Decades after Battle of Bentonville, a Connecticut vet suffers

In a photo probably taken shortly after the Civil War, Jesse Rice, a private in the
 20th Connecticut, poses in the studio of a photographer in New Haven, Conn.
 (Photo: Blogger's collection)

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On March 19, 1865, less than a month before Lee surrendered to Grant, Jesse Hull Rice suffered a gunshot wound to his right arm at the Battle of Bentonville (N.C.). The 20th Connecticut private's limb was amputated nearly two months later, but the surgeon apparently botched the operation, leaving Rice with a painful, lasting reminder of his 38 months in the Union Army.

After the war, Rice twice tried to be outfitted for an artificial arm, but a physician wrote it was not possible “for reason that end of bone is so sharp & and whole stump is so painful." The veteran had trouble sleeping because of the amputation.

A New Haven, Conn., physician noted a litany of maladies for Rice, all largely due to the “nervous shock from loss of [the] arm and the disadvantage to which this loss put him.”  Rice, only 53 at the time, suffered from “severe constipation,” dizziness, a double hernia, frequent attacks of diabetes, “great pain in defecation,” and an “inability to properly digest food,” among other ailments. Once weighing about 185 pounds, Rice only had 140 pounds on his 5-foot-11 frame.

“His condition in a general way is as bad as it could be and but for a strong will and superior intellect he would be absolutely helpless,” wrote a doctor, adding, “If  [Rice] long survives it must be through constant and daily medical attention and judicious nursing.”

In 1895, another doctor wrote in a pension affidavit for Rice that his patient suffered from attacks of severe retching and vomiting that would continue for two or three days and then recur a day or two later. “It appears to have become a chronic condition for him,” noted the physician, who  attributed Rice’s awful health to his war wound.

In a post-war diary in which he recorded the weather, deaths in the neighborhood, the assassination of President Garfield and the butchering of his 428-pound hog, Rice barely made mention of the Civil War. Perhaps it was just easier to forget.

“18 years since Bentonville,” the married farmer simply wrote in 1883 on the anniversary of his wounding.

When he died in 1915 at 71, Rice, who lived in Cheshire, Conn., was on government rolls for a $55-a-month war pension.

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SOURCES:

-- Jesse Rice pension file, National Archives and Records Service, Washington D.C.
-- Jesse Rice diary, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, Conn.

Battle of Bentonville (N.C.) interactive panoramas/tour

Click here for my interactive Antietam, Cedar Mountain, Chickamauga, Cold Harbor, Gettysburg, Harris Farm, Manassas, Malvern Hill, Salem Church, Spotsylvania Courthouse and Harrison's Landing panoramas. (Whew! That's a mouthful.)

Under a stand of trees and a bed of pine cones and needles rest the remains of 20 unknown Rebels who died at the Battle of Bentonville (N.C.). Outnumbered nearly 3-to-1 (60,000 to 21,000), the Confederates were routed here on March 19-21, 1865, suffering more than 3,000 casualties to about 1,600 for the Union army in a battle "remarkable both for the obstinancy with which the Rebels fought and the terrible fire which they maintained."

"Beautiful day," a 5th Connecticut soldier noted of the Sunday the battle began. "Peach trees in blossom and all the country seems lovely, but the sound of cannonading is heard." Less than a month before Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, eight soldiers in the 20th Connecticut were killed or mortally wounded at Bentonville -- including Corporal Abner C. Smith of East Haddam, Conn. He died March 28, nine days after his right leg had been amputated.

"The wound appeared to do well," the regimental chaplain wrote to Smith's wife from Goldsboro, N.C., "and we had hoped that he would recover from the shock. But he was very much exhausted by the long ride from the hospital near to the battle field to this place; and he never fully recovered himself. All was done which could have been under the circumstances: but it was in vain: he continued to fail till the morning of the 28th when he was taken from this scene of pain and sorrow to another world." ...

... Near the graves of Confederate unknowns, a memorial marks the site of a trench containing the remains of 360 Rebel soldiers, all gathered from the battlefield after the Civil War by Confederate veterans. Among the donors for the monument was Union veteran T. E. Harvey, who lost four fingers during the battle. At the dedication on March 20, 1895, Reverend J.J. Harper, son of the farmer on whose property some of the battle swirled, gave a prayer described by Confederate Magazine as "patriotic" and "comprehensive."

"And grant, O Lord," Reverend Harper said, "that the light of Thy presence, and warmth of Thy love and Thy strength of Thy mighty arm may ever be present and manifest to the brave sons of the South, who by Thy providence were preserved through the dangers and carnage of war, and the eclipse of the cause they loved, and who still linger on these mortal shores." ...



... The Rebels made five attacks from right to left here but were stopped by the Union army's XX Corps. The Army of Tennessee made its last great charge of the war across this field, which is privately owned and still farmed today ...

... More than 500 wounded Union were treated at the house of John and Amy Harper, whose 11-member family was ordered to stay upstairs while a field hospital operated downstairs. After the Union army left the area, it left behind about 50 wounded Rebels, 23 of whom died in the Harper family's care and were later buried near the family graveyard. (Pan to the far right in the interactive panorama above to view it.)  It wasn't the first time the war hit home for the Harpers, whose 16-year-old son, Martin, a private in the 20th North Carolina, had been wounded at the Battle of South Mountain on Sept. 14, 1862. ...

... This pink granite monument honors the sacrifice of Texas soldiers at Bentonville. It's nearly identical to the state's monuments at Antietam and Gettysburg ...

... and this cenotaph honors all Rebel soldiers who fell at Bentonville. "Sleep soldier sleep in thy rough earthen tomb," begins the inscription on the side. ...

... Union soldiers, including those of the 5th and 20th Connecticut, are also remembered at Bentonville. This monument was placed on the battlefield by Sons of Union Veterans in 2013.