When Glory Was Out of Date

ONCE AGAIN, CONFEDERATE valor had been in vain, only resulting in unprecedented slaughter. During the three days of fighting at Gettysburg, Lee lost 22,625 men, including 4,536 dead on the field. Meade’s losses were about the same. The desperate attempt to win it all on northern soil was the most costly of all of Lee’s campaigns.534 The small town of Gettysburg was transformed into a sea of misery and suffering for more than 20,000 wounded from both sides, after the bloodiest battle in North American history.⁵³⁵

One Gettysburg civilian, appalled by the war’s horrors and the long trenches of mass graves, wrote how Lee’s Confederates had “boasted that in coming into [Pennsylvania] they had got back into the Union—many who thus boasted occupied those trenches. Their boasting had met a fearful verification.” In the words of Private McNeily, 21st Mississippi, General Lee “had tempted fate in former campaigns and won victories with even greater inferiority of numbers than at Gettysburg,” but the odds, like a cruel trick played by the Gods of war, had finally caught up with him in Pennsylvania.

During the long, weary retreat back through the rain and mud to Virginia, Private McNeily described how the surviving Mississippians were struck with a dual body-blow by the realization of two major setbacks in both the eastern and western theaters. He wrote, “We moved back into Virginia, our depression added to by the doleful news of the capture of Vicksburg. Such was the ill-starred ending of the campaign on which we had entered with utmost confidence and highest hopes.”⁵³⁶

Like the stoic captain faithfully going down with his ship to disappear forever into oblivion, Barksdale’s painful ordeal finally came to a merciful end within 24 hours of his brigade’s all-out effort to win the war. Because of the confused fighting in the smoke-filled thickets and the blinding fog of battle, Barksdale had been left behind during the bloody repulse at Plum Run, after his three decimated regiments were finally driven back. Private Joseph Charles Lloyd, 13th Mississippi, shot in an arm that was soon amputated, had slipped rearward to escape from the piles of bodies along the red stained waters of Plum Run, and never forgot the sight of “General Barksdale lying upon the ground alone, weak and helpless, but uncomplaining and resigned to his fate.”537

One captured Mississippian informed a Yankee officer, Lieutenant George G. Benedict of the 12th Vermont Volunteer Infantry, First Corps, that his revered commander now lay badly wounded in the underbrush. He emphasized how Barksdale needed immediate medical attention before it was too late. The compassionate commander in blue, who might have seen Barksdale’s heroics while leading the attack, detailed three privates to search for the former United States Congressman in gray.

Private David Parker, 14th Vermont, one of the search party, described Barksdale’s anguished ordeal to the Mississippian’s brother, Ethelbert C. Barksdale: “We searched among the dead and wounded until about 11[:00] at night when we found him. He was suffering from bleed-ing inwardly and suffering very much. I immediately sat on the ground, took his head in my lap and gave him coffee that I had in my canteen from a spoon, as he could swallow but a small amount at a time. His mind was clear. He stated who he was and first told us that we could not carry him into our lines without a stretcher and (needed) more help as he weighed 240 pounds. Two men went for help. He commenced by telling me that he was dying; that he was leaving a good and loving wife and two sons [and said] ‘Oh my wife, it will be hard for her. Tell her that my last words were words of love to her. But my boys! Oh, it seems that I cannot leave them. Their loss they will not fully comprehend. They need a father. Many times have I thought and planned for their future, and, oh, I loved them, so to leave them is the hardest struggle I ever knew. But tell them all that I died like a brave man, that I led my men fearlessly in the fight … tell them all, all my friends, wife and children. I do not regret giving my life in a cause that I believe to be right, but one thing I do regret is that I could not have lived to have done more for the cause. Oh, that I might again lead my men, but tell them that I die content that my last day’s work was well done. I feel that I am most gone. May God ever watch over and take care of my dear wife and, oh, my boys, may God be a father to them. Tell them to be good men and brave, always defend the right.’ He became unconscious talking of his family. We carried him on the hill to the left of Cemetery Hill. He breathed his last about daylight or a little before.”538

