The Battle of Peach Tree Creek

by Earl J. Hess

  On both sides of the battle lines around Atlanta, concerned comrades visited field hospitals after the engagement to check on friends and regimental associates and to inform their families what had happened to them. Many men fully understood the anxiety of hometown residents and tried to ease their tension with quick, accurate reports of who was lost and who survived. “After a fight, matters are reported worse than they really are,” admitted Col. Patrick Jones to a hometown newspaper editor. “God knows it is bad enough as it is.” One of Rice C. Bull’s comrades in the 123rd New York asked him not only to write his family but “to be sure and say, ‘We licked them well.’” William Salter, a U. S. Christian Commission worker traveling with Sherman’s army group, performed a similar favor for wounded men in Twenty-Third Corps hospitals during the days following the battle at Peach Tree Creek, for Schofield’s men had also suffered some injuries in the skirmishing of July 20.47

  James K. Murphree took the pains to compile a list of eighty men in the 57th Alabama who were killed, wounded, and missing on July 20. In part he traversed the hospitals to do so but admitted he had missed a few men who had been sent to hospitals farther afield. The list was not only essential for the regimental commander but of great interest to the families at home. James Madison Brannock also took time to send a list of casualties in the 4th and 5th Tennessee to his wife so she could inform the relatives of the wounded men.48

  As news spread concerning who was hit and lying in hospital, the human dimensions of combat at Peach Tree Creek filtered through civilian society and became more personal. Quite a few men left behind their own accounts or their personal stories were told by friends, or those stories were encapsulated by medical personnel in reports eventually published in the multivolume Medical and Surgical History of the Civil War. These personal stories vividly told of suffering, uncertainty, and fate in blue and in gray.

  Joseph Leassions of the 123rd New York was squatting down during the battle when a Confederate ball slightly injured his hand before smashing into his face. It “entered near his left eye and lodged back of the ear,” according to Albert M. Cook. Fortunately, the bone did not fracture, and Leassions was expected to recover. Peter Helmreich of the 44th Illinois in Newton’s division was hit in the head with a ball and spent months in various hospitals as a result. Initial treatment in the division field hospital was followed by transfer to the general field hospital of the corps and a trip to Cumberland Hospital at Nashville by July 27. Helmreich later wound up in hospitals at Mound City and Quincy, Illinois. All this time “the wound was discharging, and he had occasional headache.” Helmreich finally was released from the army on June 10, 1865, having spent the remainder of his term of service in hospitals because of the bullet that found his head on July 20.49

  A brief mention of Henry Welch’s injury at Peach Tree Creek appeared in the Salem Press of his home community in upstate New York on August 2, 1864. It merely mentioned that the twenty-year-old corporal, who served in Company K, 123rd New York had been hurt in the hand. The report failed to reveal the entire story, for Welch lost the small and ring fingers of his left hand. It is quite possible his family did not worry unduly, for Henry wrote a letter from his Chattanooga hospital bed on July 29 telling them he was doing well. “I am treated first rate here and plenty to eat. When I get where I am to remain long enough for you to answer my letter I will let you know.”50

  The family of Henry Welch of the 123rd New York could count its blessings, for another man named Henry Welch who served in the same regiment was mortally wounded at Peach Tree Creek. This twenty-five-year-old private in Company G was badly injured during the engagement. His brother Charles S. Welch enlisted the help of John Law Marshall to carry Henry to the regimental surgeon. Marshall also found some water for the unfortunate man, and Henry implored him “to see that his parents did not suffer & spoke of it several times & after he was taken to the Division Hospital he told charley to take good care of his folks, this seemed his chief anxiety.” Henry seemed convinced from the moment he was hit that he could not survive. In fact, he fell into Marshall’s arms on the battle line and “said God forgive me, Good bye boys & we then carried him back.” Welch indeed passed away at 1 A.M. of July 21.51

