As we approach the 159th anniversary of the battle of Bentonville, visitors will once again hear the ring of muskets and the roar of cannons. When the smoke clears, people will cheer and go about their day. But what was it like in 1865 when the smoke cleared in the Cole fields or in the woods of the Bull Pen? The difference between a musket demonstration in 2024 and a line of men firing in 1865 is what’s left behind: the wounded.
What we can never convey in a modern demonstration is what it would have been like to be a soldier wounded on the battlefield. What we can do is examine the historical record and read the words of the soldiers themselves to see through their eyes. Thankfully, we have a few detailed accounts of the wounded experience here at Bentonville in some of the most hotly contested places like the Cole Plantation and the Bull Pen.
One of the most detailed accounts from a wounded soldier on the field comes from Marcus Bates. He was a 1st Lieutenant in the 21st Michigan Infantry Regiment. Both he and his brother Erastus were fighting with their unit on the Cole Plantation as part of Carlin’s probing attack on the morning of March 19th, 1865. After a particularly deadly volley from the Confederates in their front, Marcus remembered: “My brother shot through the thigh made his way to my side to tell me he was shot, I could only tell him to make his way to the hospital as best he could alone”. Erastus did make it to the hospital and was treated in the Harper house. He survived his wounds and died in 1917 at the age of 71.
Marcus’ wounding was also well documented. A member of the 21st Michigan recounted:
“We could not have been over ten rods from the rebel lines when they fired their first volley and Bates fell. Lieutenant Sears helped him to his feet but he could not stand and falling again, began to crawl off with a sickening dread of being captured, fainting, and craving water. Two of our men carried him into a fence corner just behind the guns and laid him down.”
Bates himself recalled the experience, “How long I lay in the fence corner I do not know, or when I was removed. The next morning, I found myself lying on my back in a tent filled with wounded men, the one next to me on my left dead….I was conscious that I was in a critical condition. And thought of my dear ones at home, thankful that I still had a fighting chance for life.” Marcus Bates’ account illustrates well the care that was received on the battlefield as well as care in a field hospital.
Also on March 19th, another harrowing experience occurred on the other side of the battlefield. While fighting in the Bull Pen, Confederate Lieutenant John D. Taylor with his “Red Infantry” (named such for the red artillery uniforms they wore) took a section of Union earthworks during an intense burst of combat. While doing so, he saw a Union soldier stand up and fire at him from about 20 paces away. Taylor was struck near the left shoulder and knocked off his feet. He was carried to a nearby field hospital where he received an amputation. Rather than endure an excruciatingly painful ambulance ride to Smithfield, he chose to ride his own horse over 15 miles away, less than 24 hours after an amputation. Surely a most painful experience!
It is interesting to note the responses and attitudes of soldiers being wounded. Marcus Bates was hopeful that he would survive, and he did! That reaction was not universally shared by all the wounded men on the field, however. Lieutenant John Marshall Branum of the 98th Ohio Infantry Regiment, after fierce fighting in the Bull Pen, wrote a letter home to the family of his comrade Capt. John Carson who was killed. He conveyed Carson’s last moments. “The ball struck him near the upper part of the chest, passing directly through him.” Carson turned to Branum and said, “I am killed, Captain. Take care of my things and send them to my mother”. Captain Carson seemed to respond with a sense of calmness and acceptance of his fate.
Sometimes the wounded men responded with relief that the war was finally over for them. Lieutenant John Schenck of the 16th Illinois came upon a North Carolinian with a ghastly leg wound while searching for ammunition in the Bull Pen. The Confederate asked Schenk if he was looking for cartridges and Schenk responded in the affirmative. The North Carolinian replied “Well, Yank, turn me over keerfully and look in my knapsack. You’ll thar find 40 rounds. Take ‘em and use ‘em. I hope you’ll whip our army and end the wah. I’m tired of it”. For this wounded man, the war was over and he was glad to see it.
For some wounded men, having a positive attitude towards their wounding paid off. For others, like Orville Dewaters of the 13th Michigan Infantry Regiment, it did not. Dewaters was wounded in some of the heaviest fighting on the Cole Plantation on the morning of March 19th. He was wounded in the ankle. He was carried to a field hospital where his regimental surgeon determined he did not need an amputation. He was transported to New Bern, NC where he wrote his family, “I think I shall be well in about four weeks if I don’t take cold in it.” By “take cold” he meant get an infection, which his wound ended up doing. Devastatingly, he died on April 30th, 1865 – mere weeks after the end of the war. Unfortunately for him, his positive attitude was not enough to keep him alive.
Each of these accounts is a window into the experience of being a wounded man on the fields of Bentonville. Through the historical record, we can learn some of what they thought, felt, and experienced. These are all experiences that cannot be reproduced today in any modern demonstrations, but they deserve to be revisited and remembered in order to come to a fuller understanding of what a Civil War battle was like for those men involved.
Written by Anna Kulcsar, Education Coordinator
Sources:
Bradley, Mark L. 1996. The Battle of Bentonville. Da Capo Press, Incorporated.
Moore, Mark A. 2001. Moore’s Historical Guide to the Battle of Bentonville. Da Capo Press.
Thank you Ms.Kulksar.