Category Archives: 15th Connecticut Infantry

15th Connecticut Infantry, Siege of Suffolk, Virginia

1863: Stiles Smith Twitchell to his friend Charles

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The following letter was written by Stiles Smith Twitchell (1838-1877), the son of Bennett Twitchell (1807-1853) and Polly Caroline Smith (1806-1892) of Bethany, New Haven, Connecticut.

Stiles enlisted in Co. H, 15th Connecticut Infantry in late August 1862 and remained with the regiment until 1 August 1863 when he was transferred to the Veteran Reserve Corps. The 15th Connecticut saw action at Fredericksburg before being sent to Suffolk in March 1863. This letter to a friend, describes the actions of the 15th during the Siege of Suffolk in April 1863.

T R A N S C R I P T I O N

Suffolk, Virginia
May 7th 1863

Dear friend Charles,

Since writing you last, I have received your kind answer but owing to amount of duty that fell upon us at the attack of the enemy upon this place some three weeks & more since, I have delayed answering until now, which I know you will freely forgive. And now as I begin, the news I write may perhaps be old to you, still I will give a short account of it as near as my knowledge extends.

It is four weeks tomorrow eve since we first fell in line to await the threatened attack and for over two weeks lay under arms behind the breastworks on the south front in anticipation of the attack, doing only such duty as such occasions require—namely, picket & fatigue duty. The enemy meantime occupying themselves or the time in throwing up breastworks, digging rifle pits, &c. preparatory to a siege, and only disturbing our quietness on one occasion by throwing a few shells near to & over us, but their batteries were soon compelled to retire by the opening of one of the forts upon them and no damage done to us.

I have since learned that on that day, the enemy had drawn up in line of attack twenty-five thousand men to rush upon us but by feeling cautiously along discovered to their surprise our well defended lines and abandoned the attack. But things were not to remain in so quiet an order long, so a reconnaissance in force was made on both the Edenton & Somerset roads to discover the position and strength of the rebels on the south front. Ours—the 2nd Brigade—led the advance on the Edenton road and discovered the enemy some three miles out. Skirmishing commenced with the rebel pickets and sharp shooters by the 11th Connecticut Vols. on the right supported by the 13th Indiana and by the 16th Conn. Vols. supported by the 15th Conn. Vols. The batteries got in position in the meantime and played with effect on the fortified works of the rebels to occupy their attention while the infantry advanced and drove their skirmishers, pickets and all, and reached a point beyond a strip of woods and within 200 yards of the rebel works. There we lay full 20 minutes during which time the shells of the opposing batteries played incessantly over us going in both directions.

Having reconnoitered their position and gained quite a knowledge of the extent of their works and not wishing to bring on a general engagement, we retired in order, and reached our former position behind the breastworks at dusk. It was during this time employed in driving in the rebel skirmishers and while marching in battle front towards them and close behind our skirmishers that the late Frederick L. Dougal received his fatal wound & Elijah Williams was wounded in the side. Corp. W. J. Abernathy was struck on the left shoulder with a spent ball which perforated the cape of his overcoat & and only raising a bump on his shoulder, but not severely injuring him. Two others of our company were also struck with spent balls but not injured.

One week ago last Tuesday we moved and now are encamped to the northeast of the town with the Nansemond river on the north front of our line. Last Sunday we were ordered out and attacked the rebels again in their works again on the northern bank of the river. The fight lasted all day and terminated with a terrific cannonade by our forts, gunboat’s batteries for an hour or more before dark, or rather moonlight, for it was clear and bright moonshine out then upon the quiet scene. Our troops withdrew in order on this side of the river by moonlight & turned their steps to their several camps.

About noon our regiment advancing into action across a corn lot in front of the rebel works, lost one killed & two wounded. Long before this time, their sharpshooters had been driven in by the 25th New Jersey & 103rd New York. Companies A, B, F & G relieved the skirmishers of the aforementioned regiments as their ammunition (60 rounds) gave out. While the rest of the 15th lay in the woods and protected by a rising knoll over which the fire of the enemy ranged, several shells bursted over us and bullets went whistling overhead continually, but only one man was wounded where we lay. Fatigued by the heat of the day & suffering with a headache, I lay upon the ground and sought relief by sleep or a nap of some two hours in length, and awoke to hear the strife still going on. And soon at or just before sundown, the cannonade set in its hideous roar & doing terrible execution among the foe. Our whole loss does not exceed one hundred in all while that of the enemy is calculated at 1,000 killed, wounded, besides some three hundred prisoners.

