Faces of the Civil War: The dead of Middletown

Private John K. Doolittle was mortally wounded at Antietam. He was only 22 years old
when he died. (Middlesex County Historical Society collection)

Mostly young men in their 20s, they stare back from the pages of a fragile, leather-bound memorial album compiled more than a century ago.

Some of the men appear in civilian attire; others proudly pose in military uniform, perhaps shortly before they were sent south to help extinguish the rebellion. Under nearly every image, the soldier's name, regiment and place of death appear in neat, cursive writing.

"Mortally wounded at Fredericksburg."

This fragile, old album includes images of 70 soldiers with ties to
Middletown, Conn. who died during the Civil War.

"Died in service April 2, 1862 in Falmouth, Va."

"Died at Andersonville prison."

Nearly 1,000 men from Middletown, Conn., a small, historic town along the Connecticut River, served during the Civil War; 110 of them died, perishing of battle wounds and disease (and at least one of suicide) far from home in such places as Alexandria, La., Chattanooga, Tenn. and Hilton Head, S.C. Some died in the major battles at Antietam, Fredericksburg and Gettysburg. Although many were returned to Connecticut for burial, some of the soldiers remains were never returned and today lie in unknown graves in the South.

General Joseph Mansfield's image is on the
first page of the memorial album.
(Middlesex County Historical Society)

In 1867, two years after Appomattox, a local Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) organization began collecting photographs and sketches of Middletown men who died during the war. Copies were made, and sometime shortly before the turn of the century, an album of  those who paid the ultimate price was compiled. Seventy images appear in the album, which today is in the collection of the Middlesex County Historical Society that is housed in the former home of  Union Gen. Joseph K. Mansfield on Main Street in Middletown. Mortally wounded at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862, Mansfield appears on the first page of the memorial album.

The images of four other soldiers with Middletown ties who were killed or mortally wounded at Antietam also appear in the album:

George Chamberlain, a private from nearby Berlin, was wounded on John Otto's farm when the 16th Connecticut was smashed in the left flank by A.P. Hill veteran troops. Discharged for disability on April 1, 1863, he died from his wound on May 11, 1865, nearly a month after war had ended. Born in Middletown, Chamberlain was just 18 when he enlisted -- after he received permission from his mother, Mary Ann.

Wearing his Sunday best and a Mona Lisa-like smile, John K. Doolittle posed for a photograph, perhaps  shortly before he was mustered into the 3rd Connecticut as a private on May 14, 1861.  After a three-month stint with the 3rd Connecticut, Doolittle was mustered into Company K of the 8th Connecticut as a private on May 1, 1862.

John Doolittle is buried in Miner Cemetery
in Middletown, Conn.

As the 8th Connecticut made a futile push on the Union left flank at Antietam, it was struck on three sides near Harpers Ferry Road. Wounded in the knee, Doolittle was treated at the German Reformed Church in Sharpsburg, but died on Oct. 10, 1862. The  final resting place of the 22-year-old soldier is in Middletown's Miner Cemetery, near a large brownstone marker memorial for his other family members.

Robert Hubbard, a 31-year-old private in Company B of the 14th Connecticut, was killed by friendly fire on the William Roulette farm. Nearly a month before his death, he wrote a impassioned, patriotic letter to his brother.

"Must it be written that 360,000 slaveholders wielded such influence and power," he wrote Josiah Hubbard. "as to destroy a government which can place a million armed men in the field, and which has conferred greater blessing on its citizens than any other that has ever existed since the days when God was the direct ruler over His own peculiar people."

"I feel as if I could not forgive myself," Robert concluded in the letter, "if this government should be overthrown and I had no weapon in its defense." (1)

Private Robert Hubbard was
killed at Antietam. He was 31.
(Middlesex County Historical
Society collection)

George Crosby, a 2nd lieutenant in the 14th Connecticut, attended Wesleyan University in Middletown before the war. An excellent student, one of his former teachers wrote of the "enthusiasm and spririt of perserverance with which he pursued his studies. He was ever anxious to improve." (2)

Standing proudly in his officer's uniform in the photograph in the memorial album, Crosby served as an army recruiter before enlisting with the 14th Connecticut in August 1862. "I feel it is my duty to go," he wrote his mother.

