by Rod Gragg
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“I Pray Most Earnestly That I May Never Witness the like Again”
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The rebel field hospitals, as the places were called, where lay the Confederate officers and soldiers that had been severely wounded and left behind, beggars all description. One of these was a barnyard. Its surroundings contained more human misery than I ever expected to see; and I pray most earnestly that I may never witness the like again. The dead and dying lay intermingled. Nearby, in an open field, were the dead who had been separated from the dying. And in the midst of the unattended sufferers on the ground outside and on the barn floor, were those who had breathed their last, but no hand had been found as yet to lift the mangled corpse away from those still living. Wretchedness was stamped on the countenances of both the dead and the living.
A Federal surgeon performs an amputation on a wounded soldier in a field hospital. Untold numbers of Gettysburg’s wounded died from lack of medical treatment—or because of it.
Library of Congress
A Southern physician holds the tools of his trade—his doctor’s kit and a medicine bottle. After crossing the Mason-Dixon Line, some of Lee’s seriously wounded troops were left in private homes to be tended by civilian doctors like this one.
Southern Communications
A stack of arms and legs were thrown on a heap where they had been left when they had been roughly severed from their bodies, with only a board for the surgeon’s table. Among this pity-demanding brotherhood I picked my way carefully and rendered such assistance as I could, changing the position of some shattered limb, when requested by its owner, and administering of what I had. When I asked in kindly words how these men came to enlist in this unnatural war, there was a moment or two of silence, when one said, “Led into it, sir!” and another responded, “Yes, led into it, sir!” Poor fellows, they were undoubtedly led into it; and many of them were, without doubt, as sincere in their devotion to their cause, as was any Union soldier to his. They thought they had been wronged, and that they were only acting upon the defensive against oppressors. As a further illustration of this I heard a prisoner, who had just been brought into Gettysburg, asked: “Were you one who thought for yourself, with reference to the cause which originated this war, or did you just believe what others told you?” I listened for the answer, and it was: “Of course I believed what I was told, or I would not have been here.”
There was something strangely fascinating in wandering over this battlefield. Dead men were buried (as soldiers are buried in haste) all about the plains, and even along the roadsides. Buried, at best, so as just to be fairly covered, and often not even so much as that. Many bodies had not yet been discovered among the knolls and dells, where they lay bloating in the sunshine and rain.
One of my Kingston parishioners, with whom I had held a close correspondence, was reported among the wounded in the accounts first received. I ascertained that he died on the field, and I succeeded in finding the grave where his body had been buried, and his name marked on a board. The best I could do was to make a sketch of the spot so that it could be found by his friends. They, with this aid, soon afterward removed his remains. By invitation, I preached a memorial service in the church in Kingston, from which he had gone forth to do battle for the salvation of the nation. The service was on Sabbath afternoon, August 2, 1863, and the text, II Samuel, first chapter, nineteenth verse: “The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places; how are the mighty fallen!”
The lesser calamities accompanying the carrying on of this war for the Union were partially shown by the hundreds and thousands of broken guns, hats, coats, cartridge boxes, bayonets, and other implements, as well as wasted provisions, that strewed the ground. The temptation to gather some of these things as relics was very strong, and not always resisted. The military regulations, however, were against so doing, and many a visitor found himself in the guard-house for presuming to disobey.
I spent one night in camp, and slept with Chaplain Gilder in his tent. Brother Gilder went to the seat of war with a regiment from Yonkers, and afterward died from disease contracted in the army. With some messages to friends of the soldiers I had met, and having in charge for bereaved ones some tokens that the departed had left to be conveyed to those who would never witness the return of the givers, I turned my face homeward again.6
“The Children of the Battlefield”
A Photograph of a Dead Soldier’s Children Grips the Hearts of Millions
After Lee’s army withdrew on its march southward, Federal troops rounded up Confederate stragglers and continued to bury the dead, which was a staggering task. “The corpses are brought into rows and counted,” a Federal soldier noted in his journal, “the Confederates and Federals being separated into different rows. At the foot of each row of fifty or a hundred dead, a trench is dug about seven or eight feet wide and about three feet deep—for there is no time for normal grave depth. Then the bodies ... are placed in the shallow ditch and quickly covered with dirt.” As Federal burial details moved through the town of Gettysburg, removing one corpse after another, they found a dead Northern soldier lying in an out-of-the-way spot near the intersection of the York and Stratton Streets. In his hand he clutched an ambrotype photograph of three small children—two boys and a girl. The soldier had apparently been mortally wounded, likely in the first day’s fighting, and had retreated into town, where he died—most likely looking at the photograph, probably of his children, in his dying moments.
The discovery of this photograph in the hands of an unidentified dead Federal soldier at Gettysburg sparked a nationwide clamor in the North to identify the soldier and locate his family.
