Coming Out with a Whole Hide: A Sharpshooter Describes the Wilderness

After nearly two years of relatively quiet service on the California and Oregon frontiers with the 2nd California Infantry, Kentucky native Sexton W. Williams secured a transfer into Co. F of the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters and journeyed east to serve with the Army of the Potomac. The regiment found itself in a very hot place indeed on May 6, 1864 during the Battle of the Wilderness.

          The sharpshooters had been supporting General Hobart Ward’s infantry line when a Confederate attack spearheaded by General Joseph Kershaw’s division knocked the Federal line to pieces and fell upon the sharpshooters. “When they were driven back, we charged upon the enemy and checked them until our infantry could form behind us,” Williams recalled. “This was repeated four times, losing over half our number in killed and wounded. My company went in with 21 men, had one killed, six wounded, and two missing. Of the seven captains in our regiment, six were engaged and only two came out with a whole hide.”

          During the Wilderness Campaign, the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Homer Stoughton served in General J.H. Hobart Ward’s First Brigade of General David Birney’s Third Division of Hancock’s Second Army Corps. Private Williams’ account of the Battle of Wilderness first saw publication in the June 9, 1864, edition of the Summit County Beacon published in Akron, Ohio.

 

The 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters used .54 caliber Model 1859 Sharps' rifles through much of their Civil War service, first receiving the rifles in June 1862. Colonel Hiram Berdan specified that the firearms have double triggers, offering his sharpshooters a "hair trigger" giving them an extra advantage in reaction time.  

Camp 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters near Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia

May 17, 1864

          I received your last letter just as I was eating dinner. I stopped to read it and thereby lost my grub for before I finished it the enemy charged on our breastworks. I sprang to my rifle to defend them and kicked over my coffee and fried pork and had to go without until next morning.

          I suppose you have had copious newspaper accounts of the Great Advance, nevertheless I would like to tell it as I saw it. We, the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters of the Third Division 2nd Army Corps commenced our advance to Chancellorsville at midnight of the 3rd and reached it at 5 p.m. on the 4th. On the 5th we started for this place and came within six miles when we were ordered back to the crossroads [Orange Plank & Brock Road]. We reached there about 3 p.m. and went at once into position. We were deployed as skirmishers and advanced on the left. After flanking all day, the company in advance of ours, composed mainly of recruits, suddenly broke our lines and the first thing we knew we were between our own and the enemy’s line of battle, subject to the fires of both lines. With several men wounded, we fell back to the rear and lay behind trees until dark and then fell back to the [Brock] road where we lay until 11 p.m. and were then sent to the front where we lay until morning.

Private Sexton W. Williams
Co. F, 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters

We formed again in the rear of our line of battle and when they were driven back, we charged upon the enemy and checked them until our infantry could form behind us. This was repeated four times, losing over half our number in killed and wounded. My company went in with 21 men, had one killed, six wounded, and two missing. Of the seven captains in our regiment, six were engaged and only two came out with a whole hide. We finally got our work completed in the road and fell back and lay till late in the evening when the enemy again charged on us and were driven back with tremendous slaughter. Our regiment being placed at the crossroads to support a battery charged on the enemy with more fury than I thought was in human power to endure. They came up to our works twice, the last time they planted their colors on the embankment beside ours, but never lived to get them away again. They charged on us with a veteran Georgia brigade which we almost entirely destroyed. We lay in the pit all night with a few pickets in front of us.

          In the morning, the general came and called for volunteers. With about 20 others I started through the woods. We found a few pickets who we drove in and kept driving through a thick wood and brush for about two miles when we found them so thick we could drive them no further. I concluded that I would flank them through a swamp, so I left the other boys and waded through a swamp for about half a mile and was just creeping up a hill when a line of battle rose up out of the brush and fired a whole volley at me! I limbered to the rear and they after me through the swamp, the bullets flying all around me. Not content with this, they fired two pieces of artillery after me, loaded with grape and canister, but it all passed over my devoted head.

          This was the most horrible day I ever saw; the woods were all on fire, the air filled with dust, soot, smoke, and such a looking object as I was, you should have seen once in your life. I had mud up to my knees with white pipe clay, wet to the waist with water, my clothes, face, and hands covered with smoke and soot, and above as bloody as a butcher. My pretty hat that you saw was literally torn to shreds. My blouse you could not have told whether it was made of wool, cotton, mud, soot, or blood. The men cheered as I came up. Nevertheless, I am all right yet and have been hit but three times and that only slightly.

I have been in front fighting whole days and have fired 369 rounds and charged four times with the bayonet. At this rate I think I shall square accounts with the Rebs in the course of a few months; till then, believe me one of Uncle Sam’s devoted.

          Private Williams would not survive the war. On June 17, 1864, during the operations against Petersburg, Virginia, he would be severely wounded in the right arm which would have to be amputated. The native Kentuckian was transported back to a Washington, D.C. area hospital where he died August 4, 1864. He is now buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

 

          For further reading on the Battle of the Wilderness, I highly recommend that readers check out Gordon C. Rhea’s The Battle of the Wilderness May 5-6, 1864 published by Louisiana State University Press in 1994 or Chris Mackowski’s Emerging Civil War series title Hell Itself: The Battle of the Wilderness May 5-7, 1864 published by Savas Beatie in 2016.

 

Source:

Letter from Private Sexton W. Williams, Co. F, 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters, Summit County Beacon (Ohio), June 9, 1864, pg. 2

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