Joseph K. F. Mansfield, Brigadier General of the U.S. Army Part 1

Joseph K. F. Mansfield, Brigadier General of the U.S. Army.

by John Mead Gould.

Joseph King Fenno Mansfield was born in New Haven, Conn., December 22, 1803. His early education was obtained in the common schools of his state.

At the age of fourteen he entered the military academy at West Point, being the youngest of a cla.s.s of forty. During the five years of his course, he was a careful and earnest student, especially distinguishing himself in the sciences, and graduating in 1822, second in his cla.s.s.

He was immediately promoted to the Corps of Engineers, in which department he served throughout the Mexican war. In 1832 he was made 1st Lieutenant; three years later Captain.

His gallantry and efficiency during the Mexican war were rewarded by successive brevets of Major, Lt.-Colonel and Colonel of Engineers.

In 1853 Mansfield was appointed Inspector General of the army, and in the prosecution of his duties visited all parts of the country.

At the outbreak of the War of the Rebellion he was in the Northwest, but in April, 1861, was summoned to Washington to take command of the forces there. On May 17, 1861, Mansfield was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General in the regular army.

He rendered valuable service at Fortress Monroe, Newport News, Suffolk, and finally at Antietam, where he was mortally wounded, September 17, 1862.

NARRATIVE.

It was bad enough and sad enough that Gen. Mansfield should be mortally wounded once, but to be wounded six, seven or eight times in as many localities is too much of a story to let stand unchallenged.

These pages will tell what the members of the 10th Maine Regiment know of the event, but first we will state what others have claimed.

The following places have been pointed out as the spot where Mansfield was wounded and all sorts of particulars have been given. Besides these a man with a magic-lantern is traveling through the country showing Burnside's bridge, and remarking, "Here Mansfield fell."

The spot marked =A= on the map is said to have been vouched for by a "New York officer of Mansfield's staff."

=B= is where the late David R. Miller understood the General was wounded by a sharpshooter stationed in Miller's barn, west of the pike.

=C= is where Capt. Gardiner and Lieut. Dunegan, of Co. K, 125th Penn.

Vols., a.s.sured me[1] that the General fell from his horse in front of their company.

=D= is where, in November, 1894, I found a marker, that had been placed there the October previous, by some one unknown to me. These are the four princ.i.p.al places which have been pointed out to visitors. Still another spot was shown to our party when the 1-10-29th Maine Regiment a.s.sociation made its first visit to the field, Oct. 4, 1889; it is south of =A=, but I did not note exactly where.

=E=. There has also been published in the National Tribune, which has an immense circulation among the soldiers, the statement[2] of Col. John H.

Keatley, now Commandant of the Soldier's Home, Marshall-town, Iowa, who locates the place near the Dunker Church.

Col. Keatley's letters show that he has been on the field several times since the war, which makes it harder to believe what would seem very plain otherwise, that his memory of locations has failed him. He appears to have got the recollection of the two woods mixed. Keatley was Sergeant of Co.

A, the extreme left of the 125th Penn.

Mr. Alexander Davis, who resided and worked on the field before and after the battle, points out a place several rods northeast of the present residence of Millard F. Nicodemus (built since the war and not shown on the map). Some Indiana troops were the supposed original authority for this place, which is not far from =B=. It is only fair to Mr. Davis to add that he claims no personal knowledge.

There are several other places that have been described to me in private letters, but these need no mention here.

WHY SO MANY ERRORS?

Why has there been so much difficulty in identifying the right locality?

There has been no difficulty, none whatever, among those who knew the facts. The errors have all come from the ignorant, the imaginative, and those who have poor memories.

It will be easy, especially for one standing on the ground while reading these pages, to see that very few except the 10th Maine would witness the event, as we were so nearly isolated and almost hidden. We made very little account at the time, of what is now considered an important event in the history of the battle. It then appeared to us as only one of the many tragedies in the great slaughter. Nothing was done at the time to mark the spot, and hardly a note of the event was recorded.

REGIMENTAL EXCURSION.

In 1889, the 1-10-29th Maine Regiment[3] a.s.sociation made an excursion to the various battle fields in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia where the regiment had fought. Friday, October 4th, was the day of the visit to Antietam. Not one of the company had been there for twenty-five years, yet on arriving in East Woods we readily and surely identified the fighting position of the regiment, which was known as the "Tenth Maine," at the time of the battle. We found that the west face of the woods had been considerably cut away, and that many of the trees inside the woods had been felled, but there was no serious change in the neighborhood where we fought, excepting that a road had been laid out exactly along the line of battle where we fired our first volley. We have since learned that in 1872, the County bought a fifteen feet strip of land, 961 feet long, bordering that part of the northeast edge of the woods, which lies between Samuel Poffenberger's lane and the Smoketown road, and moved the "worm fence" fifteen feet into the field.[4] Excepting as these changes affected the view, all agreed that everything in our vicinity had a "natural look." The chief features were "the bushes," directly in rear of our right companies; the Croasdale Knoll, further to the right and rear; the Smoketown Road, which enters East Woods between the bushes and the Knoll, and runs past our front through the woods; the low land in our right front; the "open," easily discernable through the woods; the rising land with its ledges, big and little, in the front; the denser woods in the left front; the worm fence before noted, and the long ledge behind it, against which our left companies sheltered themselves by Captain Jordan's thoughtful guidance; and the gully beginning in the rear of our position and leading down to the great stone barn and stone mansion,[5] with its immense spring of water.

