Joseph K. F. Mansfield,

BRIGADIER GENERAL OF THE U. S. ARMY.

A NARRATIVE OF EVENTS CONNECTED
WITH HIS MORTAL WOUNDING AT
ANTIETAM,
Sharpsburg, Maryland,
September 17, 1862.

BY

JOHN MEAD GOULD,

Late Acting Adjutant 10th Maine Volunteers,
and Major 29th Maine Veteran Vols.

PORTLAND:
STEPHEN BERRY, PRINTER.
1895.

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 class 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 class.

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., assured 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 principal places which have been pointed out to visitors. Still another spot was shown to our party when the 1-10-29th Maine Regiment Association 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] Association 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