Lieutenant colonel Henry Merwin was mortally wounded at the Wheatfield at Gettysburg. |
The 27th Connecticut had been thrasheed at Fredericksburg in December 1862 (19 killed, 86 wounded, three prisoners) and on May 3, 1863 at Chancellorsville, where 280 men surrendered after they were surrounded -- one of the greatest humiliations for a Union regiment during the war.
"Only five minutes before, the men stood at their posts undisturbed by even a doubt of their security," a regimental historian wrote about the Chancellorsville disaster. "Now, astonished at the sudden denouement, we found ourselves about to enter upon the terrible uncertainties of rebel captivity." Among those captured, Merwin was sent to Richmond and then paroled 20 days after his regiment's surrender.
The 27th Connecticut monument at Gettysburg, dedicated on Oct. 27, 1885, marks the spot were Merwin was mortally wounded. It's one of two monuments dedicated to the regiment at the battlefield.
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