The Color Bearer TraditionThe Warfare Between the Declares was the heyday of American battleflags and their bearers. With unusualhistorical accuracy, various stirring challenge paintings show the colors and the intrepid bearers in the front of the fray or being a rallying point in a escape. The colors of the Civil War regiment embodied its prize, and the guys chosen to carry them made an elite.
Tall, muscular men had been preferred, because holding aloft a large, large banner, to keep it visible through battle smoke cigars and at a distance, required physical power. Courage was likewise necessary to carry a flag in to combat, since the colors drew lead like a magnet. To the south Carolinas Palmetto Sharpshooters, for example , lost twelve out of 11 of its bearers and color guard at the Battle of Seven Pinastre, the banner passing through several hands devoid of touching the land. Birth and Early Life in CharlestonBorn in Charleston in 1824, Charles Edmiston and his twin sister, Ellen Ann, were the third boy and second daughter, correspondingly, of paper editor Frederick Whilden great wife, Elizabeth Gilbert Whilden.
The births of two even more sons, Richard Furman in 1826 and William Gilbert in 1828, would total the relatives, making eight children in most. Young Charles roots leaped deep in the soil from the lowcountry. His Whilden forefathers had completed in the Charleston area inside the 1690s, and an ancestral on his mothers side, the Rev. Bill Screven, acquired arrived in South Carolina even before, establishing the First Baptist Church of Charleston in 1683, today the most well-known church in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Like many Southerners who came of age in the late antebellum period, Charles Whilden got pride in his ancestors role in the American Revolution, especially his grandpa, Joseph Whilden, who, in 18, acquired run away coming from his loved ones plantation in Christ Church Parish to participate the causes under Général General Francis Swamp Sibel Marion struggling with the English. At the time of Charles birth, the family of Frederick and Elizabeth Whilden existed comfortably in their home in Magazine Road, attended by way of a devoted slave, Juno Waller Seymour, a diminutive, dynamic black woman known as Maumer Juno to four ages of the Whilden family. Brought up by Maumer Juno from the cradle, Charles soon developed a strong add-on to the woman an add-on that would endure to the end of his life. The prosperity of Joseph Whilden and his family would prove less enduring, however , and business reversals, beginning in the late 1820s, combined with Josephs stroke many years later wonderful eventual loss of life in 1838, would reduce his family to genteel poverty.
To help make payments, Maumer Juno took in ironing. Inspite of a lack of money for school, young Charles managed to obtain a good education. Information about Charles schooling are sketchy, but the lustrous prose of his making it through letters demonstrates a applied hand and a grown intellect. Charles admission to the South Carolina bar at Columbia in 1845 is even more evidence of a triumph of intellect and effort over financial adversity.
Inside the closing many years of the antebellum period, once Charles Whilden was developing up in Charleston, the city was the commercial and cultural middle of the lowcountry as well as Southern Carolinas developing center and many cosmopolitan town. By the time Charles Whilden reached adulthood, nevertheless , the Charleston economy was in decline, plus the citys population would actually diminish during the decade in the 1850s. Obviously, after a simple attempt to set up a law practice in Charleston, Attorney Whilden chose to search for his good fortune outside his home town. Nevertheless the practice of law inside the upcountry town of Pendleton also did not pan to Whilden.
Confronted with a major career decision, Whilden selected not only to keep the law yet also to leave the Palmetto Point out for the north. The 1850 federal government censustakers located Charles Whilden living in a boarding property in Of detroit, Michigan, where he worked like a clerk, most likely in a magazine office. Rumours in water piping stocks and land on Lake Superior soon left Charles deeply in financial trouble to his youngest close friend, William, who had built up a successful merchandising business back home in Charleston. Eager to get out of debt, and perhaps desiring adventure, inside the spring of 1855 Charles Whilden signed on like a civilian staff of the U.
S. Military services. After a difficult two-month trek from Ft Leavenworth, Kansas, Whilden arrived in the old The spanish language city of Santa claus Fe, New Mexico Terrain, on Aug 27, 1855, where he used his responsibilities as civilian private secretary to the community garrison leader, Colonel Steve Breckinridge Grayson of Kentucky, who would later on serve the Confederacy like a brigadier general in California. Life in New South america TerritoryWhen Whilden arrived in Santa Fe, the location had been under U.
