by John McCain
Holmes wrote his parents on September 18, describing his wound and informing them the surgeon had “glanced hastily & said it wasn’t fatal.” But a telegram from Captain Le Duc reached Holmes Sr. before his son’s letter did, and it left the question of his survival more ambiguous.
The butcher’s bill at Antietam was staggering, the bloodiest single day of the war, with more than ten thousand Confederate casualties and over twelve thousand Federal. The fight was essentially a draw. But Lee could ill afford such heavy losses, and because his army withdrew from the field and from Maryland (unbothered by the ever cautious McClellan), the North could claim the victory. But it was costly and left many witnesses unable to find words to describe it. “No description I ever read begins to give one an idea of the slaughter,” a young lieutenant in the 20th wrote. Few could survive such carnage and not be forever changed by the experience. Of the four hundred to five hundred men in the 20th Massachusetts who fought at Antietam, 150 had been killed or wounded or were missing.
“Capt. Holmes wounded shot through the neck,” read the telegram from Le Duc to Holmes Sr., “thought not mortal at Keedysville.” Knowing such a wound would likely cut arteries or spine and “ought to kill at once,” Holmes Sr. feared that “not mortal” referred to his son and not the wound. He boarded a train that afternoon in the company of William Dwight, the father of another Bostonian wounded at Antietam, and set out “with a full and heavy heart” in search of his son. He would later write an account of his odyssey for the Atlantic Monthly entitled “My Hunt for the Captain.”
He stopped in Philadelphia at the Hallowells’ home, hoping Wendell would be there. He wasn’t, but Pen Hallowell was, and Francis Palfrey, both recovering from their wounds, as was Pen’s brother, Ned, who was sick with typhoid. A bed was waiting there for Wendell, but Pen had received no word from him since they had parted at Keedysville and didn’t know where he was. A surgeon at Keedysville had managed to save Pen’s wounded arm, at the cost of an inch or so in its length. He would recover and return to the war, but not to the 20th Massachusetts. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel and transferred to the first all-black regiment, the 54th Massachusetts, as second-in-command to another wounded Antietam veteran, Robert Gould Shaw. Ned would follow him.
Holmes Sr. and his party pressed on to Baltimore, where William Dwight received word his son had died and his body was en route to Baltimore. Holmes left for Frederick, Maryland, where he found Little Abbot in a hospital, prostrate with typhoid fever and grieving the death of his brother, who had been killed in action in August. He also encountered another young officer he knew, Henry Wilkins, who was preparing to escort Edward Revere’s body home. Wilkins reported that he had heard Wendell’s wound was not as serious as initially feared. But he added that he had more recently heard an unconfirmed rumor that Wendell had been killed.
With his heart made heavier by the worrying report, Holmes Sr. left by wagon for Middletown, Maryland. The road from Frederick “was filled with straggling and wounded soldiers,” he wrote in the Atlantic.
Through the streets of Frederick, through Crampton’s Gap, over South Mountain, sweeping at last the hills and the woods that skirt the windings of the Antietam, the long battle had travelled, like one of those tornadoes which tear their path through our fields and villages. . . . It was a pitiable sight, truly pitiable, yet so vast, so far beyond the possibility of relief, that many single sorrows of small dimensions have wrought upon my feelings more than the sight of this great caravan of maimed pilgrims.
He searched for his son in hospitals, churches, and private homes in Middletown and Boonsboro to no avail. In Keedysville he found a doctor who directed him to the house where Le Duc had taken his son, only to learn from its owner that Wendell had left for Hagerstown by milk cart the day before. Holmes assumed Wendell would take the train from Hagerstown to Harrisburg and from there travel to Philadelphia and the Hallowells. So he decided to backtrack to Frederick and Baltimore, where he would catch the train for Philadelphia. On his way to Frederick he stopped at the battlefield, where the dead were still being buried. He stood in the infamous Cornfield, so fiercely contested in the battle’s first fight. “The opposing tides of battle must have blended their waves at this point,” he would write, “for portions of gray uniform were mingled with the ‘garments rolled in blood’ torn from our own dead and wounded soldiers.”
