Ned Duffey was a Private with Parker’s Richmond Battery at Sharpburg and was wounded in action there. He was promoted to Sergeant in March 1864 but was a Private again in November. In 1864 he was court-martialed for insubordination (verdict not known) and he ended the war with Woolfolk’s Battery.
This photograph taken of him in September 1925, along with two others – seated hatless, and a bust view – now at the Library of Congress, along with an affirmative reply of 27 January 1900 from General James Longstreet to a letter of Duffey’s.
Here’s an impressive cavalryman you might like to meet: Charles L. Leiper of Rush’s Lancers – the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry.
Although cavalry units were not significantly engaged at Antietam on 17 September, they battled all across Maryland in the week or so before.
On the 7th [September 1862], Lieutenant Charles L. Leiper was placed in command of Company ‘A,’ which he retained until the beginning of October. On the march to Antietam, when near Frederick, Maryland, on the 13th of September, he came upon a body of dismounted rebel cavalry in a wood. Although largely outnumbering his small force, he drove them in confusion, and made some prisoners. The enemy were armed with carbines, and though our men had only the lance and their pistols, by one determined charge they succeeded in dislodging the enemy, who fled in dismay.
This was Leiper’s habit through the war – taking aggressive action apparently without regard for the odds or his own safety.
He was seriously wounded twice as a result, and was promoted to Captain, Major, Lieutenant Colonel, and Colonel of his regiment by early 1865, and had been their commanding officer in practice since mid-1864. In March 1865 he was breveted – honorarily ranked – Brigadier General of Volunteers for his service.
The front page of the War Press, published in Philadelphia on 30 September 1862 includes a piece about how members of the Christian Commission found dead and wounded soldiers of the 118th Pennsylvania Infantry on both sides of the Potomac on 21 September, the day after the battle at Boteler’s Ford.
Among these was Private Chancellor Benjamin of Company F, shot in the thigh. He died of his wounds at the Broad and Cherry Streets hospital in Philadelphia on 22 November 1862. Details of his wound and medical care are seen here in a page from Surgeon G.A. Otis’ A Report on Excisions of the Head of the Femur for Gunshot Injury (1869), online from the Hathi Trust.
Here’s another extract from Otis’s Report on Excisions of the Head of the Femur for Gunshot Injury (1869) describing the wound and treatment of Private Richard M Brown of the 2nd South Carolina Cavalry. He had been shot and captured in a skirmish in the city of Frederick, MD on 12 September 1862 and died of his wounds and infection in a Federal hospital there on 7 November.
This is part of US Surgeon G.A. Otis’s Report on Excisions of the Head of the Femur for Gunshot Injury (1869) concerning Corporal Thomas J. Dunn of the 18th Mississippi Infantry describing his months of misery after he was shot at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862. His diseased femur (thigh bone) is illustrated.
In April 1863 the Confederate Agent of Exchange in Richmond requested
SIR: … I will be much obliged to you if you will cause to be sent to City Point Thomas J Dunn, Company E, Eighteenth Mississippi Regiment, captured and wounded at Antietam. He is now at Locust Springs [field hospital on the Geeting Farm near Keedysville, MD ], about two [21] miles from Frederick, Md. I am very anxious about this matter and will take it as a great favor if you will give it your attention …
He was not exchanged, probably in no condition to travel, but was instead transferred to a US Army hospital in Frederick on 3 May and he died there of infection in his hip and other complications from his wounds on 19 June 1863.