S. jurisdiction intended for only a few years, and the inhabitants was overwhelmingly Hispanic and Roman Catholic, causing the Baptist Whilden to complain, in an early letter to his sibling William in Charleston, that we now have so many Saints days amongst these Hottentots, that it is hard to recollect all of them. So remote was Santa claus Fe through the U. S i9000.
that mail reached the city only once a month from Missouri. Seeking on the bright-side of his cultural and geographic remoteness in Fresh Mexico Area, in a notice written in May 1856 Charles expressed his intention to William to remain in Fresh Mexico till I have paid out up all my debts, intended for I can get it done better away here, than in the Claims, as there are zero concerts, Theatres, White Youngster Gloves, Subscribers to Non profit organizations or church buildings, or gallivanting the ladies on Sleigh trips and &c to make a mans money travel. Whildens obligations as Colonel Graysons admin were comparatively light, giving him enough time for various other pursuits most likely too much time intended for his personal financial great. His The spring 30, 1857 letter home to Charleston states: Beyond the offices My spouse and i hold through this Territory of Warden of any Masonic Resort, President of your Literary Contemporary society, member of a Territorial Democratic Central Panel, c.
.., I possess lately added that of Player. Dreaming of making enough money to satisfy his debts to William and also to establish a regulation practice in Texas, Charles had purchased a of sixteen acre vehicle farm around Sante Fe, establishing his claim like a farmer.
Alas, the farm would prove to be unprofitable. In his free time, Whilden likewise occasionally edited the Father christmas Fe paper when the regular editor was busy. Throughout the Presidential selection campaign of 1856, Whilden penned an editorial helping the renomination of Chief executive Franklin Touch, a pro-Southern Democrat, and he stated the desire in a letter to William that Pierce would be re-elected and give me a fat workplace. Whildens expect a political sinecure as well proved to be ideal.
Marriage was another unrealized dream. Following his personal marriage in 1850, William Whilden badgeredhis elder brother to end his bachelorhood and settle down. In December 1854, when he was stillin Of detroit and old 30, a buddy had attempted to interest Charles in getting married to his fiftyish, red-headed great aunt. Seizing the opportunity to turn the tables in William, Charles wrote to William to never be shocked if this individual married over and used William in the standing give to permit Charles to honeymoon at Williams stylish new home in Charleston.
Whatever romantic aspirations Charles may include entertained if he arrived in New Mexico, the dearth of eligible girls in the terrain soon quashed. In a letter to William written eight months after his entrance in Santa claus Fe, Charles could depend only half a dozen unmarried American ladies in every of New Mexico, non-e of whom, yet , lived in Santa Fe. Nevertheless boring it could have been, life in Father christmas Fe likewise afforded Whilden time for puffing his meerschaum pipe, examining his subscriptions to the peppery Charleston Mercury newspaper and thehighbrow Russells Magazine and reflecting on the mounting sectional tensions in the prewar years. In a notification to Bill dated 03 26, 1856, Charles complained that the Authorities is becoming even more abolition each day and he predicted which the Union may possibly last a couple of years longer, although unless a decided alter takes place in Northern governmental policies, it must now go under.
The War BeginsEvents would demonstrate Whilden appropriate. On December 20, 1860, delegates for the so-called Secession Convention, appointment in Start Hall in downtown Charleston, only a brief distance by Charles Whildens boyhood house on Mag Street, all adopted the Ordinance of Secession, acquiring South Carolina out of the Union. The bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor several months later on heralded first the shooting war. A lesser man than Charles Whilden might have been happy to sit your war in New South america Territory.
After all, Whilden had been eliminated from the Southern region for more than 10 years. He was quickly approaching forty five. Whildens frequent denunciations of abolitionism in his letters were deduced on principle, not personal expediency or financial self-interest. Apart from a nominal, undivided interest in his beloved Maumer Juno that he distributed to his siblings, Charles placed no servant property.
Furthermore, having been more than one particular, 000 miles from Sc, with small money to get travel. Yet Charles Whilden was no common man. Undeterred by the obstructions confronting him, Whilden solved to answer To the south Carolinas call up to hands. According into a reminiscence written in 1969 by his grand relative, Miss Elizabeth Whilden Hard of Greenville, South Carolina, in order to he might get back to Charleston was by Bahamas, and his way back to Charleston the send was destroyed, he put in some time within an open vessel, suffered sunstroke, and as a result acquired epileptic attacks.
The particular date of Whildens harrowing come back to Charleston is usually conjectural, since none of his correspondence from the early war years has survived, but the likely date is definitely late 1861 or early 1862. Whildens Confederate documents in the Countrywide Archives in Washington, D. C. start with his enlistment in 1864, but Miss Hards memory may be appropriate that her Great Uncle Charles enrolled a number of moments, but when he previously an epileptic attack can be discharged.
