History up close: Wilder Dwight's bloodstained Antietam note

Bloodstained battlefield note written by Wilder Dwight to his mother as he lay mortally wounded.
(Massachusetts Historical Society)

The second page of Wilder Dwight's blood-stained battlefield note to his mother. After he was wounded on
the morning of Sept. 17, 1862, he struggled to complete it. (Massachusetts Historical Society)

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In the last act of his short military career, Wilder Dwight implored his soldiers in the 2nd Massachusetts to keep their heads down as fighting raged near the Hagerstown Pike. Just before he was about to give further orders during the Battle of Antietam, a bullet struck him in the left hip, sending him crashing to the ground. "They have done for me," the 29-year-old lieutenant colonel said after he was shot.

Wilder Dwight

Also wounded in the left wrist,  Dwight complained of intense pain, but while his regiment fell back a short distance, he refused to be moved. The pain was simply too much to bear. As the fighting swirled near the Dunker Church, the Harvard-educated officer struggled to complete the short note he had begun to his mother earlier that misty morning of Sept. 17, 1862, well before the fighting reached a crescendo:

"Dearest Mother, — I am wounded so as to be helpless. Good by, if so it must be. I think I die in victory. God defend our country. I trust in God, and love you all to the last. Dearest love to father and all my dear brothers. Our troops have left the part of the field where I lay.

"Mother, yours,

"Wilder."

Across the opposite page, in much larger letters, he wrote:

"All is well with those that have faith."

The note was stained with his blood.

Finally rescued from the battlefield by comrades, Dwight died in private residence in Boonsboro, Md., two days after the battle.

At the Massachusetts Historical Society this afternoon, I examined for the first time Dwight's heart-rending note to his mother, Elizabeth. It was an extraordinary experience.

"All is well with those that have faith," grievously wounded Wilder Dwight concluded his note to his mother.
(Massachusetts Historical Society)

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SOURCES

-- Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight, Lieut.-Col. Second Massaschusetts Infantry Volunteers, Boston, Ticknor and Fields, 1868.