Today 157 Years Ago On July 1, 1862 In The Civil War...
The Battle of Malvern Hill, also known as the Battle of Poindexter's Farm, was fought on July 1, 1862, between the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, led by Gen. Robert E. Lee, and the Union Army of the Potomac under Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan. Dead and wounded for the South was 5,650 and 3,000 for the North. Another sad day in American History. Terrible, brothers against brothers.
It was listed as a Union victory: But Lee was considered the hero by saving Richmond from being captured by the Union and McClellan was not even present during the battle which came back to bite him later. It was a day full of blunders for the South in miscommunication.
"In the aftermath of the battle, however, the Confederate press heralded Lee as the savior of Richmond. In stark contrast, McClellan was accused of being absent from the battlefield, a harsh criticism that haunted him when he ran for president in 1864."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Malvern_Hill
Seventeen-year-old Confederate soldier Edwin Francis Jemison was one of those killed in the battle.
It was listed as a Union victory: But Lee was considered the hero by saving Richmond from being captured by the Union and McClellan was not even present during the battle which came back to bite him later. It was a day full of blunders for the South in miscommunication.
"In the aftermath of the battle, however, the Confederate press heralded Lee as the savior of Richmond. In stark contrast, McClellan was accused of being absent from the battlefield, a harsh criticism that haunted him when he ran for president in 1864."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Malvern_Hill
Seventeen-year-old Confederate soldier Edwin Francis Jemison was one of those killed in the battle.
0
-
Yes, McClellan displayed poor leadership during the Peninsula Campaign, and Lee looked like a genius. 0 -
Below is a picture of one of my great grandfathers. His first two significant battles was at Savage Station and Malvern Hill, along with two of his seven brothers, during the Seven Days' Battles when Lee's army mostly stayed on the attack in the defense of Richmond, and sent McClellan's Union forces back across the river. 0 -
kimi your great grandfather looks like a real bad ass. What was his name and what outfit was he with? 0 -
Allen, his name is Jack Norris. Although born in Tennessee, he was with a Mississippi unit during the war. I get the same impression about him as you do.
He was also at the battles of Maryland Heights, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (where the Mississippians under General Barksdale at the Peach Orchard in "a ferocious assault", that one Union officer said was, "the grandest charge that was ever made by mortal man"), and Chickamauga.
This picture was hanging in the living room of one of his sons in Nacogdoches, Texas, when my father took me to introduce me to some of my Norris kinfolks. My grandmother had a large picture of him dressed in his Confederate uniform, but it burned up with her home back in the 70s. He was with one of his older brothers who gunned down a man with a double barreled shotgun from horseback about 1857 - the why of it has been forgotten. He got thrown in the Old Stone Fort jail for being a part of it, ( https://www.tsl.texas.gov/exhibits/indian/early/stone-fort.html ) and that brother was never heard from again. He busted out and went back to Mississippi and joined the war effort with two of his brothers, while the rest were with Louisiana units. When he came back to Texas after the war he supposedly had to stand trial to clear his name...at which proceedings, as the story goes - and I believe it, he pulled his six-gun before things settled back down. A lot of his family and grandsons carried sidearms right up to their passing. I had the privilege to witness one of his sons dressed in western working garb of the day with hat, kerchief, boots and sixgun...striding through a crowded sidewalk filled with town folks dressed in stylish 1950s fashion in downtown Nacogdoches. My father beaming with great pride pointed him out to me...I still see him to this moment in my mind's eye.0 -
I've told this story before but for anyone that's interested here it is again.
I had relatives on both sides in the war but the one I know the most about was a Union Soldier. My great great grandpa Miller on my dad's side of the family was a Union prisoner of war held at Cahaba Prison near Selma, AL. He was captured at the Battle of Athens, AL. in September of 1864.
I was living in Montgomery, AL when I discovered that info written in my great grandma's bible that I had just gotten from my Dad.
I drove over to the old prison site that is a state park now and there's a welcome center there where the old city used to exist. It's a ghost town now. I told the guy working there that I thought my gggrandpa had been a prisoner there. He checked their computer for his name which was John W. Miller, 1st Tennessee Calvary, Co. E and he found it right away. He was a prison there.
I started doing some research and found out that when he was released from the prison in the spring of 1865 that he was put on a paddle wheel steamboat in Vicksburg, MS named the Sultana for the return trip back to Tennessee. Turns out that the boat blew up just outside of Memphis which is the biggest US maritime disaster to this day. More lives were lost on it than there were on the Titanic. Approx. 1,500 lives were lost (exact number is not known) that night April 27, 1865 when 3 of the 4 boilers blew up.
My gggrandpa was a tough old bird, he survived the explosion. He clung onto some wood from the boat and paddled his way to the flooded banks of the Mississippi River where he clung to a tree top until rescued the next morning by people searching for survivors from Memphis.