As he encouraged his men in Company K at Antietam, Crosby was struck in the side by a bullet that passed through his lungs and close by his spine. Only 19 years old, Crosby died on Oct. 22, 1862. "He was a great but very patient sufferer," wrote the Middle Haddam, Conn., physician who attended to him. (3)

Crosby's funeral in Middle Haddam was attended by his Wesleyan classmates, the university president and many townsmen.

"He talked much of his country during his illness," a post-war account noted, "but little of himself." (4)

(1) Middletown Penny Press, April 13, 1898
(2) Memorial of Deceased Officers of the Fourteenth Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers, Henry P.Goddard, 1872, Pages 9-10
(3) Ibid
(4) Ibid

Left, George Chamberlain, a private in the 16th Connecticut, was wounded at Antietam.
George Crosby, a 2nd lieutenant in the 14th Connecticut, was mortally wounded at Antietam.
A student at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., before the war, he died on Oct. 22, 1862.
(Middlesex County Historical Society collection)

Letter to Mrs. Mansfield: 'Depths of Pandemonia'

 "It seemed as if the very depths of Pandemonia, had sent her furies, and such a tornado of deadly
missiles screaming through the air," a surgeon wrote to General Joseph Mansfield's wife about the
circumstances before her husband's death at Antietam.  Below, Mansfield's grave in Middletown, Conn.

In a neatly written five-page letter to Louisa Mansfield dated April 28, 1863, a surgeon in the 107th New York described in detail the circumstances before her husband's death and his last hours at a Union field hospital. General Joseph K Mansfield of Middletown, Conn. was mortally wounded by a shot to the chest near the East Woods during the Battle of Antietam.

General Joseph Mansfield lived in this house in
Middletown, Conn.,  during  the Civil War. 
It now houses the Middlesex County
 Historical Society.

"The wound was inflicted by a 'Minnie ball,' Dr. Patrick Flood wrote. "When I came up, some men were trying to carry him in a blanket, but the jolting motion, made him bleed so fast, they were afraid to move. I found the clothing around his chest saturated with blood, and upon opening them, found he was wounded in the right breast, the ball penetrating about two inches from the nipple, and passing out of the back, near the edge of the shoulder blade."  (Major hat tip to Randy Buchman's Enfilading Lines blog for first posting the contents of the letter.)

Mansfield died on Sept. 18, 1862, about 24 hours after he was wounded. He was 58 years old.

The original Flood letter to Mrs. Mansfield is now in the collection of the Middlesex County Historical Society at the general's Civil War home in Middletown. Middlesex County Historical Society director Deborah Shapiro kindly photocopied Flood's letter for me recently, and a good friend of the blog enhanced it to make it even more readable than the original. Not quite as exciting as, say, purchasing a bible of a soldier who served in the 8th Connecticut for $3 at a community yard sale, but it's close. Sort of. (CLICK HERE FOR .PDF OF ENTIRE LETTER. IT'S A LARGE FILE.)

General Mansfield was one of more than 100 soldiers from Middletown, about 18 miles south of Hartford, who died during the Civil War. The most impressive exhibit at the Middlesex County Historical Society is a wall of photos of some of those soldiers from the town who gave the last full measure, including Mansfield and Private Robert Hubbard of the 14th Connecticut. I'll write much more about some of these soldiers in the coming weeks.

A wall of Middletown's Civil War dead at the Middlesex County Historical Society
in the former home of General Joseph Mansfield, who was mortally wounded at Antietam.
(The gentleman  in the middle was not from Middletown, Conn.)