In Hagerstown on September 20 a widow, Mrs. Howard Kennedy, watched wounded Union soldiers trudge by her gate and noticed Wendell with a “bandage around his neck . . . and walking very languidly.” She asked if there was anything she could do for him. He thanked her and complained he was “suffering greatly.” She invited him to remain in her home until he was strong enough to travel. She proved to be an excellent nurse, and her charge improved quickly. He was “a delightful guest,” one of her children remembered, who flirted a little too boldly with a visiting cousin, “a very brilliant young woman” from Philadelphia.
Holmes Sr. reached Philadelphia on the 23rd and rushed to the Hallowells hoping to reunite with his son. But Wendell wasn’t there. He had sent a letter to Boston from Hagerstown the day before explaining his circumstances and improved health: “Tho I am unheard from I am not yet dead.” It wouldn’t arrive for many days. No word had been received from him in Philadelphia, and Holmes Sr. worried Wendell’s wounds had become infected or some other misfortune had befallen him. He set out the next day for Harrisburg, where he encountered a wounded officer from a Pennsylvania regiment who told him a group of Massachusetts men had passed through town that afternoon on the way to Philadelphia and one of them was a young captain with the name Holmes. The elder Holmes rejoiced and telegraphed the Hallowells, only to learn in reply that they had not seen or heard anything from Wendell.
Holmes Sr. remained in Harrisburg the next day. He received word from Philadelphia that Wendell was last seen in the care of a Hagerstown family, the Kennedys. He sent two telegrams to Mrs. Kennedy, and at last, late in the evening of the 25th, received a reply: “Captain H. still here leaves seven tomorrow for Harrisburg, Penna. Is doing well.”
The following afternoon the father waited impatiently for the late-arriving train from Hagerstown. When it finally pulled into the station, the anxious man composed himself to “walk calmly through the cars.”
In the first car, on the fourth seat to the right, I saw my Captain; there saw I him, even my first-born, whom I had sought through many cities.
“How are you, Boy?”
“How are you, Dad?”
Decades later another account of the reunion surfaced in which Wendell replies, “Boy, nothing.” It is considered a less reliable version than his father’s, but it makes little difference really. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wasn’t a boy any longer. And he wasn’t the man he might have been had he not gone to war. There was less of the romantic in him and less of the idealist. Hard use left him clearer-eyed and, at times, a grimmer, more cynical, and less trusting soul. As men fresh from combat often do, he could restrain expressions of positive emotions but could less easily suppress discouragement and resentment. The night before father and son left Philadelphia for Boston, they were having a drink with a friend of Holmes Sr. when “Wendell spoke with bitterness and gallows humor about the senseless battles and the mismanagement of the army.”
When they reached Boston the following day, a letter was waiting for Wendell, which he kept among his papers for the rest of his life.
sir Captain Holmes i take the opportunity of writing these few lines to you hoping that this will find you recovering from your wound fast. . . .
Hayes in behalf of the Company.
Captain we would like to hear from you.
Wendell’s stay in Boston was brief this time. He returned to Washington in November with Little Abbott, who had spent a few weeks recuperating at home. When they reached the capital they discovered their regiment had left for Virginia. They followed after it deep into hostile country and caught up on November 1
9 in the village of Falmouth, across the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg. The Army of the Potomac was gathering there for another fight, under the command of Major General Ambrose Burnside, who had replaced the fired McClellan.
The 20th Massachusetts was under new leadership as well. General Dana did not return after he recovered, and Colonel Lee inherited formal command of the brigade. But Lee, who was greatly admired by the regiment, had been broken by his experiences, particularly the slaughter in the West Woods. He had disappeared after the battle; a young lieutenant found him two days later in a stable in Keedysville, drunk, filthy, and insensible. Colonel Palfrey, whose wound at Antietam left his arm permanently crippled, never returned to the field. Command of the 20th went to the senior company commander, Ferdinand Dreher, who had commanded one of the German companies. Dreher didn’t like many of the Harvard officers, and they, including Holmes, disliked him for, among other reasons, not being one of them. They successfully conspired to have him removed from command and one of their own, George Nelson Macy (Class of 1860), made acting commander, with Little Abbott as his second-in-command. So it was that the 20th Massachusetts, depleted, distrustful, and weary, would lead the advance into Fredericksburg.