Library of Congress
After the unidentified soldier’s body was buried, the photograph of the children eventually came into the possession of Dr. Francis J. Bourns, a Philadelphia physician who was volunteering at Gettysburg. When he returned home to Philadelphia, Dr. Bourns took the poignant story and the ambrotype photograph to the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper, which reported the story under the headline “Whose Father Was He?” The limited technology of the day prevented the newspaper from publishing the photograph, but the brief story described the children and their clothing. Other newspapers picked up the story, and it rapidly circulated throughout the North. With so many families grieving for loved ones lost in the war, the story of the “Children of the Battlefield” touched the hearts of newspaper readers throughout the North, and it became a national sensation. Dr. Bourns made inexpensive carte de visite copies of the photograph, which he distributed and mailed to soldiers’ families who contacted him in hopes of learning the fate of a missing husband and father.
In November of 1863, a neighbor brought a copy of The American Presbyterian newspaper to Philinda Humiston, a thirty-two-year-old soldier’s wife and mother of three children, who was living in the southwestern New York town of Portville. Philinda had married a former harness-maker who was serving in the Army of the Potomac but had not heard from her husband since before the battle of Gettysburg. When she read the description of the children and their apparel, she feared the dead soldier to be her husband, to whom she had mailed an ambrotype photograph of their children. The postmaster in Portville helped her contact Dr. Bourns, who mailed her a carte de visite copy of the ambrotype.
It was the photograph she had mailed her husband, Sergeant Amos Humiston of the 154th New York Infantry, and it depicted their three children: eight-year-old Frank, four-year-old Frederick, and six-year-old Alice. Sergeant Humiston had left his harness-making work to fight for the Union, despite the misgivings of his wife, who had been widowed once before as a young woman. In a letter home before Gettysburg, Humiston had written Philinda about his pleasure at receiving the photograph she had mailed him: “... I got the likeness of the children and it pleased me more than anything that you could have sent me. How I want to see them and their mother is more than I can tell. I hope that we may all live to see each other again....” On Get
tysburg’s first day of battle, Southern troops of Early’s division overwhelmed Humiston’s regiment northeast of town. Mortally wounded, he somehow made it into town, where he died with the photograph of his children clutched in his hands.
News of the discovery of Humiston’s identity as well as the story of his family sent another wave of emotion throughout the North, resulting in the production of a popular song, “The Children of the Battlefield,” and brisk sales of sheet music—with donations from it sent to the Humiston family. Funds were also raised in order to establish an orphanage for soldiers’ children in Gettysburg, and the institution hired Philinda to be the headmistress. After a few years, she remarried and moved with her children to New England—far from the battlefield that had so affected her family. Below is the Philadelphia Inquirer story that launched the search for the father of the “Children of the Battlefield.”
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“As He Silently Gazed upon Them His Soul Passed Away”
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Whose Father Was He?
After the battle of Gettysburg, a Union soldier was found in a secluded spot on the field, where, wounded, he had laid himself down to die. In his hands, tightly clasped, was an ambrotype containing the portraits of three small children, and upon this picture his eyes, set in death, rested. The last object upon which the dying father looked was the image of his children, and as he silently gazed upon them his soul passed away. How touching! how solemn! What pen can describe the emotions of this patriot-father as he gazed upon these children, so soon to be made orphans! Wounded and alone, the din of battle still sounding in his ears, he lies down to die. His last thoughts and prayers are for his family. He has finished his work on earth; his last battle has been fought; he has freely given his life to his country; and now, while his life’s blood is ebbing, he clasps in his hands the image of his children, and, commending them to the God of the fatherless, rests his last lingering look upon them.
When, after the battle, the dead were being buried, this soldier was thus found. The ambrotype was taken from his embrace, and has since been sent to this city for recognition. Nothing else was found upon his person by which he might be identified. His grave has been marked, however, so that if by any means this ambrotype will lead to his recognition he can be disinterred. This picture is now in the possession of Dr. BOURNS, No. 1104 Spring Garden street, of this city, who can be called upon or addressed in reference to it.
The children, two boys and a girl, are, apparently, nine, seven and five years of age, the boys being respectively the oldest and youngest of the three. The youngest boy is sitting in a high chair, and on each side of him are his brother and sister. The eldest boy’s jacket is made from the same material as his sister’s dress. These are the most prominent features of the group. It is earnestly desired that all the papers in the country will draw attention to the discovery of this picture and its attendant circumstances, so that, if possible, the family of the dead hero may come into possession of it. Of what inestimable value it will be to these children, proving, as it does, that the last thoughts of their dying father was for them, and them only.7
“This Distressing Casualty”
The Decisive Battle of the Civil War Comes at a Great Price
The Army of Northern Virginia moved southward in long, slow columns, heading for the fords across the Potomac River. Moving the thousands of Southern wounded required a seventeen-mile-long wagon train, and for those inside the wagons, bumping along over the muddy roads, the journey caused excruciating pain. “Very few of the wagons even had straw in them,” General Imboden, who oversaw the column, would later recall. “As the horses trotted on, while the winds howled through the driving rain, there arose from that awful procession of the dying, oaths and curses, sobs and prayers, moans and shrieks that pierced the darkness and made the storm seem gentle.”
