Civil War veteran. As the heavy metal doors of the railcar rumbled open, they revealed a tight huddle of men collected on the train platform, the flickering light from their lanterns reflecting off their rain-soaked oilskin ponchos. The cadet moved nervously toward the open door. If the transfer of the body had not been properly cleared, he might face arrest.

“Who are you?” he asked the men gathered outside the railcar. “What do you want?”

One of the dark figures stepped forward and unbuttoned his poncho, revealing the dress uniform of a Confederate army officer. The men silently boarded the train and carried the casket of the fallen hero to a mule-drawn wagon. The dark figures followed the casket as it slowly made its way to the cemetery, accompanied by an elderly veteran beating a muffled drum and a flag bearer holding the outlawed Stars and Bars of the defeated rebellion of Southern states.

Inside the cemetery, the casket was brought alongside a trench that had been cleared for its burial, next to the site of the cadet’s father, also a fallen Civil War hero and the brother of the dead man whom the cadet had escorted from Baltimore. But the trench, it turned out, was too small. Grabbing a shovel, the young man lowered himself into the hole to widen it. He glanced at his father’s exposed casket. After ten years in the ground, the wooden planks had rotted away, and by the eerie, flickering lantern light he could see the face, the long beard, and, at the throat, the gold brocade of his father’s gray uniform. Years later the son, George Smith Patton II, would comment simply about the sight of his father’s cadaver, “He looked exactly as I remembered him.”

The uncle whose casket was interred next to that of George Smith Patton I was Waller Tazewell Patton, named for a governor of Virginia, Littleton Waller Tazewell. Called Tazewell or “Taz” by his family, he was one of twelve children of John Mercer Patton and his wife, Peggy. Of the nine children who survived infancy, eight were sons, and Taz was the youngest. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Tazewell enlisted in the Confederate army, eventually achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel and taking command of the Seventh Virginia Infantry. He was badly wounded at the second battle of Manassas on August 30, 1862, and was sent home to recuperate from a bullet hole through his right hand. His family could not help but notice how the bloody experience of battle over the past year had transformed Tazewell from a boisterous and flippant youth into a spiritual man who spoke often of religion and reflected upon his desire to lead a pure and holy life. He seemed haunted by the violence and killing of which he had been a part.

While he recovered, Tazewell was elected to the Virginia Senate. He could have honorably resigned his military commission to serve as a full-time legislator, but he chose instead to return to his outfit, which in December 1862 was assigned to the division of General George Pickett in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Tazewell would be severely wounded during Pickett’s famous charge, the failed frontal assault on the Union’s heavily defended battle line on the third and final day of the battle of Gettysburg. Crossing nearly a mile of open field in a deliberate march, the rebel troops were battered by the Union guns. It was a horrifying spectacle of violence which the soldiers on both sides would remember with reverence and awe until their dying moments. Of the more than fourteen thousand men who began the attack, fewer than half would return to the safety of their own lines. The ranks of the officers were particularly decimated. Pickett’s division suffered most. Nearly two-thirds of his men were cut down, including all three brigade commanders. Every one of the thirteen regimental commanders was killed or wounded.

A Union artillery officer, Lieutenant Henry T. Lee, witnessed Tazewell’s fall. During the attack, Lee saw two Confederate officers join hands, jump onto the wall behind which his battery was positioned, and instantly fall.¹ The act so impressed him that when the charge was repulsed, he went to look for Confederates who had been struck down. One, a boy of nineteen, was dead. The other lay dying from a ghastly wound, his jaw shattered. The wounded officer motioned to Lee for a pencil and paper and wrote as follows: “As we approached the wall my cousin and regimental adjutant, Captain (name forgotten) pressed to my side and said: ‘It’s our turn next, Tazewell.’ We grasped hands and jumped on the wall. Send this to my mother so that she may know that her son has lived up to and died according to her ideals.”²

About six weeks later, Peggy Patton received two letters in one envelope. The earlier letter, dated July 15, had been dictated by Tazewell to a nurse:

My dear Mother

It has now been nearly two weeks since I have been stretched out on this bed of suffering. You will doubtless have heard before this reaches you that I was badly wounded and left in the hands of the enemy. My sufferings and hardships during about two weeks that I was kept out in the field hospital were very great.

