Transcripts For CSPAN3 Battles Of Appomattox 20150314 : vima

CSPAN3 Battles Of Appomattox March 14, 2015

At the very moment the confederates come out at what was called devils den ready to attack, there was vincent putting his men into position. They attacked only minutes of vincent with his manager position. So his place ing of the men he did it on its own without any authority saved the day because those guys beat back the attack. Unfortunately, the confederate attack was years. Part of the lines began to buckle. Visit sees that part of the line was starting to cave in, rushed to the side and had his wife writing and is the with white writing crop. He just had the white writing crop. He was saying hold your position and had the writing crop in the air, and it was a perfect target. It got to the abdomen and proved fatal a couple of days later. Chamberlain who is been under vincent, developed a very close friendship was in charge of one end of the line took over when vincent was mortally wounded. He did not die right away. He was carried to the back. Chamberlain took over. Within the next hour chamberlain saw his men were running out of a munition, and he knew and another charge or two they might break through and take the top. So chamberlain decides, and a man of the same quality of vincent, the only choice is to attack. He can the order for his men he getsi the order to charge down the hill withves the net they are nuts. Bayonettes. The confederates are now tired from a long day march and then fight and they panicked and ran. That is how it was saved. Chamberlain goes on, by the way, to live for another word he had 50 years. He becomes a political figure and governor and a president. He tells the story over and over. Eventually he tends to emerge as a hero because he lived to tell the story. Instant vincent who died and his body was eventually brought home was a here he zero at airey but the story was not as dramatic as chamberlins charge down the hill. We have the celebration in 1995 of the history. The bicentennial history. One of the goals was to reverend a heroes remember the heroes of the community. Visit vincent was a hero forgot. After the High School Named after him, there was no memorial around the history so we decided to build one. Vincent had a wonderful career ahead of him. He was a natural leader, a wealthy man, a lawyer by profession. He wanted to become a major leader in the community. He could have easily avoided serving, but free time he goes back. That is the kind of patriotism, the kind of commitment to country, the kind of commitment to a cause that every country needs to he was an exemplar when when people believed it was more important than private interest. Heroes in history are critical to point the way to others. So if we are not willing to give on behalf of the common good, we soon have no common good. We would like to stay on schedule for cspan3 friends. Welcome back to American History tv live coverage of the closing of the civil war what hundred 53 years of the spring posted by courthouse National Historic park. This is live coverage on cspan3. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] we will get started in just a second, as soon as everyone get to their seat. Ok, the next speaker should be familiar to everybody else. He is the cosponsor of the seminar, patrick schroeder. Patrick is historian at appomattox courthouse National Historical park and has worked with me, one of our other speakers the third speaker today, ron wilson is the person who got the seminar together for the first time in 19992000. When ron retired, patrick took over working with longwood on the seminar. Patrick has history degrees from Shepherd College and from virginia tech. He worked as a Seasonal Employee at appomattox for a number of years and also at redhill Patrick Henry memorial, and historian at appomattox since 2002 and probably many of you know patrick has written many books relating to the campaign and other aspect of the war. He has done 30 minutes about lisa render. Confederate cemetery at appetite. I think you could say his most important work is we came to fight, history of the fifth new york volunteer infantry. You have to reenactments. He also helped to finish ryan cohan the book. Vortex of hell is the correct title i think. The importance of War Preservation trust. His talk today is the bottles of automatic final. The last to die. [applause] i know youre probably tired of seeing lee, tired of telling me what to do it what books to read. Now i will give you the history roost and have done over the years. It is a little daunting. Now i will give you the little history i have done over the years. Ron will and will be the next. We have made a high school trip for 11th grade and went down to tour appomattox internet ron at that time and started volunteering on the weekend sometimes. Then in 1985 he let me know the fellow doing living history there was not coming back and asked me if i was just. The night of graduation while the rest of the kids went out and had Graduation Party i packed up the car and moved to appomattox. Now here i am. What i am going to do is try to familiarize you with the bottles of appomattox courthouse and station. Many people do not know about the battles, often overlooked. Many people have written about them outside of chris talking. I would like to show you some of the men in the battle. Whenever i could locate a photograph of the battle of the soldier killed, i have included that. If you know of any photographs of guys killed or wounded please let me know about it. There are not that many. I know i will go ahead and tell you the stories. It is the two battle at appomattox are the culmination of the automatic campaign. This young ella here, if you do not recognize him, George Armstrong custer and west point class. That is how he looks in 1861. There he is in 1865. The general has about 4000 calvary men under the command during the Appomattox Campaign. Last night chris was asked to touch on this a little bit. The battles are going the is even. They have men known as