Henry Stevens Willey of the 16th Vermont described the sad sight of the blood-stained General Barksdale, in intense pain, as he was taken rearward: “Another stretcher crew came along near me [and] Its occupant was saying, ‘O God, boys, how much further is it to the hospital?’ The answer was ‘Only a little way, General.’ Next day I learned that the Confederate General Barksdale was desperately wounded … .”⁵³⁹

At the busy Second Corps hospital located at the whitewashed Jacob Hummelbaugh House, Barksdale described his role during the attack, including the last-ditch offensive effort that had surged east of Plum Run, to Private Parker, who had assisted in carrying the semi-conscious general to the field infirmary. Barksdale stated: “I was wounded by a rifle ball in my left limb above the knee but I led my men. Next I was wounded by having my left foot off or nearly off near the ankle by a cannon ball. Though I was weak from loss of blood still I rode my horse and led my men in the fierest [sic] of the charge that we broke the lines and drove our enemy and at the moment of success I was pierced by a ball through the brest [sic] knocked senseless from my horse and left by soldiers for dead.”⁵⁴⁰

Ohioan Lieutenant Homer H. Baldwin, Battery C, 5th United States Artillery, was another victor who encountered the mortally wounded Barksdale. He described how Barksdale “of Mis. was wounded in front of our battery. I gave him brandy and water then I got a surgeon and fixed him up as comfortably as possible.” Numerous accounts revealed Barksdale’s last words as filled with high-spirited defiance, despite enduring the agony of mortal wounds. Private William Henry Hill, 13th Mississippi, recorded in his diary of Barksdale’s dying words to tell his family that he fought to the last and bravely “died at his post.” And Captain Lamar, McLaws’ aide-de-camp, stated that the general’s final words were “I am killed. Tell my wife and children I died fighting at my post”—the ultimate honor and dignity to a man like Barksdale.⁵⁴¹ Displaying his characteristic spunkiness, Barksdale was also reported to have spoken his final words to a Union surgeon: “Tell my wife I am shot, but we fought like hell.” Indeed, perhaps this last statement best summarized the Mississippi Brigade’s never-say-die qualities on July 2.⁵⁴² In the end, Barksdale felt a certain serenity and peace because he had sacrificed himself and done all that was humanly possible to save the life of his “splendid republic,” as he described the Confederacy, in leading one of the most devastating assaults of the Civil War.543

Indeed, even when within the Federal lines and at his captor’s mercy, the dying Barksdale lost none of his feisty fighting spirit. Assistant Surgeon Alfred T. Hamilton, 148th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, described the dying Mississippian’s optimism for eventual victory at Gettysburg on July 3, when “Old Barks” declared to his captors, even though “He was shot through the left breast; & the left leg was broken by two missiles. He asked whether I considered his wounds necessarily mortal. I told him I did. He stated that he desired peace, but only on terms that would recognize the Confederacy [and] he asked about our strength and was answered that heavy reinforcements are coming. He said that Lee would show us a trick before morning, that before we knew it Ewell would be thundering in our rear.”⁵⁴⁴

A kind-hearted Union soldier, musician Robert A. Cassidy, 148th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, served as a medical assistant in the Second Corps hospital, and he became Barksdale’s guardian angel. In a sad May 6, 1865 letter to his widow, Narcissa Saunders Barksdale, who would have otherwise never known the exact details of her husband’s last moments in a life that had held such bountiful promise and potential: “Gen. Barksdale—leading his command in a desperate charge on our left centre—fell mortally wounded within less than a hundred yards of our lines. As soon as the … firing ceased, the General was conveyed, as tenderly as circumstances would permit, from the field. Here I found him just after dark, while moving around in company with [Surgeon Hamilton] I came upon the General accidently. Kneeling at his side, I asked him if he desired any assistance. He informed me that he was very thirsty, and I endeavored to give him water from the canteen but was unable to do so in consequence of his recumbent position, and the pain from his wounds was so great as not to admit of his being raised upright [so] taking my spoon from my haversack filled it several times and the General drank the water with feverish avidity [then Assistant Surgeon Hamilton] informed him in kind but confident terms that [his wounds] were mortal, and that the best that could be done was to render him as comfortable as possible; and to this end began to administer morphine as a means of assuaging the pain.”⁵⁴⁵