He was burned pretty bad and spent some time in the hospital in Memphis until they moved him to a hospital near Nashville. My great great grandma found out that he was alive and went by horse back by herself from Knoxville, to Nashville, TN to bring him back home. He was mustered out of the army in Nashville on June 10, 1865.
I sent off to Washington and got copies of his pension papers. There's a lot of personal info on the pension papers that was very interesting. It's pretty neat to see his signature and some of the info that he wrote. He was drawing $12 a month back in the late 1800s. He died in 1917
Not many people knew about the disaster because it only made back page news since Lincoln had been assassinated a few days earlier.
I attended a memorial day celebration at the Cahaba Prison site one year in the late 90s where they had a Civil War reenactment group there doing 3 gun salutes at the graves of the soldiers that had died there. There was a pretty big crowd of people there but my son and I were the only relatives of any of the prisoners that were held there. It was a tearful gathering as the bugle was played and prayers were said.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultana_(steamboat)
The last picture of the Sultana on April 26, 1865, the day before she blew up. Wish I knew which one was gggrandpa in the photo. He's probably the one standing at the highest point.0 -
Something else I found interesting about the Sultana was this Sultana Memorial at the Mount Olive Baptist Church Cemetery in Knoxville, Tennessee which was not far from where I grew up. My great great grandpa Miller's name is on the stone.
I was there at Mount Olive Church attending a meeting of The Sultana Descendants Association one year and noticed at the bottom of the stone that it was donated by the Gray Eagle Marble Co. in 1912. You can see it if you enlarge the photo. My great grandpa Monday just happened to be the Superintendent of Gray Eagle Marble Co. at that time when the stone was donated who had no connection to my gggrandpa Miller. I thought that was a pretty neat coincidence since the 2 families had no ties until my mom married my dad in 1948.0 -
I found this very enlightening reading! Thank you both kimi and Smitty for sharing your ancestors lives! 0 -
Damn, Smitty, your great great grandfather was on the Sultana. Damn. Tough guy, one of the few to survive. 0 -
allen griggs wrote:Damn, Smitty, your great great grandfather was on the Sultana. Damn. Tough guy, one of the few to survive.
He had a lot of luck too. Many of the men were drowned during the panic when they hit the cold water in the dark and someone would grab hold of them and pull them under. I can only imagine the terror of riding along in the boat and suddenly a huge blast in the middle of the night and the next thing you know you're in a flooded river in the dark with pieces of burning debris and metal parts of the boilers falling from the sky all around you while you're trying to swim with your cloths on and people grabbing at you. Plus most of them were skin and bones and very weak from being in the prison camps at Cahaba and Andersonville. Luckily my gggrandpa had been in Cahaba which was bad but not nearly as bad as Andersonville.0 -
allen griggs wrote:kimi your great grandfather looks like a real bad ass. What was his name and what outfit was he with?
My thoughts exactly Sir.
The story that follows in this thread, is most appreciated.
Those Men were a Breed apart.0 -
Wow, this thread is a good read.
Mule0 -
I'm glad ya'll liked it! My thanks to Smitty for starting it...
Have a great day.0 -
l read an article awhile back stating Confederate deaths were much higher in Union prisons than for Union prisoners in Andersonville 0 -
fatcat458 wrote:l read an article awhile back stating Confederate deaths were much higher in Union prisons than for Union prisoners in Andersonville
They were all bad but I can't see how any prison could have been worse than Andersonville. Men were starved to death.0 -
It's true that the death rates in Union and Confederate prisons were relatively close based on percentages. Dead is dead. Unfortunately, I know of no photographs that survive showing dead, starving, or dying Confederates in Union POW camps that would rival those of Andersonville or anywhere else...and one does not need to be a rocket scientist to understand why. People at Andersonville starved...including the Confederate soldiers who were guards there...only not as much, of course. At Camp Douglas in Chicago, Confederate soldiers were tortured, and black Confederates were shot dead upon admittance. Were there any like atrocities at Andersonville?
On the subject of this war and photographs, there are a lot of them that show the destruction of Southern cities and dead Confederate soldiers, while there are thousands that those show Union soldiers being alive and well, and none that I can think of showing the destruction of Northern cities or Union dead, other than Lawrence, Kansas, which by all rights needed to be sacked after their hand in Missouri atrocities. Here again...no rocket science needed. Consider the one famous photo of a few dead Confederates lying along the stone wall at the Battle of Fredericksburg. These photographs and/or copies of same were taken and made public for infamous reasons. They were no doubt taken after the Confederates had fallen back to Marye's Heights where they continued to lay waste to the enemy. What the photos don't show is the slaughter and injury of over the bigger portion of 12,000 Union soldiers on the opposite side of the wall and along the Union lines looked like. No rocket science needed here, neither, as to why the public will never be privy to such scenes.
On a brighter note, as Americans...we can all be proud and thankful for Independance Day of 1776...and our Revolutionary War Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines. Happy 4th of July to all and to the the year of 1776!!!0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
15 comments