Then he would go someplace else and get again. Confederate service records happen to be notoriously incomplete, and this stands to reason that Charles Whilden would not possess risked lifestyle and arm or leg returning to Charleston only to steer clear of military assistance once home. Irrespective of whether or not he had seen previous service, Whildendemonstrably enlisted pertaining to the warfare at Charleston on March 6, 1864, as a private in Organization I (known as the Richardson Guards) of the initial Regiment, South Carolina Volunteers. Lieutenant Wallace Delph enlisted Whilden, and the lieutenant can be pardoned if this individual looked askance at his new recruit.
By most requirements, Whilden was obviously a marginal get. Though brilliant and devoted, Whilden was also in his 40th yr, the reddish colored hair of his youngsters turned gray. His city background and thread of inactive occupations better suited him fora Richmond clerkship than active assistance in the field. On top of everything else, Whilden was epileptic.
Whildens new regiment was a proud outfit. The 1st Regiment, SouthCarolina Volunteers, was known popularly as Greggs lst SouthCarolina after the first colonel, Maxcy Gregg, in order to distinguishthe regiment coming from several other Sc infantry regiments also discovered numerically because the lst Regiment. The successor to a regiment organized by Encolure. Gregg in December 1860 for six-months service, the very first Regiment, SCV, was probably the very first Digital rebel infantry regiment.
In the time Whildens enlistment, the routine was a part of Brigadier Standard Samuel McGowans brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia. At one time component to A. L. Hills vaunted Light Section, McGowans South Carolinians awarded a popularity for hard fighting on many a bloody field.
That reputation was shortly to be put to the sternest test at an organized Virginia crossroads village referred to as Spotsylvania Courtroom House. The Fight with the Mule ShoeFollowing his repulse at the Wilderness on May your five and 6, 1864, Union General in Chief Ulysses S. Offer ordered the Army of the Potomac to maneuver southeast about 12 miles to the vicinity of Spotsylvania The courtroom House (NPS Web Site), hoping to obtain between the Army of North Virginia and Richmond. General Robert E.
Lee, however , was quicker, and elements of the Confederate Initial Corps reached Spotsylvania Courtroom House merely ahead of the Federals. Over the subsequent few days several collisions inside the area happened as both equally sides took up positions and lifted additional models. The Army of Upper Virginia resolved into a defensive line at Spotsylvania that bulged northward in the center to create a salient or perhaps mule-shoe, with elements of Lieutenant General Rich Ewells Second Corps protecting the mule-shoe. At first mild on May 12, nearly 19, 000 men of the Union II Corps, taking advantage of ground fog, bitten the tip or perhaps apex of the mule-shoe, quickly overwhelming Main General Edward Johnsons 5, 000-man section defending the apex.
Once inside the mule-shoe, the Federals vulnerable to advance southward like a tidal wave. Simply their own disorganization and a number of desperate Confederate counterattacks halted the Union advance prior to it ended in a general rout. With almost all of Johnsons Section dead or perhaps prisoners, a substantial segment of the works within the apex in the mule-shoe was unoccupied simply by any Confederate troops. To improve this, Basic Lee submitted two écurie from the Third Corps, Harriss Mississippians and McGowans South Carolinians, through the mid-morning several hours of the 12th.
With a cheer including the double quick, McGowans Brigade advanced towards the tip of the mule-shoe in support of Harriss Brigade, sloshing through rain and mud and under heavy fire. At the head of each from the brigades five regiments, two soldiers transported the regimental state flag and the nationwide battleflag. The blue cotton state banner featured a palmetto tree encircled using a wreath of oak and laurel leaves, the nationwide battleflag exhibited the familiar blue, starred St . Andrews cross dividing a reddish colored field.
When the frequent color bearer was shot, Whilden insisted upon bearing his regiments national colours into the battle, although he was not a member of Company E, the regiments color business. Lieutenant James Armstrong, the commander of CompanyK and Whildens messmate, relented, although, according to Armstrongs postwar account, Whilden was feeble in into the totally unfitted for lively service
. Actually he was stumbling at every step. Watching Whilden struggle to sustain his control, Armstrong agreed to relieve Whilden of the flag and to carry it himself. Whilden relinquished the flag for the lieutenant, nevertheless only following Armstrong got promised to bring back it to him when the regiment stopped.