  The color sergeant of the 123rd New York also fell to Confederate fire at Peach Tree Creek. William Hutton Jr. was a close friend and tentmate of Serg. Henry C. Morhous. When he was hit by a bullet in the back, Hutton gave up the flag and was transported to the division hospital. Morhous received permission to visit him on the morning of July 21 and found Hutton resting on rubber and woolen blankets on the ground inside a tent. He gathered some leaves to provide a cushion for him and learned that the surgeon had tried but could not find the bullet. Hutton’s case did not seem mortal at the time, but when writing to his sister, Morhous told her he had been only slightly wounded. Hutton then gave Morhous a book of poetry to remember him by, a volume that Morhous kept for the rest of his life. He returned to the hospital on July 22 expecting to find his friend better but was shocked to see several fresh graves near the tent and a board marking one that read “William Hutton, Jr., died July 21.” Richard Terrill, another member of the 123rd, told him what happened. At forty-four years of age, Terrill was literally twice the age of both Hutton and Morhous and thus was detailed to hospital duty. Hutton had asked Terrill to fetch Morhous during the night but that was impossible; there were too many wounded to care for, so Hutton died alone. At least Terrill was able to oversee the erection of the headboard. Morhous never forgot his friend Hutton and told the sergeant’s story in a book of reminiscences published fifteen years after his death.52

  There are many individual stories of Federal soldiers badly wounded at Peach Tree Creek who survived despite the tremendous pain and stress on their bodies. Serg. William V. Taylor of the 66th Ohio had already been wounded at Antietam and Gettysburg, but his Peach Tree injuries were more serious. He was shot in the hand, arm, and shoulder; surgeons cut out two and a half inches of bone but the man healed well enough to be discharged in December 1864 and sent home with a pension. A few months later, Dr. B. B. Leonard of West Liberty, Ohio, took Taylor into his care, probed the shoulder wound, and found half a minie ball. When Leonard extracted it, Taylor healed quite readily and lived a good life despite the hail of Confederate fire that descended on him in three battles.53

  Taylor represented a comparatively unusual case. More common are stories of Union soldiers badly injured who barely survived the war and often led lives of limited opportunities. Serg. Cyrus Shade of the 46th Pennsylvania was twenty-three years old when a ball injured his left ankle. Simple dressings were all that were needed before he returned to duty August 13, and in fact he received promotion to lieutenant before leaving the army in the summer of 1865. But Shade suffered from “pain, weakness, and swelling on over-exertion” and received a pension as well. Corp. John H. Jaycox of the 143rd New York endured several operations to resection bones in his arm before leaving the army in June 1865. He also received a pension because, despite the surgical procedures, the arm often swelled up and became useless as far as his ability to make a living was concerned. Nineteen-year-old Pvt. Thomas Donohue of the 123rd New York also endured several operations for his shoulder wound and was shifted to Nashville, Louisville, and eventually New York by May 1865. Although surviving this ordeal and returning to civilian life, Donohue could not use his arm or shoulder and came to rely on a government pension.54

  Shade, Jaycox, and Donohue represented men whose bodies were impaired enough by Peach Tree wounds to alter their lives forever, but others suffered emotional and mental trauma as well as physical pain and disfigurement because of what happened to them on July 20. Pvt. Asbell A. Webster of the 19th Michigan was badly wounded in the head and “was insensible or delirious for a considerable time,” according to the compilers of the Medical and Surgical History. A surgeon at Nashville extracted several pieces of bone from the wound, one of which was three-quarters of an inch long, and when gangrene
set in, it sloughed off a considerable portion of the scalp. But the wound eventually healed, and Webster was transported to Michigan to be discharged in January 1865. “His mental faculties, especially his memory, were somewhat impaired, and the eyesight was, to some extent, weakened.” For these conditions, Webster was granted a pension four years after Peach Tree Creek. For all that, Webster suffered less than Lieut. James P. Conn of the 66th Ohio. Hit on the head by a sword in the fight, “he continued to complain of the pain” and “eventually became mentally unbalanced and ended his days in the Cleveland Hospital for the Insane.”55