jesse scouts from the Shenandoah Valley, Appomattox Campaign known as major henry young scouts. These are federal soldiers that have some of them raised in the south or can affect the southern dialect and they donned confederate uniforms and infiltrated the Confederate Army turning wagons down the wrong road and trying to delay the. The biggest two april 3 after the battle at the church they captured the confederate general simply by writing up to him. They claimed the members of the ninth virginia calvary, they get close and pull out the revolver is. Over around appomattox, there is a sergeant there is a group of scouts. She encounters train he encounters train heading east from lynchburg and learns there are supplies for general lees army and the destination is appomattox station. He does not give anything away. He says generally is in desperate need of the supplies. He writes back to the commander. They go to phil sheridan. He dispatches general custers division to appomattox station the afternoon of april 8. What is going on at appomattox station . Not a whole lot written from the Confederate Point of view. There is supplies on this thing trading, but what is going on down there . Just recently i obtained an account from a federal surgeon named william h taylor, a major and the 19 virginia infantry. The he escape the battle of the creek. He was with pickets division. When it gets overrun the surgeons are set up a little bit to the rear. He manages to escape. He escaped by running around trees, running over trees, and if he had to he would have run through a tree to escape at sailors creek. He manages to get away and makes it up or to appomattox station early in the afternoon and this is the first time i am presenting best, so i hope it goes smoothly, but what is going on at this nation . They have rations and supplies, but there is a bunch of Government Army red tape going on. Making a very different to get the rations out. They are finally able to obtain rations. Then they come back to get food for the horses. They were rather despairing about getting the food from the quartermaster. The fellow doctor urged him to use his abilities to get the food for the horses. I will start in to what taylor said. I had great doubt of success but concluded to try. Filling up to the quartermaster i preemptively demanded more speed. I was preemptively refused. He said send me your quartermaster here. He said strict constructionist. I will issue to him and no one else. Taylor responds, he is gone captured i expect with the rest. The strict constructionist last left, see here, i am a quartermaster myself. They do not get captures. [laughter] look for him. Taylor responds. But i have looked for him. And i cannot find him. A point to another in his place and i will see to him. Before you the regimen. I am at in kernel, major, dr. Everything rank in kernel meijer, dr. , everything and hereby appoint myself acting quartermaster to boot. To draw forth said regiment with obstruction to obtain it at every hazard. This did the work. So they were able to get food for the horses. They were not real generous and quick. They make it in the appomattox river valley. They are advancing from the southeast. Ahab within three for grades. Third new jersey, second new york, second ohio, the new york, first vermont, third indiana. Hearst new york, second and third West Virginia. The upper grade gbrigrade was shorthanded that they. They are moving on to the nation. There are three trains loaded with applied. 120,000 rations, equipment medical supplies everything lees army needs. You pictures are taken by Timothy Osullivan in the late summer of 1865. The second new york advancing on the station first. There is a young fella right here named Fred Blodgett who was 16 years old but the veteran of a dozen bottles and writes out and pulls out his serve all over pulls out his revolver and you know what he said . Hands up. The trains are captured. They will not leave the train right there. They will try to get him down the track. It is a volunteer army. They have previous occupations before joining the army. Some of them have worked on the railroad and start to move the trains out of the area. Send some artillery shells start to fall on the area of the station. Where are they coming from . Coming from the command of this guy here, rubin Lyndsay Walker from virginia. He commands the reserve artillery. He also let the distinction of having the best mustache and goatee in the can direct army. Wouldnt you agree . That is just dandy. So nice he likes to keep it in good order. He actually is sitting on a stump and having his men give him a shame that morning with the news comes in there is federal federal calvary approaching appomattox nation. Walker had with him about somewhere around 100 artillery pieces. Following behind him is the federal hospital change. What happens during the campaign when we concentrate army at an merely a courthouse they separate from the least effective artillery and send it on the northern route so it does not p the progress, the march of the rest of the army. It just happens on april 8, the artillery comes back and a little advance of the armies. So a writerider comes in calling a sheridan, the yankees are coming. Kind of like paul revere and the british are coming. Apparently this guy wanted to get out of the station pretty fast. He jumped on the mule backward in road into the federal artillery camp and the men are eating. What is volcker walker going to do . He does have infantry support other than artillery support. He starts to get his men into a rough time i and starts running towards appomattox station. Just about that time, a fourth train comes in, pushing more supplies from lynchburg. This is actually pushing it, the trains into the station. When its either federal cavalry there, they throw the engine into reverse and it breaks the couplings, so it leaves the cars and the supplies, but the engine makes it back to lynchburg and escapes. This is a very unusual battle. It is confederate artillery against federal mounted cavalry. I tried to