The large oak in rear of our right, to which Col. Beal crawled after he was wounded, was still standing a few paces up (northeast) the Smoketown road, and another good sized tree nearer the front was recognized by Capt.

(then Sergt.) Goss as the one from which he first opened fire. Lt.-Col.

Emerson (Capt. of H, the right Co.) stood where he stood in 1862 and pointed out to our guests place after place which he recognized.

Many of "the bushes" of 1862 had grown into sizable trees; they, with Beal's and Goss's trees and the Smoketown road fence, had been a serious obstacle to the advance of our right companies.

The scar, or depression in the ground, where we had buried a few of our dead (northeast of Beal's tree), was still visible, but repeated plowing since 1889 has entirely effaced it.

Our excursion was entirely for pleasure; we had no thought of controversy, nor even of the enlightenment of the Sharpsburg people, who knew nothing of the true locality where Mansfield was wounded, but were showing two or three erroneous places to visitors. We defended the truth, photographed the position, but found it difficult for several reasons to decide by several feet upon the _exact_ spot of the wounding.

It is necessary now to go back to 1862 and tell the story of the battle as seen by the 10th Maine; and as since the war a generation has grown up that knows nothing of the way soldiers are arranged for marching and fighting, it is best to give a great many explanations that may seem unnecessary to an old soldier.

THE PART TAKEN BY THE 10TH MAINE.

The 12th Army Corps, Mansfield commanding, marched on the Boonsboro pike, late at night of Sept. 16th, from "the center" through Keedysville to the farm of George Line (G. Lyons on the old maps) and there rested till daybreak. Gen. Mansfield slept on the west side of a fence which ran south from Line's garden to woods. His bed was the gra.s.s and his roof a blanket. The 10th Maine was on the east side of the fence (see map), and some of our boys who indulged in loud talk were ordered by the General to lower their tones to a whisper. The other regiments of our brigade were near us, while the other brigades of the corps appeared to be behind ours (or east). Our brigade[6] was the advance of the corps, and marched a little before 5 o'clock on the morning of the battle, first to the west across the Smoketown road, and nearly to John Poffenberger's, and then south to nearly abreast of Joseph Poffenberger's (marked 6.20 on the map), and there halted for almost an hour, during all of which time, that is from before 5 A. M., Hooker's corps was fighting in and around "the great cornfield," the enemy being south and west of it.

As well as could be judged, all of the 12th corps followed our movements, and halted to the right or left of the rear of our brigade.

The 124th and 125th Penn. were detached from the brigade at some early hour, but at 7.20 by my watch, which may have been five to ten minutes fast, the other four regiments were started for the fight.

The 10th Maine was guided by Gen. Mansfield in person. We had all seen him for some time previous sitting on his horse at the northwest corner of the East Wood, marked W on the map. He hurried us, first to the front, down hill through a field where several piles of stone lay, the Smoketown road still being on our left. We barely entered the "ten acre cornfield" when Mansfield beckoned us to move to our left. We then marched a few steps by what the tactics call "Left oblique," but did not gain ground to the left sufficiently to suit the General, so Col. Beal commanded "Left flank,"

whereupon each man faced east, and we presently knocked over the two fences of the Smoketown road and marched into Sam Poffenberger's field.

While going across the Smoketown road Gen. Hooker rode from the woods (M) and told Col. Beal "The enemy are breaking through my lines; you must hold these woods," (meaning East Woods.)

After crossing the road, bullets from the enemy began to whiz over and around us. When well into Sam Poffenberger's field the Colonel commanded "Right flank," then each man again faced south (or west of south to be more exact) and we all marched straight for the enemy, whom some of us could see in the woods, close to where our Mansfield marker is now standing, marked M on the map.

The 10th Maine was in "double column at half distance" (or "double column in ma.s.s," as some remember.)

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Each line in the diagram represents about 15 men all facing "front." In this order we had bivouacked and marched to Sam Poffenberger's field, only that while in the ten acre corn field every man turned on his left heel and marched toward what had been the "left," until arriving in Sam Poffenberger's field, where a turn of each man to his right, or the technical "front," brought us to our original position.

Apparently fifty to a hundred Confederates were strung along the fence (M) firing at us. They had the immense advantage that they could rest their rifles on the fence and fire into us, ma.s.sed ten ranks deep, while we could only march and "take it."