While the control arrived at the next line, Whilden came hurrying up, required the banner and bravely bore that throughout the fight, Armstrong were recalled. The lieutenant was being exacto when he wrote that Whilden bore the flag, since, when the best of his flag staff was shot away through the advance, Whilden tied the battleflag about his midsection and ongoing forward. When Whilden great comrades finally halted in the late forenoon, they will fell into trenches west of the mule-shoe tip. Maybe two hundred meters of the salients defenses after that remained in Federal hands.
In his recent publication on Scholarships Overland Advertising campaign, Noah Trudeau writes: Along those two hundred yards of mutually held trenches, guys now murdered each other with zealous get away from. In a conflict that got birthed it is share of bloody perspectives, this day and the morning with the next in Spotsylvania would give birth for the bloodiest of all of them. For the next 18 hours or so, McGowans Brigade would keep its position along the apex from the salient front side and will maintain an even more or much less continuous fireplace. At times the 2 sides were only a few yards apart.
Now and then one hundred or so Yankees would rise forward within the Confederate trenches, only to always be immediately hurled back in eager hand-to-hand struggling with. Rain fell intermittently throughout the afternoon in the 12th, adding to the misery of the combatants. About 12 oclock that evening, a large oak, some 22 in . in size and slice almost by 50 % by National rifle fireplace, fell down on works manned by Whildens regiment, wounding several males and surprising a great many even more. While this kind of desperate fighting took place, other Confederates were constructing a brand new defensive line across the base with the mule-shoe about a mile for the rear from the Mississippians and South Carolinians.
Finally, at 5 oclock each morning of May13, the brigades of Harris and McGowan withdrew for the new line. Thus finished the lengthiest sustained hand-to-hand combat with the war. The toll in McGowans Escouade had been large. General McGowan was injured early in the advance, as well as the commander of Greggs 1st South Carolina, Lacet.
C. W. McCreary, fell wounded almost in Whildens arms. Total casualties inside the brigade exceeded 40 percent.
One of these casualties was your impromptu flag bearer, Exclusive Charles Whilden. At some point prior to McGowans Escouade retired to the relative protection of the new defensive line, a bullet took open Whildens shirt, inflicting a twisted to his shoulder. With all the flag even now tied around his midsection, Whilden was carried to a field medical center. For all intents and purposes, the war was over to get him.
The following day, May l4, Charles quickly wrote a letter to his close friend, William, who had been then portion as an artillery officer near Charleston. After explaining the preventing of the preceding two days as well as the heavy loss of his brigade, Charles turned to a more personal subject. If it ought to be the decree with the Almighty that we should shed my life through this War, he wrote, after that William should have his meerschaum pipe fantastic sisters-in-law should draw pertaining to his watch and chain. What tiny remained of his real estate, Charles wrote, should be evenly divided among Sisters Charlotte now & Ellen Ann We promised dear Mother that they can should never desire if I could prevent it.
Sent to the overall Hospital in Camp Winder in Richmond to recover his health, Whilden was furloughed to Charleston in late August. Listed because absent sick and tired at Charleston on the muster rolls of his regiment for Sept. 2010 through Dec 1864, Whilden never reclaimed sufficiently to come back to active service. After the WarIn common with other Confederate veterans, Charles Whilden struggled to set his existence back together following the war. He might have been successful, but upon September twenty-five, 1866 this individual died instantly in Charleston at age forty two.
In accordance to At the Hard, her Great Granddad Charles passed away without fame or glory, as with an early morning walk he suffered an epileptic attack and fell in a pool of water coming from rain gathered on the pavement. The man who survived the Bloody Viewpoint at Spotsylvania drowned at home in a few ins of surface water. The story of the flag that Charles Whilden taken so courageously at Spotsylvania does not end with his fatality. After Whilden was wounded at Spotsylvania and in the hospital, the banner was placed with his different effects.
Given to Whilden when he was furloughed to Charleston that kicks off in august 1864, the flag is at his ownership when he perished about couple of years thereafter. About 15 years after the war, Edward McCrady, Jr., a prominent Charleston lawyer who had captained colour company of Greggs initial South Carolina early on in the conflict and had later risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel of the regiment, petitioned William Whilden to choose over the battleflag that he previously inherited by his brother Charles. McCrady had own the regiments blue condition colors, and he proclaimed a prefer to reunite the 2 flags.