Musician Cassidy saw what he thought were only two severe wounds: “one in the left breast, produced I should think by a grape-shot, as it was too large to have been made by a musket-ball (unless two closely impacted), and one through the left leg, about mid-way between the ankle and knee. The first was sufficient in itself to have produced death, as the lung was cut and at every inhalation the blood was forced copiously— with a sputtering noise—from the wound. This fact rendered respiration difficult and exceedingly painful. The wound through the leg seemed to have produced a fracture which caused considerable pain, and was evidently the work of a minie-ball.”546

Covered with blood and broken in body, but not in spirit, Barksdale was most fortunate to have been taken to a makeshift Second Corps field hospital, where the fair-minded Union surgeon, Hamilton, who dedicated his efforts to cases of greatest need rather than the color of uniform, provided the kind gift and blessing of morphine to a severely-suffering Mississippi general instead of nearby wounded Yankees, including soldiers from his home state.

Continuing his kind May 6, 1865 letter to Barksdale’s wife, Cassidy described the tragic end of the man who almost won the battle of Gettysburg for the Army of Northern Virginia: “Noticing that his strength was failing rapidly, I … continued to administer water; dissolved morphine and diluted liquor alternately until I saw that he was very near the edge of the dark river. I reminded him that he had but a few moments to live and that he would soon stand in the presence of the final judge. I am not certain that he made any direct reply although incoherent utterances escaped him frequently until the last.”⁵⁴⁷

Lapsing in and out of consciousness, the forty-two-year-old Barksdale finally breathed his last on the night of July 2, far from his Columbus, Mississippi, home and family and his Magnolia State men, who had fought with their hearts and died in unprecedented numbers. Here, beside the dusty Taneytown Road, Barksdale died among the Yankees whom he had fought so tenaciously.

Even though Barksdale was treated with kindness by the Federals when alive, such was not the case after he died. He was hurriedly stripped of valuables “by despicable vultures who make robbing the dead a business,” penned musician Cassidy. One Pennsylvania private cut off some of the gold braid on Barksdale’s coat sleeve for a trophy. In his letter, Cassidy described how other “trophy hunters cut from his fatigue-jacket the insignia of rank, and all the buttons but one.”⁵⁴⁸

Therefore, at 8:00 AM on July 3 and as if knowing that Lee had thought so highly of Barksdale, who had been destined for a major general’s rank had he survived the slaughter at Gettysburg, General Meade was able to boast with a heightened sense of confidence, if not relief, by telegram to General Henry W. Halleck, “General Barksdale’s (Mississippi) dead body is within our lines.” And General Abner Doubleday bragged “among the circumstances worthy of mention which occurred on the third day was the death of the rebel General Barksdale [whose] dying speech and last message for his family, together with the valuables about his person, were intrusted by him to Lieutenant-Colonel [C.E.] Livingston.” Commanding the Fifth Corps, General George Sykes wrote on July 5 how “I have the honor to send herewith a sword and flag captured from the enemy [and] I believe the sword to have been taken from the body of rebel General Barksdale on the field of battle.”