find another battle like this in the civil war, and you cant do it. There is not a battle like this anywhere else in the american civil war. Mounted calvary attacking unsupported artillery. So the battle starts off at about 4 00 here at and what happens is custer cents april grade sends a brigade forward. But it is not a good area for fighting a battle. It is mainly shrubbery and dense forest. Some trails leading through the woods. So it is very difficult for the federal cavalry to mount an attack. The confederate side is hampered because this is really unexpected. They had no idea federal cavalry were going to set upon them. There was a lack of organization. It is hard for Central Command to command all these guns. And they walker tries to get the rest of the artillery away as fast as possible. He gets about 30 guns into action, and the rest of the men are trying to head off towards lynchburg. The bulk of them go north to a place called oak hill. About an hour later, he could take little help from general garys calvary. Some of his men arrived and i believe they are dismounted at the time. So they come up to lend support about an hour into the fight. Here is a charge of the first new york calvary. The lincoln cavalry. You can see the are charging into the woods. And here is the caption, the death of lieutenant walter. Well, lieutenant walter was mortally wounded. He didnt die until a few days later, but this is one of the few illustrations of the battle of appomattox station. These are custer upon brigade commanders. Alexander pennington, and william wells. Going into this battle, one of the men under wells is montague. We found upon entering the woods that the underbrush and fight for toothache for us to march there and keep our organization. And we were soon advancing every man for himself. Shells came crashing through the trees overhead, but now and then, our men were up to the mouths of the gun and they put out such a volume of raping canister it was impossible to exist. And we were obliged to fall back. We advance, and we were again repulsed. These guys are mounted on horses, charging this artillery that is firing canisters. These canons are acting as big shotguns. This is a Real Advantage to the confederate artillery because you dont necessarily have to take the calvary men out, you just have to take his horse out, right to go and they right . And they are inflicting casualties on the federals. This is one of the casualties, willard. Like i said earlier, every time a brigade comes up, they advance and get repulsed. The sun sets a little after 6 00, so much of the fighting is going on after dark. Custer is personally leading many of these charges. But at about 8 00 that evening he gets all his men together as a division and makes a final fourth charge. And they advance against the confederate artillery. The confederate artillery has been pulling out. But a member of the second new york calvary says this. As they come out of the woods. There is a flash of six bright lights. Six cannons firing at them. And a tornado of canister shots swept over our heads. In the next instant, we were fighting in the battery. Everyman was fighting for himself, and fighting like tigers. He asked a gets hit with a canister ball, but it numbs his like for a time. One of the casualties here is willard farrington. This fellow here is a graduate of Dartmouth College and was in the first vermont. Here, he is writing forward. He gets his horse his courts horse and him gets hit with a canister. When he recovers himself on the ground, he looks at his hand and he says, my fingers were completely knocked out and hanging over the backside of my hand, held on by a little shred of skin. So he suffered a rather severe casualty, as did his comment charles bell. Charles bell becomes a future governor of vermont. He takes a canister ball in the back of his hand. And as later able to draw a pension on that wound. This is barney shields the second West Virginia cavalry. He received the medal of honor for his actions at the battle of appomattox station. He captures the flag of the famed washington artillery of new orleans. And he takes the flag from the soldier here, or your babies. Williams kong comrade said he was an excellent soldier. I think this is an amazing photograph here. This is walter jones. He carried a bible in his breast pocket. Check that out. One of those holes was made in the Shenandoah Valley in the fall of 1864, the second hole was made at the battle of appomattox station. So that bible literally saved his life on two occasions. There are confederate casualties in this fight, too. This is captain myles makin. He is one of the men that is buried in the confederate cemetery at appomattox. As is oscar, of the louisiana artillery. And there is a casualty. This is members of the first West Virginia cavalry. They call them the red neckties because they would wear these red neckties under the uniform. By this time, the commander of the first West Virginia is this fellow over here. I love that image. He must have had light blue eyes. But he is struck down in this final charge on the confederate batteries. And he is later interred outside of Liberty Church near appomattox station. He is later disinterred and taken to a cemetery at petersburg. Another one of the casualties in those West Virginia boys is martin sutherland. Look where he takes the canister shot. Right in the foot. A rather nasty, nasty looking wont there. Wound there. They then hit the confederate hospital trains. In those hospital trains is confederate general young moody who was captured. Elements of custard command most prominently members of the 15th new york calvary, several squadrons, actually hit the stage road and start the charge towards the video of appomattox courthouse. In doing so, they nearly round up this fellow here. Is that general lee . No. That is his double, pendleton. The most gets captured by the 15th new york calvary. He left his horse over a fence and ended up falling up and landed in some sassafras bushe

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