I rec’d a wound through the mouth, fracturing the face bone badly on both sides. The doctors seem to agree that the danger of losing my life is small. The wound is serious, annoying and will necessarily be a very long time in getting well.

I can assure you that it was the greatest consolation to me, whilst lying in pain on the dark and cold ground, to look up to that God to whom you so constantly directed my infantile and puerile thoughts, and feel that I was his son by adoption. When friends are far away from you, in sickness and in sorrow, how delightful to be able to contemplate the wonderful salvation unfolded in the bible. Whilst I have been far from being a consistent Christian, I have never let go of my hope in Jesus, and find it inexpressibly dear now. I write these things to show you my spiritual condition, and to ask your prayers continually for me.

I am glad under such adverse circumstances to be able to write so cheerfully. I do not feel that I could do so every day. Sometimes I feel very badly and very weak. I have strong hope however that I shall get well ultimately, and be restored to the fond embraces of my friends in Virginia. To be at the Meadows, at Spring Farm, or in Richmond, with all the family around, would be the highest delight I could experience. I must however put it off for some time. As soon as I am able to travel, I will hurry homeward.

Give my love to all. I write with some difficulty. Should you wish to communicate, address me Col W T Patton, 7^thVaInfy, College Hospital near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Poor Lewis Williams died a few days after the battle from the effects of a wound. I am very affectionately your son,

—W. T. Patton

The second letter, dated July 24, appeared to be written by the same hand and began with the dreaded words, “It is my sad duty to inform you. . . .” Peggy Patton read that her son Tazewell had died from his wounds at eleven o’clock on the morning of July 21, 1863, six days after his twenty-eighth birthday:

He was aware of the approach of death, and met it as became a soldier and a Christian. He repeated often the words “in Christ alone, perfectly resigned, perfectly resigned.” He spoke with great difficulty, but I could understand him repeating the first lines of the Hymn “Rock of ages, cleft for me”. . . . He called for the 14th chapter of Saint John, which was read to him. . . . From Miss McRea and Miss Sayer of Baltimore, who were his nurses in the hospital . . . he rec’d the most devoted attention, and much kindness from several Federal officers who were stationed near the hospital.

Shortly after receiving the letter announcing Tazewell’s death, Peggy received another note from his nurses, Miss McRea and Miss Sayer. They enclosed a poem cut from a newspaper that they had read to her dying son:

On the field of battle, Mother, all the night I lay,

Angels watching o’er me, Mother, ’til the break of day.

The nurses concluded by saying that they would never forget Tazewell’s “beautiful chestnut hair on the pillow.”³

As she folded the note, Peggy Patton broke down in tears for the first time since learning of her son’s death. When another of her sons asked her why she was crying, she lifted her head from her hands and defiantly proclaimed, “I am crying because I have only seven sons left to fight the Yankees.” Tazewell was cited for gallantry in virtually every battle he fought in. Of the eight Patton brothers, he would be remembered as the most courageous because he had always been the most afraid.⁴

Tazewell’s body now lay next to his brother George Smith Patton, who had also been killed in the Civil War at the age of thirty-one. He had been born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1833 and entered VMI at the age of sixteen. Three of his brothers had also attended VMI. George graduated in 1852, second in his class, ranking first in tactics, French, mathematics, Latin, geology, and chemistry.⁵ Upon graduation he taught in Richmond for two years, while he studied for the bar in his father’s law office. In November 1855 he married Susan Thornton Glassell. The union produced four children. The eldest was born on September 30, 1856, and christened George William Patton. He later changed his middle name to Smith, after his father. The junior George Smith Patton would eventually move to California, marry, and father two children, one of whom was the future World War II general.