By way of tribute to one of the South’s most hard-fighting generals, a good many Federals, officers of all ranks and enlisted men, made special note of Barksdale’s demise, almost as if his death itself had somehow symbolized Southern defeat at Gettysburg and heralded the Confederacy’s own demise, which was in fact the case. General Hancock specifically noted in his battle report that “Brigadier-General Barksdale, of the rebel service, was left on the field, mortally wounded.” And Captain Josiah C. Fuller, 32nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, scribbled with some relief in a July 4, 1863 letter how, “We gave the rebs a severe drubbing [and] Genl. Barksdale (Reb) is dead.”549

Without the men of his brigade realizing as much, the Mississippi general was buried in the yard of the Jacob Hummelbaugh House under a small carved piece of wood that stood atop the shallow grave, which paid a brief, final tribute to the man who had come so close to winning it all for the Confederacy on a single afternoon:

Brigadier General Barksdale of Mississippi McLaw’s division, Longstreet’s Corps Died on the morning of 3rd July, 1863 Eight years a representative in United States Congress. Shot through the left breast, and left leg broken below the knee.⁵⁵⁰

Saddened by the most severe loss ever suffered by the Mississippi Brigade (more than 800 officers and men), Private Dinkins lamented how “we drop a tear to the memory of heroic General William Barksdale, brave, patriotic and kind. He was a statesman, and a hero. We saw him in battle, on the march, and in camp. He felt a personal interest in every man in his brigade; he was proud of his men, and never doubted them. He believed they would follow him, nor was he mistaken. He fell with his face to the foe.”551

Barksdale remained as inspirational in death as in life, as the Mississippi Brigade’s survivors learned on August 23, 1863 of his supposed dying words, which were “published to us this evening on dress parade, the first order from our new Brig. Gen. Humphreys. In it appears the last words of our late Gen. Barksdale who fell at Gettysburg, Pa. ‘The Rebels are invincible. Although repulsed today will be victorious tomorrow’.”⁵⁵²

Hearing of his friend’s death, President Davis described Barksdale to the beleaguered people of the Southern nation as a “Hero who fell at the head of a Brigade of Heroes.” On a dreary, dank January in 1867, more than three and a half years after he was killed north of the Mason-Dixon Line, Barksdale’s body was retrieved from a temporary resting place in South Carolina and brought back to his beloved Mississippi by Captain Harris Barksdale, who had served faithfully beside his uncle’s side during the terrible storm of Gettysburg. Here, at the Greenwood Cemetery in the state capital of Jackson, Barksdale at long last found a permanent home in Mississippi soil in the Barksdale family’s burial plot. Today, only the most modest of stone headstones now mark the forgotten grave of the never-say-die general, who almost won it all for the Confederacy at Gettysburg. Most appropriate, the Mississippi general’s headstone was no different than that of a humble Mississippi Brigade private, as Barksdale would have most desired in true egalitarian fashion.

As for the other losses in Barksdale’s Brigade, they were severe. In his diary, Private Moore, 17th Mississippi, summarized the Mississippi Brigade’s dramatic achievements that had brought the Confederacy close to decisive victory: “Had a desperate encounter with the enemy this evening for 2 hours. Drove them before us for 1 mile but were forced to fall back for lack of support. Captured several batteries & stand of colors. Our loss was heavy, in the [17th Mississippi] 223 killed & wounded, in our Co., 29. Several of them were my dear friends. Every man acted the hero. Miss. has lost many of her best & bravest sons. How thankful should all be to God who have escaped. OH! the horrors of war.”⁵⁵³

In terms of overall percentage, the 17th Mississippi lost more heavily than any other Mississippi Brigade regiment, losing 210 soldiers with 30 killed, 172 wounded, and 8 missing out of about 450 men. But these were only officially listed losses and incomplete totals. Private William Meshack Abernathy was more correct when he wrote of the awful truth of the terrible toll on Colonel Holder’s regiment: “Nearly two-thirds of the regiment had been killed or wounded, but they held the field … three sets of brothers, two each, had been mortally wounded—the Ouslers, the Blackburns and the Kankades … “ Indeed, the 17th Mississippi actually lost at least 64 killed, 108 wounded, and 99 missing, a total of 271. The 64 17th Mississippi men killed on the field was the highest number, with the 13th Mississippi second with 39 killed, followed by the 21st Mississippi with 22 killed, and 18th Mississippi with 20. Of the more than 550 listed as wounded in the brigade, another 63 soldiers died of their wounds. The brigade suffered 178 missing or captured, among whom were doubtless additional wounded. When the brigade joined the army’s general retreat from Gettysburg they were forced to leave 224 seriously wounded behind, 50 of whom later died of their injuries.