  Capt. Ezra Dickerman was called on by fate to endure more than most Federal wounded of Peach Tree Creek. Commanding Company I, 20th Connecticut, the twenty-three-year-old officer was badly wounded in the head and lay “in an insensible condition” for “several days.” Overworked surgeons in the field hospital tried but could not locate the bullet. By the time Dickerman was transported to Chattanooga, he began to awaken although in tremendous pain and delirious much of the time. In the Officer’s Hospital at Nashville by July 31, he begged the surgeons to continue trying to find the bullet. One of them was successful; it had imbedded into a bone. While two assistants held Dickerman’s head, the surgeon wrenched the ball out with a forceps. He “was obliged to pull with all his strength,” according to reports, but managed to get it out. Dickerman left for his home a week later.56

  After several months of recuperation, Dickerman was well enough to return to light duty and rejoined his regiment in time for muster out in June 1865, but his condition was not good. The captain had suffered “complete loss of sight and smell of left side, and the hearing was much impaired.” Moreover, Dickerman labored under a “general want of intellectual vigor” and lost some of his memory capacity. It was almost a miracle that he could do any duty at all, and his condition worsened after the war. Anytime he worked in the sun or tried to use his cognitive abilities, he suffered from headaches and even vertigo. By the summer of 1866 epileptic convulsions set in which often lasted fifteen minutes. During his third attack of epilepsy, in December 1867, “rigidity and unconsciousness lasted about half an hour. Foaming at the mouth and a dull heavy pain at the forehead.” It was the last episode of Dickerman’s life. After three days of this, he slipped into a coma and died December 22, 1867. An autopsy revealed that an abscess had developed at the site of the wound caused by the bullet before it had been extracted.57

  The case of Lieut. George Young of the 143rd New York was not as severe as Dickerman’s but also illustrates how a Peach Tree Creek wound could alter and cloud someone’s life. Young served as provost marshal for Robinson’s brigade of Williams’s division when he was shot while taking a message across the battlefield. The bullet killed his horse and badly injured his right leg. The ball splintered two bones and lodged in the leg. Surgeons extracted it, and Young was sent to his New York home by the fall of 1864, where he was discharged from the army. Young lived a productive life. He partly owned a paper mill at Napanock, New York, got married, and fathered two sons. He even served as sheriff of his county for a couple of years before moving to his hometown of Ellenville.58

  But this cheery summary of Young’s life hid the fact that his Peach Tree Creek wound never really healed. In 1884 Young endured two operations to relieve his suffering. In the first, attended by three local doctors, it was found that part of the bone had diseased and needed to be chipped away. Puss from an abscess was scraped, and the wound was dressed, but an opening was maintained to allow pus to flow out. The half-hour operation gave him some relief, but a second operation was required five months later to clean away more bone particles that had become diseased. As he aged, the leg bothered Young a great deal. In fact, the attending doctor listed the Peach Tree Creek wound as the prime cause of his death on March 31, 1909. One can admire Young’s persistence at living a normal life despite the problem, but it has to be admitted that one bullet could cause an enormous amount of never-ending suffering even for those who survived battle.59

  There are fewer examples of Confederate soldiers who endured long suffering because of their wounds at Peach Tree Creek, only because the South never compiled a medical history of its war effort. But Federal authorities had access to some Confederate medical data and included it in the Medical and Surgical History. Pvt. E. Collins of the 33rd Mississippi was hit on the battlefield, the ball badly injuring his right ankle. It fell into Collins’s shoe after doing the damage, but the wound never really healed. Despite stays in several hospitals, the hole remained so big one could insert a finger into it, and it drained and swelled. On June 8, 1865, surgeons finally decided to amputate the leg. The operation proceeded without problems, and Collins was sent home the next month.60

  Federal authorities also knew of the case involving James Palmer of the 40th Mississippi, who was hit in the right hand, the projectile cutting the stock of his musket in two as well. He spent one night in Loring’s Division hospital before leaving Atlanta on July 21 for Macon by railroad. After two days there, Palmer traveled to Columbus, Georgia, where he spent four days. He was well enough to be furloughed for sixty days and used a combination of railroad, wagon, and steamboat to reach Meridian, Mississippi, in five days. Here Palmer had his wound dressed again before he set out by rail and on horseback to reach his home near Shuqualak, Mississippi. His relatively light injury did not prevent him from taking a rather long and trying journey home, and he parceled out his sixty-day furlough into a stay of seven months before he joined a cavalry regiment rather than return to the 40th Mississippi.61