The Pattons’ military legacy pre-dated the Confederacy. Tazewell and George had a grandfather, Robert Patton, who had fought in the Revolutionary War, as had Hugh Mercer, his father-in-law. Mercer had fled from Scotland on a ship bound for Philadelphia in 1746. A physician in the army of Charles Edward Stuart—“Bonnie Prince Charlie”—he tended to his fellow Scots who had been wounded fighting for their independence.

In the spring of 1755, Mercer took part in a British expedition to Fort Duquesne on the Ohio River. The commander was General Edward Braddock, and the group of officers included George Washington and six other future generals of the American Revolution. When the column was four miles from its target, at what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, French troops and Indians, who were hiding in the surrounding forest, attacked the army’s advance party from three sides. A thousand British troops were killed in the ensuing three-hour battle. Braddock was shot through the lung. Washington miraculously escaped injury when four bullets tore through his coat. Although Hugh Mercer was severely wounded, he would recover and continue to fight in the French and Indian War for another three years.⁶

After the war, Mercer settled in the thriving town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he developed friendships and social ties with other Scotch-Irish colonists who shared his anti-government sentiments. Many times the men would gather over rum punch at the Rising Sun tavern. The party included men who would, in the very near future, play important roles in the American Revolution and in the subsequent government of the United States. George Washington was a customer, as was Patrick Henry. Spence Monroe frequented the tavern, sometimes bringing with him his son James, the future president. John Paul Jones and John Marshall, the future chief justice, both drank at the tavern. The proprietor of the Rising Sun was George Weedon, nicknamed “Old Joe Gourd” after the vessel from which he poured his rum punch. He would later serve as a colonel in the Continental Army.

Hugh Mercer married George Weedon’s sister-in-law, Isabella Gordon, and they raised five children. Mercer worked as a physician and pharmacist on Caroline Street in Fredericksburg. One of his notable patients was George Washington’s mother, Mary. Washington had referred his mother to Mercer because he feared she was developing a drinking problem. When Mercer examined her, he discovered that she was suffering from cancer and had begun to rely on alcohol to ease the pain of the disease. Mercer treated Mary by having her stop by his shop each day, where he administered her a mild opiate.

In the spring of 1775, revolutionary fervor burst into the open with bloody battles at Concord and Lexington. At St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, Patrick Henry made his famous declaration, “Give me liberty or give me death!” Other patriotic colonists in Virginia established a committee of safety to protect their rights and buttressed it by forming three regiments of militia. Patrick Henry commanded one, and Hugh Mercer took charge of another. Acceding to command, Mercer patriotically proclaimed, “We are not engaged in a war of ambition or I should not have been here. For my part, I have but one object in view, and that is the success of the cause; and God can witness how cheerfully I would lay down my life to secure it.” His words would prove prophetic. Mercer said farewell to his family and departed for Williamsburg. For the second time in his life he was taking up arms against the king of England in the name of freedom.

By the autumn of 1776, the fledgling and underfunded Continental Army seemed near collapse. After defeat and retreat following the battle of Brooklyn, public support as well as recruitment dropped and desertions rose. Even the commander in chief, George Washington, seemed to lose hope. “I think the game is pretty near up,” he wrote in an uncharacteristic moment of despair in November. The Continental Army’s fortunes, however, were about to change dramatically.

On December 16, General John Armstrong overheard a private discussion between two officers about a secret plan to cross the Delaware and surprise the enemy garrison at Trenton. The two officers were George Washington and Hugh Mercer, who would both participate in the night crossing on Christmas. The attack took the Hessian mercenary defenders completely by surprise. One hundred of the enemy were killed and a thousand captured. The Continentals suffered only four dead. The stunning and inspirational victory provided a huge psychological lift for the army, which might well have disintegrated days later, at the end of the year, when many of the soldiers’ enlistments expired.