Afterward, no one was more embittered by the attack’s repulse and missed opportunities than Colonel Humphreys, who had accomplished as much as anyone in attempting to secure decisive victory. In an angry letter, he described the lack of support at the most critical moment on July 2: “I did not know, until Wilcox himself told me two days after the charge that he was engaged at all that day. I know that Wilcox was not in advance of Barksdale or myself—nor in our rear on that occasion … Wofford’s Brigade was not driven back … Wofford must have gone back by orders from some superior authority.”554

An embittered Private McNeily analyzed how “the exigencies of battle forced Longstreet to lead Wofford to the support of Kershaw and Semmes; thus depriving Barksdale’s penetration through the enemy’s line of the driving power that would have reached its vitals.” Indeed, despite a host of disadvantages and handicaps, the Mississippi Brigade’s achievements were some of the most remarkable of the entire conflict.⁵⁵⁵

Hardly before the firing had ceased on that bloody July 2, the trusty adjutant of the 17th Mississippi, Lieutenant John Ansley, informed Private James W. Duke that his brother Private Archibald Y. Duke was yet alive on the field of slaughter, but badly wounded. Jim described the personal torment of his anxious search in the haunted darkness: “I hunted until I found him [and] His first words to me were, ‘Thank God! My prayers are answered. I have asked [God] to take me in place of you, as I am prepared and you are not. That is the first time that I ever weakened. I promised him there that I would live a better life in the future.”556 Suffering a fate like so many of his comrades with comparable wounds, young Archy Duke survived his leg’s amputation, but then gangrene took his life.⁵⁵⁷

In the tortured days after the unprecedented bloodletting at Gettysburg, scores of Mississippi soldiers died in field hospitals, houses, barns, stables, and in fence corners and under trees that offered too little shade in the scorching heat.⁵⁵⁸ Private Edgar Gideon Baker was one such unfortunate young man, who paid the ultimate price. In a neat hand, Chaplain Owen Burton Owen, 17th Mississippi, penned a sad note to the father, Luman Baker, about the loss of his son, thirty-year-old Private Edgar. Baker was a proud member of the Hurricane Rifles, 21st Mississippi. The young man had been an adventurous soul early smitten with wanderlust that had caused him to depart his native homeland in search for a better future far away from the family’s Greene County, New York, farm. Chaplain Owen wrote: “Your son Edgar G. Baker, Company E, 21st Mississippi Regt., … was wounded through the lungs on the 2nd of July, and died July 11th … I was with him much, after he was wounded, and conversed freely with him in regard to the future and I believe he is gone to rest. One of the evidences of his having been converted to my mind was this, that he desired to live that he might glorify God by going good, and another was his sorrow for having done wrong. He spoke of having probably ridiculed his sisters on account of their religion, and very sorry that he ever did it…. The death of your son will be sad news to you and your family, but I trust our Blessed Redeemer will give you all grace for this sad bereavement … .”⁵⁵⁹

Only days before he filled a shallow grave at Gettysburg, Private Nimrod Newton Nash, of Company I, 13th Mississippi, penned his last letter to his beloved wife Mollie. The sensitive, introspective private offered a final hope and prayer that went unanswered for him and so many of his comrades: “Give my love to all, and may the good Lord bring this unholy war to a speedy end, and may we all be permitted to return to loved [ones] at home is the daily prayer of your devoted Newton.”⁵⁶⁰