Monday the rebels retreated in great haste (leaving their pickets which were captured on their posts) either through fear of a greater assault or more probably to help intercept Hooker’s advance which has struck terror to their minds in his great success so far undertaken and which will continue to do so, or so to be I most earnestly hope. All is quiet now here and the firing of forts and gunboats which has disturbed the stillness of both day and night for over three weeks has ceased for the present. The rebels have gone beyond the Black Water as reported by stragglers & deserters.

Captain Stevens has a colored waiter now who came into our lines Monday. He was in among the rebels during the fight. He says our shells at night made fearful havoc among them and they were obliged to fall back as fast as possible out of range. By the papers I see that Fighting Joe [Hooker] is doing a big thing beyond the Rappahannock completely outgeneraling Lee and we earnestly hope & believe he may succeed in capturing or destroying the whole rebel army in Virginia. If the important movements in the great drama meets with brilliant success at every point, the rebellion will be nearly terminated, I think. I have seen enough to satisfy my curiosity of beholding a battle, but I do not wish to turn away from it if not ended with our wishes until all is effectually settled for the good of all. I would like to return home as well as anyone of us here but I want it to be at the close of this bloody strife.

I wish to remain in health and strength until it is ended. Let us hope it will not be long in so doing. Yours truly. From your friend, — S. S. Twitchell

15th Connecticut Infantry

1863: Patrick John Quigley to Levertt Clark

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The following letter was written by Patrick John Quigley (b. 1842), a farmer from Orange, Connecticut who served in Co. E, 15th Connecticut Infantry. This regiment first saw action in the Battle of Fredericksburg and afterwards were sent to Suffolk in February where they remained for some time. In this late May 1863 letter John describes the hard work of digging entrenchments and mounting guns in the forts surrounding Suffolk.

Transcription

Addressed to Levertt Clark, Orange, Connecticut

May the 31st 1863

Dear Friend,

I take the opportunity to write these few lines to you hoping this will find you in good health as this leaves me in good health at present. Thank God for His goodness to us all. I have been sick for three weeks but I am better now.

We are now garrisoning forts at [Suffolk]. We have had a hard time here. We had to work hard. We defended the whole town for 14 days and done picket duty around the whole place. Now we are are at rest. We expect to go to Portsmouth in a week or more to build entrenchments. We have got a little over four hundred for duty in the regiment. We have had as hard a time as any other regiment since we came out. We have not had as much fighting as some other regiments has but we have worked.

Some of our boys were on picket for 9 days while the rest was digging. We have one of the best forts I have seen in three rods of the town. It has two Parrott Rifles. They throw one hundred pound shells and three that throw 132 pound, and three mortars and six Siege guns and they are going to put more up in it. It covers the whole ground that our Brigade camped on.

I have not had a letter from you but one and I don’t want you to stop writing cause you do not get one from me. Write as often as you get time and I will answer if I can. I thank you for that paper you sent me. It cost me 6 cents every day for paper to hear the news but now we are here, we can’t get the paper. Let me know how everything is to home in Connecticut and what you think of the times and the war and the draft. Give my love to the children and tell them that I will come and see them when the war is over and I think it will be short. The rebs is coming down and they will come down and they must come down, dead or alive.

No more at present, but remain your friend, — John Quigley

Address to P. J. Quigley, Co. E, 15th Regt. Conn. Vols., Suffolk, Va.

15th Connecticut Infantry, Battle of Fredericksburg, Great Dismal Swamp, Suffolk, Virginia, The Lincoln Gun

1863: Henry D. Lewis to Charles D. Lewis

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I could not find an image of Henry but here is a tintype of Cpl. Richard K. Woodruff of Co. I, 15th Connecticut Infantry (Jeffrey Kraus Collection)

This letter was written by Cpl. Henry D. Lewis (1841-1937) of Co. H, 15th Connecticut Infantry. Henry was the son of Lucien Franklin Lewis (1804-1882) and Susan Hitchcock (1814-1875) of Naugatuck, New Haven county, Connecticut. Henry served from August 1862 until June 1865.

Henry wrote the letter to his cousin, Charles Dwight Lewis (1841-18xx), the son of Asahel H. Lewis (1807-1895) and Harriet Newell Horton (1818-1907) of Naugatuck, New Haven county, Connecticut.

Mentioned in the letter is another cousin, Rufus W. Lewis (1836-1909) — the son of Lawrence Sterne Lewis (1804-1884) and Nancy L. Hull (1810-1881) of Naugatuck. Rufus also served in Co. H, 15th Connecticut Infantry until his disability caused his reassignment to Co. E, 18th Veteran Reserve Corps in 1863.