  The strange case of Serg. Oscar Bowen of the 3rd Mississippi indicates how wrong a wounded soldier could be concerning his fate. Badly wounded on July 20, a surgeon predicted his death in two hours. Bowen asked his comrades to dress him for the grave, but they transported him to the depot at Atlanta instead. There he had a spasm while waiting for the train. When he came to consciousness, Bowen realized he was on his way to Macon and begged to be let out of the train, but no one paid attention to him.62

  Bowen was left at Barnesville, Georgia, and taken to the hospital where surgeons once again predicted he would die soon. He had enough presence of mind to make arrangements, dictating a last letter to his nurse, selected a coffin from among several he could see from his hospital bed, and inquired about local cemeteries. Despite all this, Bowen did not die. He suffered more spasms, and soon his father arrived at Barnesville to find him alive. Bowen’s first sight of him was to see his father “looking into my face with dumb silence, the tears ran down his cheeks.” He took his son home as soon as he was able to travel. The war was over for Bowen; he not only survived but became a Baptist minister at Handsboro, Mississippi, after Appomattox.63

  A Confederate officer who survived a shell wound in his left thigh later wrote an engaging description of how he recovered from it. Lieut. Robert M. Collins of the 15th Texas made his way to Atlanta in a decrepit ambulance and was deposited at City Hall. The grounds around the building were filled with wounded and studded with operating tables. In fact, the lawn had “been turned into a carving pen,” in Collins’s words. When it came his turn, he was placed on “a big broad pine table” as four men held down each limb because the surgeon did not want to use chloroform on any but the most serious cases. Two surgeons probed the wound and found an ounce ball from the projectile had pushed against the femoral artery. They were able to extricate it without damaging the artery.64

  Collins was now placed on a cot inside a tent set up on the lawn of the Trout House near City Hall where he spent a comfortable night before riding the train to Forsyth on July 21. He stayed in a good hotel in Forsyth, dining on chicken, coffee, and fresh butter. Collins even began to stump around a bit but then “break-bone wounded man’s fever set up.” The wound began to suppurate, and the matter in passing pressed on a major nerve that caused excruciating pain. Red matter oozed out of the wound seemingly without let up, and Collins could endure the pain only with constant doses of morphine for eig
hteen days. He complained so much about it that a doctor tried to “burn it off” as Collins put it by shoving “the sharp corners of a chunk of bluestone” into the wound. It was extremely painful. When the surgeon also stopped the morphine, he gave Collins a quart of “Confederate whiskey” instead. Collins was in a foul mood about everything; relying on the morphine, his first reaction to its absence was to throw the whiskey bottle at the surgeon. His mood changed when a local planter took him to his home on the Chattahoochee River to recuperate for a few weeks. Here he lived very comfortably until he was well enough to return to the hospital at Forsyth and continue healing under the care of army surgeons.65

  Many Union and Confederate soldiers who were wounded at Peach Tree Creek struggled with death and won, while others did not. Capt. Oliver R. Post of the 20th Connecticut was wounded on July 20 and died the next day. He had edited the Hartford Post and was noted for “the cool, cutting and sarcastic yet eloquent writings from his pen,” according to Harry Stanley. “He had fine talents and a good education and never was at a loss to find words to most eloquently express his meaning.” Post also left a wife and three children behind.66

  John Potter deeply remembered the story of his close friend, William C. Young. Both men served in the 101st Illinois, and Young confided to Potter a short while before the battle of Peach Tree Creek that he was sure he would die soon. The thought of never seeing his beloved wife Tilly caused deep anguish. Young was hit on July 20 and remained convinced the bad wound in his abdomen would end his life. Potter tried to buoy his spirits. “John, I don’t want to die yet!,” Young told him. “O, it is so dark before me; everything is so dark! So dark!” Not long after their last meeting, Young died in the hospital at Marietta and was buried there. Potter had a chance to visit Tilly soon after the regiment was discharged in 1865. She was distraught that her husband “had to be left down there” in Georgia. Potter learned that Tilly was so sickened by her loss that she died a few years after the war ended.67