Tag Archives: 4th Maine Infantry Regiment

Maine soldiers watch the army disintegrate in winter 1863, part 2

The arrival of Joe Hooker at Army of the Potomac headquarters in late January 1863 stirred interest, trepidation, and many questions. Within weeks he instituted morale-building improvements that restored the army’s elan. “Never was the magic influence of a single man more clearly shown than when Hooker assumed command,” said Capt. Charles P. Mattocks, 17th […]

Maine impersonates Ohio

A Saco adolescent aged remarkably before joining the 16th Maine Infantry Regiment. Whatever his actual age, he experienced war at its worst during the next four years. According to the 1860 U.S. Census for Saco, George A. Deering was the youngest living-at-home child of James M. Deering and Charlotte Deering. A wealthy merchant, James Deering […]

The 3rd Maine and Cadmus Wilcox’s Alabamians duel in Pitzer’s Woods, part 1

Early on Thursday, July 2, 1863, Maj. Gen. Dan Sickles sent an aide to find Col. Elijah Walker and his 4th Maine Infantry Regiment, numbering “about 300 men and 18 officers” upon bivouacking near Cemetery Ridge the previous night. Sickles commanded III Corps, deployed by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade to hold the southern end […]

Typhoid fever sweeps away the 7th Maine Infantry’s top dog

“Mr. Editor: We have lost our colonel,” a 7th Maine Infantry Regiment private informed the Bangor-published Daily Whig & Courier’s William H. Wheeler on Saturday, October 26, 1861. The news shocked many people in the Pine Tree State — and opened the promotion door to an Army captain. Hailing from Belfast, Thomas H. Marshall had joined […]

The 1863 draft nabs a Lincoln-hating newspaper editor

Since acquiring the Republican Journal in May 1858, William H. Simpson had unabashedly shared his political opinions with his readers in Belfast and elsewhere. Thundering against Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party, emancipation, and blacks since late 1862, he vehemently opposed the Civil War in a city committed to Union victory. And now the Lincoln Administration […]

Bugged by bureaucracy as the 4th Maine’s war winds down

He’d been shot and briefly captured at Gettysburg, had led his men into the maelstroms at First and Second Manassas, and had scurried as dawn approached on December 16, 1862 to find and save missing pickets at Fredericksburg. Now Elijah Walker was home, but bureaucracy followed him even there. With the Army of the Potomac […]

The army bungles discharging two 4th Maine heroes

The War Department kicked out two 4th Maine Infantry officers in November 1863 and promptly kicked one back in. The other guy wasn’t quite so lucky … A Rockland merchant who recruited Co. B, 4th Maine Infantry Regiment, Elijah Walker rose from captain to colonel by spring 1862, when the departing Hiram Berry left the […]

Mainers go violent at the Devil’s Den, part 2

Editor’s note: You can read part 1 here. Realizing that Confederates had swarmed over the Devil’s Den and captured three 10-pounder Parrott rifles atop Houck’s Ridge, Col. Elijah Walker led his men uphill to retake the guns belonging to Capt. James E. Smith’s 4th New York Battery. The 4th Maine had spent the afternoon on […]

Mainers go violent at the Devil’s Den, part 1

As John Bell Hood’s division swept east from the Emmitsburg Road after 3 p.m., the 4th Maine Infantry Regiment occupied a position near the Devil’s Den, the rock-tumbled outcropping at the south end of Houck’s Ridge. Atop it spread four 10-pounder Parrotts belonging to the 4th New York Battery, commanded by Capt. James E. Smith. […]

The 4th Maine’s Johnnies Come Marching Home, part 2

When the steamer carrying the homeward-bound 4th Maine rounded Owls Head at 3 a.m., Saturday, June 25, Rockland church bells started pealing, the Halfway Point battery “opened a salute,” and a minute gun fired continuously at the steamboat wharf, Vose observed. Aboard the inbound steamer, “every man was anxious to once more set foot on […]