On the night of July 4, as heavy rains turned the roads to mud bogs, Lee put his defeated army on the road southward back to Virginia.
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War
At the Potomac, Lee found that the rains had brought the river to near flood stage, making the fords impassable, and the pontoon bridge he had used to cross the river on his way north had been destroyed by Federal raiders. Lee’s army was trapped on the north side of the Potomac River. His troops deployed into battle lines, expecting Meade’s army to arrive and attack at any moment.
General Meade and his army, however, still remained at Gettysburg. Keenly aware of his losses, Meade acknowledged that his army was in no condition to immediately pursue Lee. Not until July 7 did he get the army on the move, urged on by General in Chief Henry Halleck, and—behind him, President Lincoln—who resolved that Meade should overtake Lee’s defeated army and destroy it. “Do not let the enemy escape,” Halleck telegraphed Meade. But Lee did escape—barely. On July 13, eight days after leaving Gettysburg, Lee’s army managed to cross the Potomac on a rigged-up pontoon bridge—just as the forward elements of Meade’s army arrived on the opposite bank. A skirmish ensued between Lee’s rear guard and Federal cavalry at a riverside village called Falling Waters, and General James Johnston Pettigrew—who had survived the Pickett-Pettigrew Charge—was mortally wounded. Despite that blow, the Army of Northern Virginia made it across to safety, cutting loose the pontoon bridge after crossing. Much to President Lincoln’s chagrin, Lee and his army made it back to Virginia to fight again.
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“He Was Seen to Fall Forward on His Face”
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Aware of Lincoln’s dismay that Lee’s army had escaped, General George Gordon Meade offered to resign as commander of the Army of the Potomac. However, Meade was now the victor who had turned back Lee’s invasion of the North, and his resignation was not accepted. Almost three months after the battle, Meade wrote a lengthy official report of the combat, outlining the main actions of the campaign and concluding with praise for his victorious troops. “I will only add my tribute to the heroic bravery of the whole army, officers and men,” he wrote, “which, under the blessing of Divine Providence, enabled a crowning victory to be obtained, which I feel confident the country will never cease to bear in grateful remembrance.” In his official report, he summarized the results of the Federal victory at Gettysburg in tally form: “the defeat of the enemy at Gettysburg, his compulsory evacuation of Pennsylvania and Maryland, and withdrawal from the upper valley of the Shenandoah, and in the capture of 3 guns, 41 standards, and 13,021 prisoners; 24,978 small-arms were collected on the battle-field.”
Concerned that his exhausted troops were in no condition for a forced march, Meade was slow to pursue Lee’s army. When he finally did take up the chase, Federal forces were hampered by rain and bad roads. Artist and eyewitness Edwin Forbes sketched the soggy, lumbering pursuit.
Library of Congress
General Lee also tendered his resignation. In typical fashion, Lee blamed no one but himself for the defeat at Gettysburg, and in his official statement, he, too, heralded his soldiers, proclaiming “their courage in battle entitles them to rank with the soldiers of any army at any time.” His resignation was also declined. At first, many Southerners hailed the Gettysburg campaign as a success, based on the much-needed supplies that were obtained and the fear instilled in the North. “I believe that the battle of Gettysburg has done more to strike terror in them than anything else,” observed a Southern soldier soon after the battle. Eventually, however, the Southern press, the Southern people, and even Lee’s veterans would come to view Gettysburg as an incomparable loss that proved disastrous for the South. As a Confederate private wounded at Gettysburg put it: “It was a trip that didn’t pay.”
Gettysburg would also prove to be the bloodiest battle of the American Civil War. Combined casualties—dead, wounded, and missing—totaled 51,112. Northern casualties amounted to 23,049, while Southern losses numbered 28,063. The bare statistics belie the human suffering they represent. Throughout America, in both the North and South, a tidal wave of mourning f
ollowed the Battle of Gettysburg, leaving untold numbers of communities and families awash in grief for the husbands, sons, and fathers who were no more.
When both armies moved on, left behind at Gettysburg was a huge source of heartbreak—an estimated 8,000 sons, husbands, and fathers buried beneath a thin layer of Pennsylvania soil. Countless others later died of wounds.
Library of Congress
Two weeks after Gettysburg, Colonel C. M. Avery of the 33rd North Carolina Infantry wrote the father of one of his young officers—Second Lieutenant John Caldwell—to report the death of his son. Lieutenant Caldwell—“Jonny” to family and friends—who made the Pickett-Pettigrew Charge in Lane’s Brigade of Trimble’s division, and was shot down at the foot of Cemetery Ridge. “To console a Father for an only son is a difficult task,” Avery concluded—a sentiment that undoubtedly reflected the hearts of countless Americans, North and South alike.
