Civil War under my nose: Mansfield's grave

Joseph Mansfield died Sept. 18, 1862, a day after being wounded at Antietam. He
is buried in Middletown, Conn.

Gen. Joseph Mansfield's demise is one of the incredible hard-luck stories of the Civil War.

Mansfield was 58 when he died.

A longtime professional soldier -- he was wounded in the leg in 1846 during the Mexican War -- Mansfield saw little serious fighting during the first 17 months of the Civil War. Itching to lead troops in the field, the 58-year-old soldier from Middletown, Conn. was given command of the XII Corps of the Army of the Potomac on Sept. 15, 1862. Three days later, he was dead, succumbing to a bullet wound in the chest suffered Sept. 17 during fighting near the East Woods at Antietam.

I visited Mansfield's grave this morning at Indian Hills Cemetery in Middletown, Conn., about 30 minutes from my home in Avon. He's buried near a majestic, old oak near the crest of the hill at the cemetery off Washington Street. Mansfield's large brownstone marker is topped with an ornamental sword, the top portion of which is missing. His wife, Louisa, who died in 1870, and a son, Joseph, who died as an infant in 1844, are buried nearby.

Mansfield was one of six generals killed at Antietam -- three Union and three Confederate. Amazingly, 12 generals were wounded during the bloodiest day of the war -- six from each side. General John Sedgwick, a Connecticut native who commanded a division in the II Corps at Antietam, was wounded three times during the battle. He was killed by a sharpshooter's bullet at Spotsylvania Courthouse on May 9, 1864 and is buried in tiny Cornwall Hollow, also about 30 minutes from my house.


The date of Mansfield's death is incorrect on his memorial.  The general died at the
George Line farm on Sept. 18, 1862, a day after Antietam.

Civil War under my nose: Newport, R.I.



Artillery tube outside historic Fort Adams, at the mouth of Newport Harbor.



Massive walls of the fort.

Historic Newport, R.I., only a two-hour drive from our Connecticut home, is one of my favorite places. Besides the incredible mansions on Bellevue Avenue, the church where JFK was married and very underrated beaches, Newport is home to a good deal of Civil War history.

Fort Adams, situated at the mouth of the beautiful Newport Harbor, was the largest coastal fortification during the Civil War. During the war, the headquarters for the U.S. Naval Academy was moved from Annapolis, Md., to Fort Adams because the government wasn't quite sure of the political sympathies of Marylanders.

We made a quick drive-by of the fort on Friday afternoon, "thrilling" my youngest daughter. The visitors center closed at 4 p.m., so we didn't get a chance to tour the interior of the massive fort. The current Fort Adams, built in 1824, also was the site of the first X Games on ESPN, in 1995. You can rent the place out for corporate functions and weddings. I'm sure both my daughters will file that nugget away.

Six artillery tubes lay outside Fort Adams. The fort  was the largest coastal fortification in the U.S.

Faces of the Civil War: Unknown IV

This unidentified soldier was from New Hampshire, probably the Manchester area.

Nearly 34,000 soldiers from New Hampshire served in the Union army. About 5,000 of them died. Was this private one of them?

Unfortunately, like so many images of Civil War soldiers, this one does not include a name. It's a long shot, but maybe an Internet surfer will ID this photo in my collection. Here's what I do know:


A card on the back of the photograph shows that
the image was taken in a studio on Elm Street in
Manchester, N.H.

Based on the card on the reverse of this 1/6-plate ambrotype, this man was from New Hampshire, likely  from Manchester or the surrounding area. He plunked down about a buck and a half to have a keepsake image taken at M.S. Lamprey's Daugerrian Saloon on Elm Street in Manchester, across the street from a hotel.  After processing the image, the photographer tinted the soldier's cheeks a light shade of red, a common practice. Perhaps this man had this photo taken shortly after he quit his job at a local mill -- Manchester once was home to the world's largest cotton mill -- and enlisted in the army.

Did this soldier see action at Antietam or Gettysburg or somewhere in the Deep South? Soldiers from New Hampshire fought and died in all the major battles in the East, in addition to serving as far away as the swamps of Louisiana. I have no indication of the regiment in which he served, so there's no telling what experience this soldier had during the war.

Ambrotypes, a photograph created on a sheet of glass, were popular in the late 1850s and early 1860s, so it's safe bet that this image was taken in 1861 or 1862. Ambrotypes were a fragile format, and someone who handled this one probably dropped it, causing it to break into three pieces.