See also — 1863: Henry D. Lewis to Charles D. Lewis [Letter dated 10 October 1863 from Portsmouth, Va.] and 1863: Henry D. Lewis to Charles D. Lewis [Letter dated 17 December 1863]

Transcription

Addressed to Mr. Charles D. Lewis, Naugatuck, Connecticut

Suffolk, Virginia
Monday, March 16, 1863

My dear cousin Charlie,

When I wrote you last, I forgot where I was, but if I don’t have my letters very well connected, you will consider that we are subject to many changes, and it is unnecessary for me to make excuses. In your letter which you last wrote, you mentioned riding on the cars & I think that you must have heard about it from Sam. Speaking about Sam puts one in mind that he is a pretty fast boy. Florence says that he beats his brother entirely going to see the girls, and its my opinion that if he is worse than me, he must be pretty well up in the world. Sam it seems thought that there was danger of your becoming entangled in the meshes of love & I hope if such is the casae, that he has been kind enough to do his best to help you out—that is, if you needed any help.

You asked in your letter if there were any such hills in Virginia as in Old Connecticut. I reckon there are some & there were some in the rear of the City of Fredericksburg which none were able to climb—at least none of the Union soldiers. We had a fine place for encampment at Newport News & it really seemed much like home because I had such a view of the water. I sometimes fancied when looking across the James river that I was looking across Long Island Sound & that Long Island was in the distance for the river is from six to seven miles wide. 

During our stay in Newport News, I had a pass one day to visit Fortress Monroe. I went on the boat free of charge and returned having quite an interesting time. I could not get in the fort but I saw the famous guns—the Lincoln and Floyd. I tel you, they were monsters. One weighed 52,005 pounds and the other 49,097, if I remember rightly. The heaviest one carries a shot which weighs 500 lb. and has carried a shot to Sewall’s Point, a distance of upwards of five miles. The heaviest one is a rifled gun and the ball is part of iron and part of lead. The lead is expanded by the powder when fired and fills the grooves. The heaviest shot are of this shape [sketch] and the slug shot this [sketch]. These latter are considered the most effective for the demolishing of iron clads & weigh 450 lbs. These shot are about two feet long and 15 inches in diameter. Shell are also used of the same shape. The size of the gun I can not very well describe. I should think it was at least twenty feet long and the diameter at the breach is as good as five feet. I should like first rate to have you see them. I should hate to be on the Merrimac or any ironclad & have such a shot fired at the vessel. The fort is built for nine hundred guns but there are only about 850 mounted now, yet the work is going on.

The “Lincoln Gun” at Fortress Monroe was actually a 15-inch Rodman Columbiad LOC)

We left Newport News last Friday on board of a boat and arrived at Norfolk in about three hours and spent the night there. The next morning we went on a train of cars & after riding through a wilderness, or through Dismal Swamp as it is put down in Geography, we find ourselves in the town of Suffolk surrounded by a wilderness. For seven or eight miles we rode through a part of the Great Dismal Swamp and I think it dismal too. It is the most dismal place that I have been in, that is certain. It is a real saucy looking hole. We are surrounded by swamps and forests & there is nothing to be seen after we get away from the trenches and fortifications which surround us. The Dismal Swamp is southwest from us and we are on low, level, and damp ground—just the place for fevers. We are distant from Norfolk 23 miles & from Norfolk to Fort Monroe is 18 miles, and we are only seven or eight miles from North Carolina. 

I am quite well and in pretty good spirits considering the dismal country which surrounds us. I have weighed once within two or three weeks 148 lbs. and under, if you can beat that. Write soon. Give my best respects to all the friends, Uncles, Aunts, and cousins.

From your affectionate cousin, — Henry

15th Connecticut Infantry, New Bern, North Carolina

1864: Robert Downs to Clarissa F. Downs

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This letter was written by Robert Downs (1835-1907), the son of Leverett Downs (1796-1859) and Anna Atwater (1801-1895) of New Haven county, Connecticut.

Robert enlisted on 8 August 1862 as a private in Co. H, 15th Connecticut Infantry. He mustered out of the regiment at Newbern, North Carolina, on 27 June 1865. The regiment served in the defenses of Washington D. C. before participating in the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Mud March, the Siege of Suffolk, &c. They were ordered to Newbern, North Carolina in January 1864 which was their base of operations until the close of the war.

