'Peculiarly sad': Death in the Potomac of a 'patriotic man'

St. Clements Island, formerly known as Blackistone Island, near where Cunningham Johnston drowned in the Potomac River on the night of April 23, 1865. (PHOTO: David Broad)

Like this blog on Facebook | My YouTube videos

Private Cunningham Johnston emerged physically unscathed from all the 118th Pennsylvania’s major battles — Shepherdstown and Fredericksburg in 1862, Gettysburg and Chancellorsville in 1863. He slogged through Burnside’s “Mud March” in January 1864 and, after Confederates captured him during the Overland Campaign, survived nine months in Andersonville and other Southern prisons. 

But in the waning days of the Civil War, when most of the fighting had ended, the Irish-born Philadelphia bricklayer could not elude death. On April 23, 1865, Johnston and about 300 former POWs and hospital convalescents boarded the steamer Massachusetts, anchored in the Potomac River at Alexandria, Va.

 1906 illustration of St. John's College
General Hospital during
 the Civil War.  (St. John's College Digital Archives)

Fresh from St. John’s College Hospital in Annapolis, Md., the 37-year-old prepared to rejoin his regiment and complete his term of service. The war had effectively ended, but turmoil gripped the country: In Maryland and Virginia, Federal authorities hunted for Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth.

 Around midnight, the Massachusetts approached Maryland’s Blackistone Island, roughly 55 miles southeast of Washington. Nearby, the Black Diamond — an iron-hulled canal boat with men aiding the search for Booth — drifted in the darkness. The clear, moonless night left the vessel with only a single light. 

Without warning, the much larger Massachusetts slammed into the Black Diamond, tearing a gaping hole in the smaller ship’s side. The vessel sank stern first in about three minutes. “Oh, the great dark hole in the water she made,” a soldier aboard the Massachusetts recalled. Panic swept the overcrowded Massachusetts.

Though she remained afloat, she rode lower in the water. In the inky blackness, frantic soldiers — some jolted awake on deck — leaped into the Potomac. At least 50 men drowned; some reports placed the toll closer to 90. Cunningham Johnston numbered among them. The river never returned his body.

“After all their suffering in the prison pens, then to be drowned,” one survivor said. “It seemed bad.”

Decades later, In a footnote in the 118th Pennsylvania regimental history, Cunningham Johnston Jr. called his father’s fate “peculiarly sad.” “He was a patriotic man,” he wrote, “and patiently accepted the dangers and hardships of army life as a duty to his country.” 

          GOOGLE STREET VIEW: Site of orphans' home in Quakertown, Pa., where two 
                  Johnston family boys stayed after their father's death in April 1865.

---

19th-century view of Yellow Springs (later known as Chester Springs), an orphans' home in Chester, Pa. Cunningham Johnston Jr. and his brother, Michael, lived here after their
   father's death. (Chester County Library collection)

Cunningham's death threw the Johnston family into turmoil. His wife, Elizabeth, placed  her eldest sons, Cunningham, then 12, and 10-year-old Michael in the Soldiers Orphans' Home in Quakertown, Pa., "for the purpose of their education." Later, the boys were sent to another orphans' home, Yellow Springs, in Chester, Pa.

"I have not abandoned the support of any of said children, nor permitted any of them to be adopted by any person or persons ..." Elizabeth stated in an affidavit for a widow's pension. The Johnstons' other children, 14-year-old Sallie, 5-year-old Elizabeth and 4-year-old James, remained at home with their mother.

A widow's pension file offers us a glimpse into the family's tragedy: In an affidavit, Elizabeth wrote, "I have never heard from [Cunningham] him since" the collision on the Potomac. In another, a former 118th Pennsylvania officer wrote he believed he heard of Johnston's death from an official source but wasn't sure. A document noted names and birthdates of the Johnstons' children; another, the date Cunningham and Elizabeth were married in 1847.

"I feel as well as I ever did," wrote
Cunningham Johnston in a letter
to his wife on April 13, 1865.
 (fold3.com via National Archives)

The most poignant words in the file are in Cunningham Johnston's own handwriting.

In a letter to Elizabeth from St. John's College Hospital on April 10, 1865, he wrote of his disappointment at not receiving any recent letters from home and of the "glorious news" of Robert E. Lee's surrender the day before. "I feel purfickly sure," he said, "that I have seen my last battle although I am in poor halth as I ever was."

"Tell Cunningham," he added, referencing his son, "to ask Mr. Boles if he thinks the ware will be over before linkin is out of the Chair."

In perhaps the final letter of his life, Cunningham rejoiced: "I have just finnished reading the most walcom letter I have ever received from you or anyone else letting me know that my Lizay was better and the rest of my family well."

He said he expected to go to Washington soon to get transportation to return to his regiment, present at the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse. "I feel as well as I ever did," he wrote.

And, Cunningham closed in the letter, "I ... am your loving husband to death."

POSTSCRIPT: Elizabeth Cunningham secured a widow's pension at the standard rate of $8 a month. Beginning in July 1866, her five children also received pensions, at $2 a month. 

---

-- Have something to add (or correct) in this post? E-mail me here.

SOURCES

• Cunningham Johnston widow's pension file, fold3.com via National Archives and Records Service, Washington, D.C.
• Smith, John L., History of the Corn Exchange Regiment, 118th Pennsylvania Volunteers, from their first engagement at Antietam to Appomattox, Philadelphia, Pa., J. L. Smith, 1888, Page 402
• 16th Connecticut veteran William Nott 1906 journal, copy in author's collection.