Captain William Covill, Jr of the First Minnesota Infantry was with his Company in action in the West Woods at Antietam on 17 September 1862, and later remembered

As I saw it the whole Division except our Regiment was broken into a mob, madly pressing to the rear followed closely by the enemies lines. Instantly on the breaking up of the 84th [82nd] N.Y. which was next on our left, Col Sully of our Regiment gave the order to about face and march to the rear, which we did double quickly, accompanied with a shower of cannister from a battery which had hurried up the pasture field …

By May 1863 he had been promoted to Colonel of the regiment and was seriously wounded leading them at Gettysburg in July. After mustering out he was elected to the state legislature, in November 1864, but left St. Paul to serve again in the field, as Colonel of the First Minnesota Heavy Artillery from April to July 1865. He was honored with the title of Brevet Brigadier General.

His photograph is in the collection of the US Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

At 80 years old – “four score” – Andrew H Embler sent his daughter this card for Christmas 1914.

Embler was Captain of Company E, 82nd New York Infantry, (2nd State Militia) at Antietam and was wounded in the combat there. He transferred to the 59th NY Infantry in July 1864 and was the Acting Commissary of the 2nd Division, 2nd Army Corps when he led a charge “at the head of 2 regiments” at the Boydton Plank Road, VA on 27 October 1864. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for that action.

He was an officer in the Connecticut National Guard after the war and was appointed Adjutant General (AG) of the CT Guard in 1890. That’s him in National Guard uniform in the small photograph to the right above.

Lieutenant Joseph Lee Talbert was mortally wounded on Maryland Heights near Harpers Ferry on 13 September 1862, and died at Charles Town, VA (now West Virginia) on the 19th. His photograph is from the collection of Joe Matheson as published in Glen Allan Swain, Jr.’s The Bloody 7th (2014).

This is a clipping from the Wilmington, NC Weekly Star of 27 March 1896 describing the death of Captain John L. Litchfield, Company L, 7th South Carolina Infantry in September 1862 and the return of his effects to the family all those years later.

Here’s a beautiful illustration of the Mount Pleasant Hospital in Washington, DC from the Library of Congress. Its a hand-colored lithograph produced by Julian Carl “Charles” Magnus (1826-1900) in about 1862. Magnus was a prolific print publisher, map dealer, bookseller and stationer in New York City.

Scots-born 44 year old Baltimore bricklayer William H Burns enlisted in the 5th Maryland Infantry in October 1861 and was mortally wounded at Antietam in September 1862. He died at the Mount Pleasant Hospital on 24 October. The poetic clip is from his death notice in the Baltimore Sun of 27 October 1862.