The 15th Connecticut Marker at the Newbern, N. C. National Cemetery

Robert’s letter datelined from Newbern in September 1864 speaks of his own sickness and of the large number of sick citizens and soldiers in Newbern where “a good many are dying.” So many of the 15th Connecticut soldiers died at Newbern during the time they were quartered there that a monument was erected by the state honoring their service. In the dedication of that monument in 1894, Senator O. H. Platt said, “We erect monuments, not to the living, but to the dead. A century from now the State and Nation will still be seeking some way in which to testify an increasing regard for the men who saved the Union from dissolution, who made its flag one flag, and its boundaries to encompass one—only one—country. Heroism, achievements, sacrifice are the grand fruitage of humanity, worthy of all honor; but grander yet and worthy of supreme honor is patriotism…Other regiments may mark with their monuments positions on battlefields where their comrades met the enemy in a fierce and deadly struggle to retain their position and beat the enemy back from the field. These your comrades battled with the death angel on a field which they would have gladly abandoned but from which there was no retreat; their struggle involved no passion, none of the accessories of battle strife bore them up, no word of command, no cheer of comrades, no bugle note, no drum, so sound of cannon or rattle of musketry to life them out of themselves and to inspire them to heroic deeds, but in silence and in darkness, alone with themselves, and with the invisible destroyer, far from the homes of love, uncheered and unattended, they met their foe and their fate…”[See Platt Address at Newbern, N. C.]

To read other letters by members of the 15th Connecticut that I’ve transcribed and posted on Spared & Shared, see:

Eli Walter Osborn, F&S, 15th Connecticut (1 Letter)
Charles Griswold, Co. E, 15th Connecticut (1 Letter)
Charles H. Taylor, Co. F, 15th Connecticut (1 Letter)
Henry C. Baldwin, Co. H, 15th Connecticut (1 Letter)
Henry D. Lewis, Co. H, 15th Connecticut (1 letter)
Henry D. Lewis, Co. H, 15th Connecticut (1 Letter)
Walter Howard Lord, Co. I, 15th Connecticut (1 Letter)
John Harrison Hall, Co. K, 15th Connecticut (1 Letter)

Transcription

Addressed to Miss Clarissa F. Downs, Naugatuck, Connecticut

New Bern, N. C.
September 17th 1864

Dear Sisters and all at home,

I received two letters yesterday from you, one from home from Clarissa, and one from Laura then at Bethany. But I suppose that Laura is at home by this time. I am very happy to hear that you are all pretty well. I am a good deal better than I have been but I don’t feel as well as I did before I was sick. I have got over the shakes, but I am in the hospital yet for I don’t feel well enough to do guard duty. We have now and then a cool day and night but the weather is mostly very warm and it is getting to be pretty dry. It is quite sickly here both among the citizens and soldiers and a good many are dying, but the weather will be cooler before long and then it will be more healthy, I think.

Another boy from our company and from Naugatuck died yesterday here in the hospital. His name was Henry Lord. Perhaps you knew him. He was a good, steady boy. He came out with the regiment and he has enjoyed pretty good health till lately. He died quite sudden.

Both of your letters was dated September the 4th. I think they have been a good while coming though I had been looking for a letter from home for some days. But we heard that one of our mail boats had been taken by the rebs and burnt and I thought that I might have a letter on that boat but I guess I didn’t for you was not at home, the reason that you did not write any sooner. I am glad that you went to the camp meeting. I hope you enjoyed it to your best good. I would liked to have been there too for they have such good times and the place is a very pleasant one for a camp meeting.

I should have written to Laura again but I didn’t think that she was going to stay there so long so I thought I would not write to her for I didn’t think she would get the letter and I knew that you would send the letters to her as soon as you could.

I think it is the best thing that Mother could do to fat[ten] that heifer for I don’t want that you should have the bother of an unruly creature for you have enough to see to without that.

I am glad to hear that you are getting along so well and that things on the farm are in pretty good condition. Some say that the war will be over this fall and I think if things work as it appears, that it will now. I say I think that the war will be over sometime this fall. I hope it may be so so that we can all come home for good some time next winter. But this is uncertain for we can’t tell what is before us. Therefore we must trust in the Lord and be consigned to his Holy will. I know that many times the way looks dark ahead and we can see no way how that we are going to get over the difficulties which appear to lay before us, but three is One who can see through all the future, who will guide us in the right path (when we appear to be in the dark) if we ask Him in faith, trusting to His knowledge, mercy, and goodness. I hope that we shall all trust in the mercy and tender love of Jesus, our blessed Saviour and Redeemer, and ask Him to fit us for a more glorious home than the one we possess on earth. I hope these lines will find you all well. Please write soon.

From your sincere and affectionate brother, — Robert Downs