Antietam: A visit to General Mansfield's house

"He lived about 24 hours after he was shot,"  Dr. Patrick Flood wrote about
General Joseph  Mansfield in this letter to his widow. The letter is in the archives at the
Middlesex County Historical Society in Middletown, Conn.
.

Middlesex County Historical  Society director
 Deborah Shapiro holds a letter from the physician
who saw Joseph Mansfield die to his widow.

Suffering from a gunshot in the right breast, General Joseph K. Mansfield clearly was in dire condition at a field hospital at a farmhouse about a mile behind Union lines.

"He was very pallad (sic), almost as white as paper as I approached him -- his pulse was small and quick," an attending physician wrote in a five-page letter to Mansfield's widow seven months after her husband was mortally wounded at the Battle of Antietam.

At first, the general was "very talkative,"  Patrick Flood, a surgeon in the 107th New York wrote, and he was lucid until around midnight. The old soldier from Middletown, Conn., was given a canteen filled with cool water and brandy, but the mixture didn't agree with him.

"On our way to the hospital," Flood wrote to Louisa Mansfield, "he repeated many times 'Oh my God, am I to die thus?' – 'Get me a horse.'  'Oh my poor family.' "

Given command of the XII Corps just two days before Antietam, the 58-year-old general went downhill fast.

Post-war painting of Mansfield at the
Middlesex County Historical Society.

"After I had dressed his wound," Flood continued in the letter to Mrs. Mansfield, "I left him in charge of the medical director, but called to see him often, and saw him one hour before he expired. ... He lived about 24 hours after he was shot. Had the very best of care and attention."

Connecticut suffered terrible losses at Antietam, but perhaps no death was as shocking as Mansfield's. On the day of his funeral in Middletown, about 18 miles south of Hartford, "emblems of sorrow appeared in all directions." (1) Most businesses were shut down, and stores and homes along the route of the funeral procession were draped in black.

Following an elaborate memorial service attended by Governor William Buckingham, U.S. Sen. James Dixon, the wife of General George McClellan and hundreds of others, Mansfield was buried in Middletown on Sept. 23, 1862.  As his coffin was lowered into the ground at Mortimer Cemetery, the Mansfield Guard, a local militia group head by Mansfield's friend Elihu Starr, fired three volleys. (Mansfield was reburied at Indian Hills Cemetery in Middletown in 1867.)

The circumstances of Mansfield's wounding at Antietam on the morning of Sept. 17, 1862 are well known to many Civil War buffs, but Flood's letter describing the general's last hours was news to me. Randy Buchman, an Antietam battlefield guide, discovered an old, typewritten copy of the surgeon's letter to Mansfield's widow in the basement of the Antietam National Park Visitor's Center and posted the complete contents on his terrific Enfilading Lines blog. Curious, he wondered if the original belonged to the Middlesex County Historical Society. I aimed to find out.

Order directing Mansfield to hold
 his command at Antietam. 
(Middlesex County Historical Society)

Fifty-two years ago, the house Mansfield lived in during the Civil War was set to be demolished and turned into a parking lot. Thankfully, the Middlesex County Historical Society bought the red-brick home on Main Street in Middletown from Mansfield's descendants and turned it into a museum.

An exhibit focused on Middletown soldiers who served during the Civil War takes up a good chunk of space in the small, well-kept building. The historical society also displays an extensive collection of Mansfield memorabilia, including a daguerreotype of a much younger Mansfield as a soldier, a pre-Civil War letter from Robert E. Lee and a pair of black-and-white striped pants Mansfield wore as a tot.

And in a manilla folder in the small research room, there's a five-page letter, yellowed with age and difficult to read, to a Middletown widow.

"I have endeavored to give you a faithful detail of all that transpired in my relations with your lamented husband," closed Dr. Patrick Flood's letter to Louisa Mansfield on April 28, 1863. "... The Country has suffered an irreparable loss in his death."

(1) Hartford Courant, Sept. 24, 1862

Joseph Mansfield lived in this house on Main Street in Middletown. It now houses
the Middlesex Historical Society, which operates a small museum here.