The 50th Pennsylvania's Civil War Odyssey
The Exciting Life and Hard Times of a Union Volunteer Infantry Regiment:1861 to 1865
by
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The 50th Pennsylvania apparently hesitated before entering a field of standing corn. One of General Stevens' aides reached it to encourage its commanders to plunge ahead. Rice said of this moment that "their bullets were coming thick and fast at every step…” He reported that old Sergeant Casper Kahley, who often tried to look after him as a younger man, came to him and encouraged him to move forward. As he moved, he felt bullets twice cut his clothing or equipment, and he fired and loaded while still moving. I was, he said "in the act of ramming home another (minie ball), when I felt a shock and pitched forward among the corn. I knew I was hit, but could not tell where. There was no local pain, but a general numbness in my legs, and I could not rise. I threw off my accouterments and worked my way to the rear by taking hold of corn hills and pulling myself along.”2 Rice had been struck by a rifle ball in the groin.
Rice said he "bled like a stuck pig," and in the driving rain his pants were soaked with blood and his shoes were running over with it. He remembered that he had laid at the edge of the corn field and "had been holding a finger in each one of the holes (the entry and exit wounds) to stop the flow of the blood for an hour or so, when a surgeon came and made an examination of my wound.”3 Captain Bossard came by to gather the men of Company I who could still walk and encouraged them to rejoin their company. Rice was left on the field and awoke at first light the next day to find Rebel soldiers walking about picking up haversacks from the dead and wounded in search of food and useful clothing or equipment. Some Union army surgeons had remained behind to help the wounded, but all were without food for 24 hours. A sympathetic Confederate officer told Rice that his own army's trains were too far away to provide help. Rice had only two hard crackers to eat as he lay for three days in the field where he had been shot. By the third day a parole had been arranged, and an ambulance train arrived under a flag of truce to pick up the wounded Federal soldiers and take them on a jolting, pain-filled trip to hospitals in Washington, DC.4
In about the same period of time when Corporal Rice was hit and the 50th Pennsylvania was advancing in the face of heavy enemy fire, the leading element of Stevens' command, the 79th New York, lost five color bearers and was almost at a standstill. General Stevens pushed to the front of the regiment that he so clearly loved, and, taking the colors of his old regiment in his hands, he rushed forward holding the flag aloft. He purportedly called, "Highlanders, my Highlanders, follow your general!" As the 50th Pennsylvania and the other regiments of its division pushed forward in support of the 79th New York, the Confederates fell back. But General Stevens was shot through the head and died, just as a terrible thunderstorm rolled over the battlefield.5
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1 Rice pp. 62-63
2 Ibid, p. 64.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid, p. 68.
5 Stevens, pp. 485, 486.
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About the Book
About 1,900 men served in this regiment during the war. Men, who began their military service as enlisted men, winnowed by battle, increasingly assumed the commissioned leadership roles in the regiment. Reading of their experiences, you will come to understand, how the Union army, despite the battlefield debacles of the early years of the war, was converted into an army that could stand up to the Confederacy's best. In telling this story of heroism and sacrifices, the author also shows the warts and blemishes of a volunteer regiment.
About the Author
Born, raised, and educated in Pennsylvania, the author's high regard for his native state's contribution to the preservation of the Union and the abolishment of slavery shines through on the pages of this book.