'Daughter of the Regiment'
By John Russell
Scenes of Yesteryear
Sunday, October 12, 2008 1:13 PM CDT
Missing from this column for the past few weeks has been an account of the actions of Miss Eliza Wilson, the “Daughter of the Regiment” and the daughter of Mrs. and Capt. William Wilson.
Her father, a founder of the Menomonie-based Knapp, Stout and Company, outfitted their daughter “with her own tent, servant, and furnished her with necessary food and clothing to serve the regiment on a philanthropic mission.”
Exception to the rule
I am not certain how long she remained with Company K, Dunn County Pinery Rifles. I suspect that she may have returned home at the end of the 1862 campaign that came at the battle at Fredericksburg, Va. on Dec. 15 of that year. She had provided care for the wounded of all 10 companies of the Fifth Regiment as indicated in this letter from a member of the regiment who wrote this letter to his family:
“The boys have no sweethearts to see, and therefore white shirts, standing collars, hair oil, bosom-pins and tight boots have disappeared completely. We have not seen a woman for a fortnight with the exception of the Daughter of the Regiment, who is with us in storm and sunshine.
It would do you good to see her trudging along, with or after the regiment, her dark brown frock buttoned tightly around her waist, her what-you-call-’ems tucked into her well fitting gaiters, her hat and feather set jauntily on one side, her step firm and assured, for she knows that every arm in our ranks would protect her. Never pouting or passionate, with a kind work for everyone, and everyone a kind word for her.
“She came with one of the companies [Company K] and remains with the regiment. Were it not for her, when a woman would appear, we would be running after her, as children do after an organ and a monkey.”
Rough conditions
It would take a little research of news stories about the company to determine the length of Eliza’s stay with the regiment. She was still with the company in early 1862, but there are few mentions of her later on that year.
Living conditions for the men of Company K were very rough, especially in the Seven days’ Battles. I suspect that even with a tent and servant, it wasn’t a picnic for Eliza. There were no references about her in later accounts of the actions of the local company that I could find.
Changing of the guard
After the three-day battle of Fredericksburg that found a Union army, including Company K, setting up winter quarters at the White Oak Church near Belle Plain, Va. The regiment’s head man, Col. Amasa Cobb, a native of Mineral Point, had been successfully elected to Congress, and resigned his commission on Dec. 25 and returned to Wisconsin to serve in the legislature. Another native of Mineral Point, Col. Thomas Allen, took over as the head of the Fifth Regiment.
There was another change in February 1863, when General Calvin E. Pratt, a Massachusetts lawyer, formed a “Light Division,” a force of men carrying little armament and military equipment, and commanded by Col Hiram Burnham, a lumberman from Maine. This special force consisted of selected units of the Sixth Corps with which Company K had served up until Fredericksburg. So the men from Dunn County were about to march and “undertake Reconnaissances and movements, which required great activity, unencumbered [“light,” in other words] by the usual impediments.”
Into ‘The Slaughter Pen’
This Light Division was ordered to storm the enemy’s position on Marye’s Heights, a site on the southwest outskirts of Fredericksburg, about four “bird flight” miles from the White Oak Church where the men of Company K had their winter quarters. It was at Marye’s Heights that five months earlier, in December 1862, General Ambrose Burnside had lost 5,000 men in a similar attempt to capture the Heights. From that event the site had become known as “The Slaughter Pen.”
First in line to make the attack up the steep hill fortified by the Rebels were the men of the 5th Regiment’s Companies A, B, F, H and I. In front of them, about 450 yards away, was the enemy in rifle-pits and behind a stone wall.
Behind the the first ranks of the 5th were companies from the 31st New York and the 6th Maine. Poised in back of them were the remaining 5th Wisconsin companies C, D, E, G — and the Dunn County Pinery Rifles in Company K.
Storming the Heights
It was sometime in the late morning of May 3, 1862, that the men of the 5th Regiment, heard the battle cry of Col. Allen, “Boys! You see those heights? You have to take them! You think you cannot do it, but you can! You will do it! When the order ‘Forward’ is given, you will start at double quick — you will not fire a gun — you will not stop until you hear the order to halt! You will never get that order!”
Soon the “Forward” order came, and the men of all the regiments of the Light Division, “...advanced with un-daunted bravery up the slope and into the deadly fire which met them about one hundred yards from the stone wall.
“Then it came with terrible fury and effect from musketry behind the wall and rifle-pits above, in front, and from batteries on all the crests of the hills, from rifles in homes and rifle-pits on the right flank. Shot, shell and canister tore through the ranks of the gallant storming party, but without stopping to return a shot, the band of heroes rushed on, surmounted the stone wall, where they bayoneted some of the foe, and scattering the others like chaff, clambered up the steep pitch of the hill and into the enemy’s works at the top, and were soon in possession of the famous Washington Battery of New Orleans, whose commander surrendered his sword to Col Allen.”
Rebels surrender
After the Rebel surrender of Marye’s Heights, the 5th Wisconsin checked their numbers to find that three commissioned officers and 41 enlisted men had been killed or mortally wounded, and eight commissioned officers and 84 enlisted men were wounded. There were 23 men listed as missing, out of a force of about a total of 400 men in the Fifth Regiment.
Privates August Pelengo (also listed as “Pielenz”), Menom-onie, and Andrew McRay (also listed as “McCrey” in some reports), Pine Island, Minn., were the only fatalities in Company K’s ranks.
There were five men from the company who were wounded in the fight: Corporal J. B. Kendall, of Watermill, Minn., and privates John H. Bolton, Francis Lee, Frederick Britennather and Frederick Messner, all from Menomonie. Aaron Vasey of Dunnville was killed in the battle while fighting with the men of Company I of the 5th Regiment.
Next week: The Battle of Salem Heights, Virginia.
John Russell, a local photographer and Dunn County resident, writes a weekly column for The Dunn County News. He is curator emeritus of the Dunn County Historical Society. |
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