After the victory at Trenton, Washington set his sights on the British supply depot at nearby Princeton. A spy’s map of the area revealed a little-used trail around the British defenses along the Post Road into Princeton. The main body of Washington’s troops would follow this trail into town while another four hundred men led by General Mercer proceeded north along Stony Brook to the Post Road bridge. Mercer’s objective was the destruction of the bridge in order to block potential British reinforcements from Trenton.

Mercer’s men reached the bridge just as British troops were crossing it and leaving town. When Mercer lost the nearby high ground to the British, he decided to rejoin the main column moving toward Princeton. As the men moved across an orchard, they came under attack. The Americans fired a volley at the British, but the more disciplined and better-trained redcoats, who could reload more quickly, returned three volleys before charging Mercer’s men with bayonets. Mercer’s horse was felled by a musket ball. On foot, he unsuccessfully attempted to rally his men, who soon broke ranks and fled the British assault. Mercer did not flee. He was shot, then bludgeoned about his head with a musket butt. When the enemy discovered his rank, they exulted at taking a “rebel general” and told him to ask for “quarter,” that is, to beg that his life be spared. A fearless Mercer refused, and instead defiantly lunged at his nearest tormentor with his sword. He was bayoneted and left for dead.

Washington himself, drawn to the scene by the sound of gunfire, confronted Mercer’s fleeing soldiers. “There is but a handful of enemy, and we will have them directly!” he shouted. The scattered men rallied, bolstered by Washington’s presence and the sight of a brigade of reinforcements. Washington boldly rode out alone between the revolutionary troops and the approaching British army. He turned his back on the enemy and ordered his troops to prepare to fire. The opposing forces exchanged several volleys before the British fled the field of battle.

The injured Mercer was carried to the home of William Clark, the owner of the orchard in which he had fallen. Clark’s wife and daughter tended to his wounds, only to be interrupted by British soldiers who burst into the house and began robbing the helpless general. The delirious Mercer, whose blood had soaked through the straw mattress he lay on, insisted that he had been paroled and was no longer a fugitive from Charles Stuart’s rebellion—the revolt in which he had participated thirty-one years earlier in Scotland.

When Washington learned that Mercer was badly wounded but still alive, he sent his nephew George Washington Lewis under a flag of truce to check on Mercer’s condition. British General Cornwallis also chivalrously sent his personal surgeon to assist the colonial doctors who were tending Mercer. (Cornwallis may also have been attempting to squelch an uprising of the populace’s outrage at the treatment of Mercer as he lay dying on the battlefield.) Arriving at the general’s bedside, Lewis lifted Mercer’s left arm, revealing a deep puncture wound between the ribs that penetrated to a lung. Mercer knew his wound was mortal. “Yes, sir, that is the fellow that will very soon do my business,” he said.

“My death is owing to myself,” Mercer told Lewis. He then uttered his own patriotic epitaph: “To die as I had lived, an honored soldier in a just and righteous cause.” On January 12, 1777, nine days after the battle, Mercer expired in Lewis’s arms. Thirty thousand mourners attended his funeral in Philadelphia. Rumors that Mercer had been bayoneted while attempting to surrender fueled colonial outrage. Two decades later, Jonathan Trumbull would immortalize the fallen revolutionary hero in his painting, The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton. Trumbull’s work depicts a defiant Mercer, leaning against his fallen steed, grabbing his assailant’s bayonet with one hand and swinging a saber at the enemy with the other. In the background, George Washington rides on horseback to the American’s aid.

Fifteen years after Mercer’s death, in October 1792, his daughter married a prosperous Virginia businessman named Robert Patton. Like Mercer, Patton was an immigrant from Scotland, but he had declined to serve in the Continental Army. One of Robert Patton’s seven children was John Mercer Patton, who himself sired nine sons, among them George Smith Patton. George Patton’s eldest, another George (William) Smith Patton, became the father of General George S. Patton, the legendary general of World War II.⁷