Tag Archives: Charles Tilden

Blanket Brigade: Forming the regiment

  In early April 1862, United States Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas ordered that recruiting cease in the loyal states. On April 3, Maine Adjutant General John Hodsdon issued General Order No. 11, directing that “all officers and others engaged” in “Volunteer recruiting service in this state” should “close their several offices and [points of] rendezvous.” […]

Requiem for a hero

Tilden is dead. He whom Confederates could not kill along the railroad at Fredericksburg or at Oak Hill outside Gettysburg, he whom as the 16th Maine Infantry’s “Harry Houdini” never met an escape opportunity that he would not take, he is dead. Born in Castine on May 7, 1832, Charles W. Tilden died at his […]

16th Maine met its Armageddon at Gettysburg

Charles Tilden led 275 men of the 16th Maine Infantry Regiment into Gettysburg around noon on Wednesday, July 1, 1863. Only 40 men answered the regimental rolls after sunset on that bloody day. The other 235 men had vanished after savagely battling thousands of Confederates that afternoon. Among the missing was Tilden, who hailed from […]

17-year-old soldier charges with the 16th Maine at Fredericksburg

  The 16th Maine boys know that if they charge those distant hills, they will die. So do the Johnnies awaiting them. And today, just 12 days before Christmas 1862, there can’t be a more miserable place to die than on these muddy farm fields about 2 miles downriver from a Virginia town called Fredericksburg. […]

The 16th Maine Infantry monuments at Gettysburg

  From time to time we will wander to Gettysburg and visit the monuments left there by Maine units. Today let’s walk where the 16th Maine Infantry Regiment fought and died. Late afternoon on July 1, 1863, Col. Charles Tilden and his 16th Maine were west of Gettysburg, holding a line that essentially stretched from […]