The army waited several weeks in the hills north of the town. Winter arrived. Snow fell. Temperatures were well below freezing as army engineers struggled to finish construction of pontoon bridges on December 11 while Confederate sharpshooters subjected them to withering fire. An intense Union artillery barrage failed to suppress their fire, and by midafternoon parts of two regiments crossed the river on pontoon boats, followed immediately by the 20th, to drive the rebel marksmen from their positions, an advance that would be recalled as suicidal. Holmes remained behind in the regiment’s hospital, stricken with dysentery.
The last of the bridges was finished by late afternoon on December 11, but the bulk of the army wouldn’t cross the river until the next day. Remnants of the 20th returned to camp the morning of the 12th, and Holmes learned the toll from the previous day’s urban combat. His cousin, Charlie Cabot, had been shot in the head and killed. At least six others were killed or later died of their wounds, and many more were wounded, including Holmes’s second lieutenant.
Holmes wrote his mother that afternoon, informing her of Cabot’s death, and despairing of his situation: “I see for the first time the Regt. going to battle while I remain behind—a feeling worse than the anxiety of danger, I assure you—Weak as I was I couldn’t restrain my tears.”
The big fight started the next day, December 13, in thick fog that blinded both armies. It was a catastrophe for the Federals. Union assaults on Confederate lines were repeatedly repulsed south of the town and on Marye’s Heights, where the bloodiest fighting occurred, in attacks that lasted into the night. Holmes watched the fighting from a distant hilltop. “We couldn’t see the men, but we could see the battle,” he wrote, “a terrible sight when your Regt. is in it but you are safe.”
General Burnside wanted to launch another attack the next day, but his generals convinced him it would be as futile as the attacks of the previous day. The Federals collected their dead and wounded and slipped back across the river on December 15. The Army of the Potomac had suffered over twelve thousand killed, wounded, and missing. The Confederates lost fewer than half that number. The 20th Massachusetts, in front for much of the fighting, was commended for its “unflinching bravery” and paid a heavy price for the distinction, with dozens of dead and scores of wounded, including Ferdinand Dreher. The regiment remained in Falmouth for the winter, its morale as depleted as its numbers.
Brigade and division headquarters were in Falmouth as well, and Holmes came to be on familiar terms with the general staff. He was offered a staff position, as were Abbott and Henry Ropes (Class of 1862). All three chose to remain with the regiment. Pen Hallowell wrote to recruit Holmes to the new black regiment he had joined, but Holmes refused that offer too.
The Army of the Potomac got a new commander; Lincoln fired Burnside after Fredericksburg and replaced him with Hooker. The 20th Massachusetts had a new colonel as well. Colonel Revere had been serving on General Sumner’s staff since recovering from his wounds at Antietam. When Sumner was relieved as commander of II Corps, Revere petitioned the governor of Massachusetts for the colonelcy of the 20th and received it, though he wouldn’t assume command until May. His appointment forced out George Macy and spread dissension among many of the Harvard officers.
The Union Army began its spring offensive in the last week of April 1863. Three corps with nearly forty thousand men crossed the Rappahannock thirty miles north of Fredericksburg, and another three with sixty thousand men were on the march a mile or so south of the city. General Lee could see he was in danger of being flanked on both sides with a powerful Federal army between his army and Richmond. He withdrew most of his army from Fredericksburg and marched to meet his foe near the tiny village of Chancellorsville. The 20th Massachusetts remained in Falmouth as the Confederates left Marye’s Heights. They had heard the sound of fighting in the west for two days when they at last received orders late on the night of May 2 to cross the river and join the battle.
Lee had left a strong rearguard on the Heights, and they poured down artillery fire on the Massachusetts men who entered the deserted streets of the town. Pinned down and prone as rebel guns found their range, Holmes was struck by shrapnel in his heel. Before the surgeon chloroformed him and extracted the shrapnel, the patient wrote his mother a note that he had been wounded. He didn’t lose his foot, as he feared he would, but he had fought his last battle for a while.
The Battle of Chancellorsville was another disaster for the Union. At a critical moment Hooker halted his advance and took up defensive positions; that proved a costly decision. The next day Lee divided his army and flanked him. The Union lost a little more than seventeen thousand men at Chancellorsville; the rebels around thirteen thousand.