In a letter written in New Years Day, 1880, McCrady pled his greatest case, pointing out that his regiment experienced carried the battleflag atlanta divorce attorneys battle until May 1864 and that, for years during the warfare, he had were living with the banner in his camping tent, and slept with that by his side inside the bivouac. After consulting his three surviving brothers, a pair of whom had been Baptist ministers, William Whilden declined McCradys request, essentially on the grounds that McCrady had zero higher claims to the banner than any other veteran of the regiment. In declining, yet , Whilden suggested a readiness to entrust the flag to a collection of Confederate relics. Following Bill Whildens loss of life in 1896, custody in the battleflag passed to Williams daughter, Mrs.
Charles Hard of Greenville. In 1906, Mrs. Hard delivered up the banner to her Dad Charles aged friend and messmate, Adam Armstrong, a postwar harbor master of Charleston who had commanded colour company of Greggs initial South Carolina in Spotsylvania. In the letter to Mrs.
Hard conveying his gratitude for the flag, Armstrong promised to communicate with the other representatives of the Regiment in regard to sending the flag to the State House to be placed along with of the blue State banner. Armstrong certain Mrs. Hard that, till sent there it will be kept in a fire proof burial container. Time handed, and the battleflag remained together with the aging Armstrong.
Finally, in 1920, Mrs. Hard wrote to Armstrong about the flag. Rose McKevlin, Armstrongs health professional, responded, telling Mrs. Hard that Armstrongs leg was amputated the last month resulting from a twisted he had experienced at Spotsylvania more than half a hundred years previously.
The notice explained that Armstrong had tried to assemble a meeting of the surviving representatives to discuss the flag but that he had failed to do this, and it concluded together with the promise that Armstrong, getting the mature of the two surviving representatives of the routine, would send the flag to the Secretary of Condition in Columbia to be put alongside the blue express colors of the regiment previously there. Although the evidence is definitely not definitive, the old jewellry evidently produced good in the nurses assure on his part by turning over the battleflag to the condition before this individual died.. MAIN SOURCES employed in preparing this essay 1 )
Adam Armstrong and Varina M. Brown, McGowans Brigade in Spotsylvania, Confederate Veteran, volume. 33 (1925), pp. 376-379.
2 . T. F. L.
Caldwell, The History of your Brigade of South Carolinians, Known First as Greggs, and Subsequently as McGowans Brigade (Dayton, Ohio: Morningside Press, 1984 reprint of 1866 ed. ). several. Compiled Services Record of CharlesE.
Whilden, very first Regiment, South Carolina Volunteers, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Businesses from the State of Sc, War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109, National Records, Washington, D. C. four. Fairfax Downey, The Color-Bearers (Mattituck, NYC: J.
M. Carroll, Company, 1984). 5. Bill D.
Matter, If it Takes Most Summer, the Battle of Spotsylvania (Chapel Hill: University or college of North Carolina Press, 1988). 6. David Hammond Moore, editor, Characters From a Santa Ideología Army Clerk, 1855-1856, CharlesE. Whilden, Fresh Mexico Traditional Review, volume.
40, number 2 (April 1965), pp. 141-164 (relating to albhabets from CharlesE. Whilden to his buddy, WilliamG.
Whilden, or Mrs. WilliamG. Whilden, factory units of which happen to be in the Southern region Caroliniana Library). 7.
John Belton ONeall, Biographical Sketches in the Bench and Bar of South Carolina (Spartanburg, SC: The Reprint Business, Publishers, 1975), Vol. 2, at p. 614. almost 8.
Noah Andre Trudeau, Bloody Streets South, the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, May-June 1864 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1989). 9. U. S.
Bureau from the Census, 7th Census of the United States, 1850, City of Detroit, David County, Michigan, Schedule1-Free Residents, National Records Microfilm Club. No . T6, Reel No . 146, g.
8 (reverse). 10. CharlesE. Whilden Words, 1855-1856, MSS in the Southern Caroliniana Selection, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.
11. CharlesE. Whilden Letters, 1854-1920, MSS in the South Carolina Famous Society, Charleston, SC (which collection also contains letters of Edward McCrady, Jr., WilliamG.
Whilden, Mrs. Charles Hard and Rose McKelvin respecting the battleflag of Greggs 1st South Carolina and a typescript of Ella Hards October23, 1969 notification to the Director of Records, Columbia, SOUTH CAROLINA, respecting her great uncle). 12. Ellen Whilden, Your life of Maumer Juno of Charleston, T.
C., A Sketch of Juno (Waller) Seymour (Atlanta, GA: Foote & Davies, 1892).