Holmes again went home to Boston to recuperate. Visitors remarked on his changed appearance and personality. Thin to the point of emaciation and wan, his former liveliness, or, as his father described it, his “nervous” disposition, was replaced by a detached air that seemed not to appreciate (and even at times to recoil from) the well-wishes of family and friends. He remained in Boston while Lee, flush with his second victory at Fredericksburg, invaded the North again. The 20th fought at Gettysburg, as always with distinction and at great cost. They were in the center of the Union line the second day of the battle after III Corps on the left flank had been overwhelmed. Holmes’s first sergeant and friend, Gustave Magnitzky, was wounded; so was his classmate, Henry Patten, Company G’s captain, and his first lieutenant, Charles Cowgill. All three would return to the line in time for the next day’s battle.
The regiment had hunkered down on July 2 under a ferocious artillery barrage until General Winfield Scott Hancock arrived with reinforcements and turned back the Confederate advance. Colonel Revere acquitted himself bravely, walking among his prostrate men and officers, giving instruction and encouragement. Shrapnel from a rebel shell tore into him, and he died two days later. Macy reassumed command of the 20th with Abbott as his second in command.
The regiment bedded down that night expecting Lee to attack the Union center the next day. He did, and it cost the 20th dearly. Henry Ropes was the first casualty; a federal artillery shell prematurely detonated that morning and killed him. Abbott, his best friend, held his hand as he expired. At one o’clock that afternoon the greatest rebel artillery barrage of the war commenced on the Union center, firing every type of munitions, shell, shot, and case. Sheltering in a shallow trench behind a stone wall, the regiment held its position and managed to endure the bombardment with only a few casualties. At three o’clock the fire subsided, and the first line of Confederate Major General George Pickett’s division emerged from the woods. “The moment I saw them,” Abbott wrote later, “I knew we should give them Fredericksburg. So did everybody.”
The 20th held i
ts fire until the enemy was within a hundred yards of its line, and then opened up on them mercilessly. But the rebels managed to open up a gap by a copse of trees on the regiment’s right. It reminded Abbott of the West Woods, when the Confederates had flanked and surprised them. He organized the regiment into a new line at a right angle, and the bloodiest work of the day commenced. Killing was done with rifle butt, pistol, sword, bayonet, and hand. When it was finished, the regiment had lost thirty-one killed, ninety-three wounded, and three missing. Ten officers were dead or injured. The casualties included Macy; knocked to the ground by shrapnel and struck by a bullet when he got back up, his left hand would be amputated. Sumner Paine, a young Harvard graduate who had just joined the regiment at Fredericksburg and had taken command of Company G in Holmes’s absence, was struck by shrapnel in his ankle; kneeling, he continued to exhort his men to fight, until he was shot to death. Holmes tore accounts of the battle from the newspapers and put them in a scrapbook. He served as a pallbearer at Ropes’s funeral.
The war was nearly over for Holmes: three times wounded in some of the fiercest fights of the war; repeatedly stricken with dysentery. The allure of glory or adventure or ideals or whatever had drawn Harvard’s young men to war had expired in the mud, blood, misery, and terror that were its reality. He was, until Macy returned, senior man in the regiment, and after the New Year’s holiday he left Boston for Virginia. But when he arrived he took a staff position in VI Corps as aide to General Horatio Wright. He planned to return to the 20th in time for the spring campaign with a promotion to lieutenant colonel. But he never did. He remained a staff officer in VI Corps in May, when the Army of the Potomac, now under the command of Ulysses S. Grant, marched for Richmond again.
On May 5 they met the Army of Northern Virginia in the woods near Chancellorsville that would come to be known as the Wilderness. The next day the 20th Massachusetts was ordered to make a suicidal charge on Confederate breastworks. A tremendous volley of musket fire cut down scores of men. Several officers were killed. Macy was wounded again, and Abbott assumed command. When they resumed the advance and reached the rebel line, they fought hand to hand. But another line of Confederates was advancing from the left, and the regiment was soon overwhelmed and forced to retreat. Little Abbott was shot in the stomach and died later that afternoon.
